Hiroko Nagata , sometimes mistakenly referred to as Yōko Nagata, was a Japanese
leftist radical who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in
Japan died he was , 65. Nagata was convicted of murdering, or participating in the murder, of fellow members of the
United Red Army (URA) during a group
purge in
Gunma prefecture, Japan in February 1972.
During the purge, Nagata, acting as vice-chairman of the URA, directed the killing of 14 members of the group by beatings or by forced exposure to frigid winter air temperatures. A URA non-member who was present during the purge was also killed. Arrested on February 16, 1972, Nagata was tried and convicted for her participation in the killings, and was sentenced to
death. Nagata died from brain cancer on 5 February 2011 at the
Tokyo Detention House.
| (Nagata Hiroko?, February 8, 1945 – February 5, 2011) |
Biography
Nagata was born in
Tokyo and, after graduation from Chofu Gakuen High School, entered
Kyoritsu College of Pharmacy (defunct in 2008 and merged into
Keio University) to receive training to be a
pharmacist. During her time in college, Nagata became involved full-time in left-wing politics, eventually becoming vice-chairman of the United Red Army. Nagata would work herself into what was described as an "hysterical rage" when excited, usually over political issues. She was described as physically unattractive and was (by the standard of medicine of that time) infertile from
Basedow syndrome, she was particularly harsh with other female members.
[2]
Purge incident
Japan's leftist student movement in the 1960s pervaded Japan's universities, and, by late in the decade, had become balkanized, competitive, and violent. After a series of incidents in which leftist student groups attacked and injured or killed law enforcement officials as well as the general public, Japan's national police agency cracked down on the student groups, raiding their hideouts and arresting dozens in 1971 and 1972. Attempting to escape from the police, a core group of radicals from the URA, including Nagata, retreated to a compound in the mountains of
Gunma Prefecture during the winter of 1972.
[3]
In the second week of February 1972 at the compound, URA's chairman
Tsuneo Mori and Nagata initiated a violent
purge of the group's members. In the purge, Nagata and Mori directed the beating deaths of eight members and one non-member who happened to be present. Six other members were tied to trees outside where they froze to death in the frigid mountain winter air. Nagata especially targeted group members who, in her opinion, "took too much interest in relations with women and did not devote enough ardor to the revolution." A few were killed for "attempting to escape." One was killed for asking for some tissue paper while inside his sleeping bag, an act that Nagata apparently construed as having a sexual significance.
[4]
On February 16, police arrested Mori, Nagata, and six other URA members at the compound or at a nearby village. Five others, armed with rifles and shotguns, managed to escape, fleeing on foot through the mountains towards Karuizawa in nearby Nagano prefecture and eventually took refuge in a mountain guest lodge, initiating the
Asama-Sansō incident.
[5]
Criminal trial and sentence
Hiroko Nagata was sentenced to death in the
Tokyo District Court on June 18, 1982. On September 26, 1986, the
Tokyo High Court upheld her death sentence. On February 19, 1993, the
Supreme Court of Japan upheld her death sentence. Nagata submitted a plea for a
retrial, which was declined by the courts on November 28, 2006.
[6]
Nagata wrote several books during her time in prison and attracted the attention of a support group. Nagata's supporters reported that she had suffered from declining health, including a brain tumor, for several years which had gone untreated.
[6] She underwent surgery for a brain tumor in 1984. Nagata collapsed from brain atrophy in 2006 and was transferred to a medical prison in
Hachioji. She returned to the Tokyo Detention House in 2007, but was bedridden.
[7]
On October 11, 2008, it was revealed that Nagata had fallen into a critical condition due to the tumor, so her family was called for visitation to the Tokyo Detention Center.
[8] Nagata died on 5 February 2011.
[9]
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Miriam Hansen was a film historian who made important contributions to the study of early cinema and mass culture died from cancer she was , 61.
Born Miriam Bratu to Jewish parents in Offenbach, Germany, Hansen received a doctorate in American literature from Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt.[1] She worked at Yale University and Rutgers before moving to the University of Chicago, where she served as Ferdinand Schevill Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the time of her death.[1] She founded the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at that university.[1]
