Far Leftists Are Courteous but Dangerous : Japanese Radicals Target Summit

Japan’s largest urban guerrilla organization can be reached by telephone. Its leaders politely make appointments and grant interviews to the bourgeois press.

And, when a neighborhood tradesman complains that a minibus belonging to the Japan Revolutionary Communist League--more commonly known as the Middle Core Faction--is blocking his driveway, a member sets aside his steel helmet and wooden stave, unbolts the double steel doors of the group’s fortress-like building in northeast Tokyo, and leaves it long enough to move the offending vehicle.

All this decorum, however, is deceptive.

According to police, violent radical activity is on the increase in Japan, the Middle Core Faction is at the center of it, and most of the radical groups have declared the seven-nation Tokyo economic summit their primary target.

Raps ‘Imperialist Powers’

Yoshihisa Fujiwara, a Middle Core Faction leader, described the summit, which opens Sunday, in an interview as “a preparation by the imperialist powers for a war of aggression.”

According to Fujiwara, Libya, Iran and the Palestine Liberation Organization are fighting for the liberation of Asian and African people. He called President Reagan’s April 15 strike against Libya an act of “indiscriminate terror.”

In spite of Fujiwara’s pro-Libyan statements, Tokyo Police Chief Hideo Yamada said Friday that there was little contact between groups like the Middle Core Faction and the government of Col. Moammar Kadafi.

These domestic ultra-leftist groups, not Libyan terrorists, are regarded by the police as the main threat to the summit, according to Yamada.

900 Arrested

In the last year, Japanese police have arrested 900 people in connection with political violence. Police arrested 210 of them at one rally after members of the Middle Core Faction charged their lines with staves, steel pipes and Molotov cocktails.

Recently, the radicals have developed missiles, including one with a range of 2.5 miles, and have resorted to a variety of disguises.

“They (the radicals) have shown up as deliverymen and movers, and once they even arrived at a fire as firefighters,” said Yamada, explaining the unusually heavy security being provided by 30,000 police for Reagan and the leaders of six other industrialized countries attending the summit.

“We have had to become suspicious of the most ordinary people,” he said.

And of all the ultra-left groups, Fujiwara’s faction has been labeled the most dangerous by Tokyo police.

Split With Communists

With more than 5,000 members, the Middle Core Faction is the largest of an estimated 200 to 300 radical organizations, most of which split off from Japan’s Communist Party when that organization suddenly abandoned violence as a means to achieve revolution 30 years ago.

“The Middle Core Faction has the most dangerous weapons of any Japanese radical group,” Yamada told correspondents on Friday. “Their missiles can carry 6 kilos (13 pounds) of explosives for one kilometer.”

The faction has a secret missile factory hidden in mountains west of Tokyo, according to Japanese press reports. A raid on one of its hide-outs by police in Nagoya, Japan’s fourth largest city, yielded 100 pounds of explosives, integrated circuits and paper that dissolves in water. The faction sends all its messages in code.

Yamada said that Japanese police are determined to crack down on the radicals because their missiles are “getting dangerously close to weapons grade.”

Missile Attacks

The faction and two smaller ultra-left groups have staged half a dozen missile attacks against targets such as the U.S. Embassy, the palace of Emperor Hirohito and Osaka’s prefectural police headquarters.

The attacks on the palace have led to a new development in radical politics in Japan--violent confrontation between the ultra-left and newly organized right-wing extremists.

A right-wing group tried to ram the steel doors of the Middle Core Faction’s headquarters with a truck. In another incident, a 25-year-old right-wing activist blew off his hands when he tried to place a bomb in a toilet at a park where a left-wing group was scheduled to stage a demonstration against the 60th anniversary of the emperor’s ascent to the throne.

For the last 15 years, most of the violence has been confined to infighting among rival factions on the extreme left. According to the police, 12 activists have been killed and 84 injured in battles among ultra-left groups.

Out of Favor on Campuses

The violence, part of the ideology of the extremists, has been their downfall. Until the early 1970s, the Middle Core Faction was active on university campuses. Today it finds favor only with those who have a grudge against the government--workers opposed to the privatization of the government-owned Japan National Railways and farmers fighting a 20-year battle against the expropriation of their lands for Tokyo’s international airport at Narita.

The Middle Core Faction has played a crucial role in both anti-government movements. Last year, it cooperated with disgruntled railway workers and severed communication cables on Tokyo’s commuter lines, paralyzing the city for most of a day.

The faction has also fought alongside die-hard farmers in pitched battles against riot police at Narita. So far, six people, including four policemen, have died there. Because of the radicals’ activities, only one of the three runways planned at Narita has been completed, and the airport is permanently guarded by 7,000 police.