Takazawa Kōji
Takazawa Kōji, the author of Destiny, is a former student activist in Japan who went on to become an author, editor, and independent investigative journalist. He was a student member of the New Left organization known as Bund (Kyōsanshugisha Dōmei) and became part of the Red Army Faction when it was expelled from Bund in the summer of 1969. He helped produce the Red Army Faction’s publications and knew some members of the hijack group. In the 1990s he visited North Korea several times to meet with the Yodogō hijackers and published their writings in Japan. Over time he became suspicious of the stories they told him, and after his friend Tamiya died suddenly in 1995, he began tracing their tracks in Europe and Southeast Asia. He uncovered evidence that the group had been involved in luring young Japanese from Europe to North Korea. He published Destiny: The Secret Operations of the Yodogō Exiles in 1998. The book won the Kodansha Prize for Non-Fiction the following year. Although the remaining members of the Yodogō group in in North Korea continue to deny their involvement in thekidnapping or luring of Japanese to North Korea, in 2002 the North Korean government gave a list of Japanese abductees to the Japanese government that included the three people he had linked to the Yodogō group. Takazawa donated his vast collection of Japanese New Left social movement materials to the University of Hawaii in 1993 [http://www.takazawa.hawaii.edu] and has added additional materials since, including all his research materials for Destiny.
Volume 16 | Issue 7 | Number 1