Workshop on Adachi Masao, Nagayama Norio, and Terayama Shūji with Tatiana Sulovska

Please join the Modern Japan History Workshop for their next meeting on Monday, May 12th at **12:00 noon JST**.  Our presenter this month will be Tatiana Sulovska (UCLA), who will present her work on Adachi Masao, Nagayama Norio, and Terayama Shūji (details below).

This month’s session will be held online through Zoom.
Meeting ID: 862 4983 6545
Passcode: Will be posted on the MJHW website from May 9th onwards.

The workshop is open to all, and no prior registration is required.
Please direct any questions to Joelle Nazzicone at joelle.nazzicone[at]gmail.com.  We hope to see you there!

_______________________

Beyond the Landscape: Transcending the Present Condition (In the Thought of Adachi Masao, Nagayama Norio, and Terayama Shūji)

Tatiana Sulovska (UCLA)

Following the assassination of Abe Shinzō in the summer of 2022, Adachi Masao, a filmmaker whose history is deeply intertwined with the 1960s protest, as exemplified in his relationship with the Japanese Red Army, set out to make a film about Yamagami Tetsuya, the shooter. Revolution + 1 was screened as an incomplete 50-minute version on the day of Abe Shinzō’s funeral. The explicit goal of the screening was to preempt efforts to pathologize Yamagami, and thus to expand the discussion of his actions beyond issues of criminality and mental health. Adachi previously centered a social outcast in his 1968 film “A.K.A. Serial Killer,” completed while its subject, the 19-year-old Nagayama Norio, was facing a trial for shooting four people in four different Japanese cities, with a gun taken from a U.S. military base. While in prison, before his execution, Nagayama became an award-winning writer. So, when in 1976 Terayama Shūji, a cult underground playwright, filmmaker, and poet, condemned Nagayama in a brief article, Nagayama responded in book-length form. I triangulate the conversation between Nagayama, Terayama, and Adachi with respect to state violence and criminality as I consider their ideas with a view to transcend the immediate situation.