United Red Army on Screen: Cinema, Aesthetics and The Politics of Memory

Christopher Perkins is Lecturer in Japanese in the department of Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK. He holds a PhD in politics and international relations from Royal Holloway University of London and has published articles and book chapters on Japanese media, memory politics, cinema, and border politics.

"In this important treatment of Japanese cinematic memory texts dealing with the United Red Army, Chris Perkins brings together politics, aesthetics and history to offer a new interpretation of how the events surrounding the United Red Army's descent into violence have been represented and read as an ongoing trauma for Japanese society, and for the Left in particular. The dominant aesthetic of politicised and gendered ky?ki (madness) surrounding the URA creates through its universalism a 'trap'; violence and madness appear to be the natural ends of all left wing politics. Perkins traces the emergence of this dominant aesthetic alongside resistant processes. In doing so, he offers a new and challenging take on the generalised 'trouble with history' in Japan - the desire to suppress the past and the simultaneous searching in history for political relevance for the present condition." - Mark Pendleton, University of Sheffield, UK

• 1. The URA, politics and the aesthetics of memory 2. The Japanese New Left and the URA 3. A spectacle of sex, violence and madness 4. Horror, sympathy and empathy 5. The Image, Seeing and the Siege 6. Conclusion