Adachi Masao (born 1939) has lived one of the most extraordinary lives in Japanese cinema. He has made experimental films, worked with leading figures of the Japanese New Wave, and spent decades in Lebabon alongside the radical left-wing Japanese Red Army.

John talks to Tokyo-based researcher, writer and translator William Andrews about Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw, his new biography of this provocative filmmaker and revolutionary. Recording this episode, John and William faced radical conditions themselves – annoying ambulances, copulating cats, and clanking bottle collection, and more cats – but for you, dear listener, all that artistic struggle was left on the cutting-room floor.

William Andrews’ two books mentioned were:

Pink Auteur, Red Outlaw: Adachi Masao and Japan’s Cinema of Revolution (Awai Books, 2026). It is the first English-language book devoted to Adachi and draws on extensive interviews and years of research.

Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture, from 1945 to Fukushima (Hurst, 2016)

William’s three Adachi film recommendations are (in the order discussed):

Revolution+1 (2022) – Adachi’s film about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassin.

A.K.A. Serial Killer – completed in 1969, first publicly shown in 1975, it follows the landscapes associated with a serial killer and is the key film associated with Adachi’s “landscape theory.”

Galaxy (1967) – one of Adachi’s early experimental films.

The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press.

Podcast host Amy Chavez is author of The Widow, the Priest, and the Octopus Hunter: Discovering a Lost Way of Life on a Secluded Japanese Island. and Amy's Guide to Best Behavior in Japan.

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