Volunteer Army Unit for Punishing Traitors

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The Voluntary Army Unit for Punishing Traitors (建国義勇軍国賊征伐隊, Kenkoku giyūgun kokuzoku seibatsutai), or simply Kenkoku giyūgun or Kokuzoku seibatsutai, was an armed Japanese nationalist group founded in 2002 by Ichiro Murakami.

History

Between November 2002 and December 2003, the group carried out 23 attacks in Japan, bomb threats, arson attempts, and gun attacks against buildings which resulted in damaged walls and smashed windows.

Targets included offices of the Japan Teachers Union, Osaka and Tokyo buildings used by the terrorist cult Aum Shinrikyo (which had perpetrated the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack), the pro-North Korea Chongryon association, and the only threat taken seriously by Japanese law enforcement, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Hitoshi Tanaka, who had attempted rapprochement with North Korea in 2002.

The group ceased to exist on 19 December 2003 with the arrest of Ichiro Murakami and 12 other members, for violating

Ichirō Murakami ran a business in

Murakami recruited members to his group from his collectors' association, Token tomo no kai (The Sword-Lovers' Society), of which he was the president, and among other sword collectors. In the association's monthly newsletter, which he used as a recruitment tool, Murakami once wrote "This is a group of modern Samurai, hoping to do everything in their power to make Japan a truly independent nation" and "We must march into battle under the banner of anti-Communism, anti-Americanism and anti-socialism." The group claimed to have 30,000 members, asserting that all sword buyers were actually members of his collector's association.

Following Murakami's arrest, one of the group's members committed suicide in Osaka by jumping from a bridge after ritually taking off his shoes.

Murakami had some friends in politics, including

• 23 October 2002: Murakami confessed to the police that he had attempted to burn down a Chongryon office in
  Fukui prefecture
  .
• November 2002: Threatening letters containing bullets were sent to the Chongryon office in Tokyo.
• 29 May 2002: Shots were fired at an
  Suginami, Tokyo
  .
• 13 June 2002: Shots were fired at an Aum Shinrikyo building in Osaka.
• 27 June 2002: Tatsuya Hattori fired shots at the
  Onomichi, Hiroshima
  .
• 29 July 2002: A .38-calibre pistol was fired at the Chongryon headquarters in
  Niigata
  .
• 23 August 2002: A .38-calibre pistol was fired at the Okayama office of the Chogin Nishi Credit Union, a pro-North Korean financial organization.
• September 2003: After an anonymous phone call, a bomb was found at the home of Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Hitoshi Tanaka, who was then responsible for Japan's relations with North Korea. The bomb was accompanied by a letter denouncing Tanaka as a traitor for his soft line on North Korea.^[1] The influential and famous Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara criticized Tanaka's policies and argued that the bomb threat was justified.^[2]
• A rifle bullet was posted to Hiromu Nonaka, former secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party.
• A rifle bullet was posted to Muneo Suzuki, former deputy in the House of Representatives.
• October 2003: A man claiming to be a member of the "Volunteer Army Unit for Punishing Traitors" phoned the Tokyo head office of
  Kunitachi, western Tokyo, and planted a bomb at its head office (a fake bomb was later found there).^[3]

• Sekihōtai
• Japanese Red Army
• Chūkaku-ha

References