On the Desk Where Trotsky Was Assassinated: The Mexico of Japanese Stage Director Seki Sano | From the Study of an International History Detective #8

In a study guarded by a steel door 20 centimeters thick, Trotsky fell to an ice axe. At around the same time, Seki Sano, the stage director who translated “The Internationale” into Japanese, was living in exile in Mexico. Tetsuro Kato records his travels to the places where it all happened. (From installment 8 of “From the Study of an International History Detective,” Hon no Machi, June 2026 issue)

Trotsky’s Assassination on Film

The article begins with a film: The Assassination of Trotsky (1972), starring Alain Delon, with story and screenplay by Nicholas Mosley and location shooting in Mexico City.

Both are Americans, yet the film was shot on location in Mexico City, and in the 1940 May Day march at the start of the film, the revolutionary anthem “The Internationale” is sung in Spanish.

Alain Delon played the man who killed Trotsky with an ice axe. The real assassin, Ramón Mercader, was arrested immediately after the attack. After serving his full sentence he went to the Soviet Union, where he was named a Hero of the Soviet Union and awarded the Order of Lenin; in his final years he moved to Cuba, where he died a lonely death, the article relates.

The Man Who Wrote the Japanese Lyrics of “The Internationale”

Here the second protagonist enters the story.

The Japanese lyrics of the revolutionary anthem “The Internationale,” which begin “Arise, ye who hunger, now the day is near,” were written by the stage director Seki Sano.

Seki Sano was living in exile in Mexico at around the same time as Trotsky. The article carefully traces his relationship to the mural movement that grew out of the Mexican Revolution, to the Palace of the Revolution, and his distance from Trotsky’s assassination.

The piece is also a record of the author’s own travels through Mexico: the Frida Kahlo Museum in Coyoacán, and the Templo Mayor, the ancient ruins excavated in the heart of the city.

How was Seki Sano connected to Trotsky’s assassination? In the article’s closing pages, the author refuses to settle that question hastily, and instead sets out to read the Mexico of that era itself, a place where Stalinists, Trotskyists and artists were all tangled together.

The full article, along with the photos the author took on location, is available in the June issue PDF.

Tetsuro Kato
Born in 1947. Professor emeritus of political science at Hitotsubashi University. He researches the political history of Japan, the Soviet Union and the Comintern. His books include Zoruge Jiken (The Sorge Affair) and “Hoshoku shita Akuma” no Sengo (The Postwar of “The Devil’s Gluttony”). He writes the series “From the Study of an International History Detective” for Hon no Machi.

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This article introduces installment 8 of “From the Study of an International History Detective” by Tetsuro Kato (professor emeritus of political science, Hitotsubashi University), published in the June 2026 issue (Vol. 14) of Hon no Machi, the community salon magazine of Kanda, Ochanomizu and Jimbocho.

▶Read the June 2026 issue of Hon no Machi (PDF, in Japanese)

Founded in 1980, Hon no Machi brings you the latest from Book Town every month, together with Jimbocho’s bookstores, publishers, cafés and galleries.

▶ For other installments of “From the Study of an International History Detective,” see All installments

日本語で読む — Read this article in Japanese