Mei Shigenobu

Mei Shigenobu (; ; born March 1, 1973) is a Japanese journalist. She is the daughter of Japanese Red Army leader Fusako Shigenobu and of an unknown Palestinian who was reportedly a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Some news agencies have given her name as May Shigenobu.

Early life Mei Shigenobu was born in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon in 1973. Her father was a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine guerrilla leader (not named by Mei due to security reasons) and her mother was the Japanese Red Army leader Fusako Shigenobu.

After three Japanese volunteers for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine PFLP External Operations executed an attack on Israel's Lod Airport (see Lod Airport massacre) on May 30, 1972, PFLP leaders and other Japanese volunteers became targets for Israel's assassinations. In retaliation for the attack, PFLP's spokesman Ghassan Kanafani was killed on July 8, 1972, by the Israeli Intelligence Agency Mossad in a car bomb. Mei's mother became wanted by the INTERPOL in 1974 after the French embassy hostage-taking in The Hague in which she was thought to be involved, so Mei had to move frequently and used aliases to evade reprisals by her mother's enemies.

Mei Shigenobu lived in Lebanon and was raised during lengthy periods when her mother was absent by Arab friends and supporters. Her birth father was killed sometime during her childhood.

She attended different schools in Lebanon and other countries she refuses to name. She studied journalism at the Lebanese University. She was also a student at the American University of Beirut where she continued her graduate studies in International Relations. She was fluent in Arabic and English, but hid her knowledge of Japanese, fearing that it might lead to the capture of her mother.

She was not a citizen of any country until March 2001, when she received Japanese citizenship.

Return to Japan Mei 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. Japanese lawyers, scholars, journalists, writers and activists responded by signing a protest petition against the Israeli embassy and government saying that Mei was now a Japanese citizen and had the right to freedom of speech in Japan.

She then began working as an English teacher in a cram school in Tokyo.

She earned her PhD degree in Media Studies from Doshisha University in 2011, doing research on the development of Arabic media, and the effect of satellite channels (a case study of Al Jazeera) on Arab societies.

Mei Shigenobu is a supporter of Palestinian statehood and a critic of Israel. In contrast to Bettina Röhl's (Ulrike Meinhof's daughter) disavowal, shown in Children of the Revolution, she views her mother's actions with pride, to the point of stating that she considers her a role model, merely repeating, as her mother, that those were different times, as she mentioned to the Standard, "there were no means of gaining media attention", Mei also appears in , a documentary featuring the life of rock band and its lead singer PANTA.

In 2010, Mei costarred in the fictional Japanese movie on figure skating Coach as a sports journalist. In 2010, Mei Shigenobu and her mother Fusako Shigenobu were featured in Shane O'Sullivan's documentary film Children of the Revolution, which premiered at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. In 2011, Mei Shigenobu was featured in Eric Baudelaire's experimental movie The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi, and 27 years without Images along with filmmaker and Japanese Red Army member Masao Adachi, which was entered at the 22nd Marseilles International Film Festival.

Publications