This project at the Wolf Humanities Center is for a dissertation, The 'Criminal Woman' in Contemporary Japan: Sexualizing Spectacle and Mediating Law. It focuses on Shigenobu Fusako (b. 1945), a once leading member of a Middle East-based branch (est. 1971) of the international extremist group The Japanese Red Army (JRA). From proletariat-aligned unions to New Left student protests, a domestic social order in 20th-century Japan often precluded women from representative roles in political movements. By comparison, Shigenobu had authority and visibility domestic and abroad. The project will examine the vast media coverage of Shigenobu, how she is identified both an “extremist” and a “revolutionary,” and trace the effects of these portrayals on her 2000s trial on conspiracy charges. The project will also demonstrate that the media spectacle around Shigenobu manufactured competing truths about female embodiment and political agency that had consequences for broader social and legal negotiations in and beyond Japan of permissible political action for women in the 21st century.