Mei Shigenobu

Mei Shigenobu ( 重信メイ , Shigenobu Mei ; born March 1, 1973) is the daughter of Japanese Red Army communist Fusako Shigenobu and a Palestinian resistance fighter.¹ Some news agencies have given her name as May Shigenobu . She was born in Lebanon , though she was not a citizen of any country until March 2001, when she received Japanese citizenship. Shigenobu lived her first eight or nine years in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon; Fusako Shigenobu was absent for months at a time and Mei was raised in those periods by her mother's colleagues in the Japanese Red Army. Following the Army's 1972 terror attack at Lod Airport, Israel , in which 24 people were killed and 76 wounded, members of the group, including Shigenobu, had to move frequently and use aliases to evade Mossad reprisals. Shigenobu attended a string of strict Islamic schools as well as Christian and secular schools in the Middle East. She graduated from the American University of Beirut in International politics and continued her Masters degree there, as well as studying Journalism in the Lebanese University. She came out of hiding after her mother was captured in Osaka , and visited Japan for the first time in April 2001, making her the first child of a Red Army member to return to Japan in five years. She was the subject of some controversy in December 2001 when she gave a talk at a public school in Kanagawa prefecture about Arab culture and food at the invitation of a teacher there; the Israeli embassy in Tokyo sent a complaint to the school, describing her discussion as conveying "blatant, biased political" anti-Israeli sentiments. As of 2001, she has been living in Tokyo and working as an English teacher in a cram school. She is also a free journalist reporting and commenting on Middle Eastern issues. Since 2006, she has been an anchor on a Japanese cable television, Asahi Newstar, in a one hour live political program. [1] Shigenobu is a supporter of Palestinian statehood and a critic of Israel, and speaks of her mother's terrorism in sympathetic terms, although regretful of the violence used by the Japanese Red Army in support of the cause. She said, according to the Amarillo Globe-News , that it "reflected certain values of another age, when armed struggle seemed to some the only way to bring about quick change." She appears in Nobuyuki Oura's movie "9/11-8/15 Japan Pack Suicide" 『9.11-8.15-日本心中-』as the main cast in November 2006. "日本の非常識からみた中東の非常識 (From someone lacking common sense about Japan, a look at the Middle East's lack of common sense)" . No. 92. : Unknown parameter |month= ignored ( help ) "重信房子の実娘、自伝出版 (Shigenobu Fusako's real daughter publishes autobiography)" .²