Escape review notorious Japanese revolutionary tells story of country's most wanted criminal

"Masao Adachi is an 86-year-old Japanese film-maker and former revolutionary activist who spent almost 30 years in Lebanese exile due to his former membership of terrorist group the Japanese Red Army in the 1970s; arrested on his return to Japan, after his release from prison he returned to cinema and has now made this intriguing chamber piece called Toso, or Escape, an intensely, sometimes even passionately acted piece of work, imagining the inner life of a man who was once Japan's most wanted fugitive."

"It is about the now infamous Satoshi Kirishima who, after his involvement in terrorist attacks on corporate buildings, went on the run from the police in 1975 and for decades lived as a cash-in-hand construction worker under a false name, hiding under the radar but in plain sight. He was never recognised and finally confessed his true self on his hospital deathbed in 2024, having being diagnosed with terminal cancer."

"Rairu Sugita plays the young Satoshi, a long-haired, bespectacled radical whose grinning face on his police mugshot made him a national icon, and the older Satoshi is played by Kanji Furutachi. The movie, in its stylised way, gives us the moment of youth transformed to age by having young Satoshi accidentally bump into older, wizened Satoshi on a gloomy country walk and glumly cede his identity to him."

Masao Adachi is an 86-year-old Japanese film-maker and former revolutionary activist who spent almost 30 years in Lebanese exile after membership of the Japanese Red Army in the 1970s. After arrest and release he returned to cinema and made Toso (Escape), a chamber piece imagining Satoshi Kirishima’s inner life. Kirishima was involved in attacks on corporate buildings, fled police in 1975, and spent decades living as a cash-in-hand construction worker under a false name before confessing on his hospital deathbed in 2024 after a terminal cancer diagnosis. The film casts Rairu Sugita and Kanji Furutachi as young and old Satoshi and stages a chance meeting in which youth cedes identity to age. The narrative frames escape as a monk-like, Zen-inspired vocation of inactivity and existential defiance and prompts comparison with Hiroo Onoda’s long isolation until the 1970s.

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