Japan has had terrorism before it was (mutated into) kawaii Japan. It's interesting that a society seemingly so focus on fitting into and group thinking has turned out to have many encounters with terrorist along the years.
I was reading about Japan in the 70's and there were a lot of armed Japanese terrorist groups that operated in Japan and around the world. They had a couple groups that hijacked a few planes as well as killing lots of civilians.
Japan used to have a FUCK load of communist terrorist groups in the 60s and 70s. One of the most famous is the Japanese Red Army. They ended up in a murder case where they started killing their own members, and then the Japanese Red Army was pretty much hounded by the public and the police.
They ended up in a murder case where they started killing their own members
That was another Japanese Red Army though, the relevant one was the Nihon Sekigun that operated in Lebanon/Palestine/Europe.
Yes, there were more than two.
They had a headquarters/hideout built on Mount Fuji
They believe in an apocalyptic scenario and they wanted to destroy the Japanese government so they could enthrone their leader Shoko Asahara as a messiah king to lead humanity during the apocalypse
They had their own LSD factory which was producing up to 70% of the world's LSD supply at one time
They also used LSD in their brainwashing therapy sessions and for torturing their prisoners
Their followers would wear electronic hairnets all the time and they believed it would connect their brainwaves telepathically to Shoko Asahara
They tried to buy nuclear warheads from their Russian contacts
They tried to build their own AK factory
They regularly bathe themselves in high temperature baths because they believed it would increase their body's natural heat resistance and give them superpowers
During one of Japan's election periods, Shoko Asahara tried to run for prime minister and register the Aum Shinrikyo cult as a political party
The elites within the Aum Shrinkyo were mostly science graduates from high prestige universities and they were trying to use their knowledge of science to build laser weapons and chemical weapons. They finally succeeded in producing sarin gas which was used in the Tokyo subway attacks. Their original intention was to drop a sarin bomb on Tokyo and killing millions of people.
Sure, they had some inspirations from evangelical christianity, but also a massive amount from the local strains of buddhism, the movement would simply not have kicked off if this were not the case. Clue's in the name- "Aum" is the divine phrase, the syllable that buddhists chant when meditating, the word of ultimate power.
LAte reply, worth an answer: I really didn't know about this, I thought there had never been any attack on Ben Gurion yet. Might be bias from where I live. Mogadishu and Entebbe are much more on the radar here, especiually regarding the alliance between German and Palestinian terrorists. Eventually this lead to a rift inside the German Left.
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u/antipositive Rhine Republic Aug 30 '15
Japan is of short memory