Otoya Yamaguchi

Yamaguchi was born on 22 February 1943 in Taitō ward, Tokyo. He was the second son of Yamaguchi Shinpei, a high-ranking officer in the Japan Self Defense Forces, and was the maternal grandson of the writer Namiroku Murakami, famous for his violent novels glorifying the chivalric code of yakuza gangsters.[5] Yamaguchi grew up in relative privilege, but was radicalized as a teenager by his older brother.[5] At age 16, he joined prominent right-wing ultranationalist Bin Akao's Greater Japan Patriotic Party (日本愛国党, Nihon Aikokutō).[5]

Akao was virulently anti-communist and strongly pro-United States. Thus when left-wing protesters, led by Asanuma and the Japan Socialist Party, staged the massive Anpo protests against the 1960 revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (known as "Anpo" in Japanese), Akao became convinced that Japan was on the verge of a communist revolution and mobilized his followers to stage counter-protests.[1] Yamaguchi participated in these counter-protest activities, and was arrested and released 10 times over the course of 1959 and 1960.[6]

Over the course of his participation in the Anpo protests, Yamaguchi became further radicalized and disillusioned with Akao's leadership, which he felt was not radical enough.[7] On 29 May 1960, as the Anpo protests began to escalate in size and strength, Yamaguchi resigned from Akao's group in order to be free to take more "decisive" action.[7]

On 12 October 1960, Yamaguchi was in the large crowd of 2,500 spectators at a televised election debate held in Hibiya Public Hall in Hibya Park in central Tokyo, featuring Suehiro Nishio of the Democratic Socialist Party, Inejirō Asanuma of the Japan Socialist Party, and Hayato Ikeda of the Liberal Democratic Party. Asanuma was the second to speak, and took the stage at 3:00 p.m.

At 3:05 p.m., Yamaguchi rushed onto the stage and made a deep thrust into Asanuma's left flank with a 33-centemetre samurai short sword (wakizashi) he had stolen from his father.[note 1] Yamaguchi then tried to turn the sword on himself but was swarmed and detained by bystanders. Asanuma died within minutes from massive internal bleeding.

Throughout his imprisonment, Yamaguchi remained calm and composed and freely gave extensive testimony to police. Yamaguchi consistently asserted that he had acted alone and without any direction from others. Less than three weeks after the assassination, on 2 November, Yamaguchi mixed a small amount of toothpaste with water and wrote on his cell wall, "Long live the Emperor" and “Would that I had seven lives to give for my country” (七生報国, shichishō hōkoku), the latter a reference to the famous last words of fourteenth-century samurai Kusunoki Masashige.[2] Yamaguchi then knotted strips of his bedsheet into a makeshift rope and used it to hang himself from a light fixture.[2][9]

Right-wing groups celebrated Yamaguchi as a martyr; they gave a burial coat, kimono, and belt to his parents and performed a memorial service for him.[10] His ashes were interred in Aoyama Cemetery.[11]

Yasushi Nagao with his Pulitzer Prize winning photo. (1961)

A photograph taken by Yasushi Nagao immediately after Yamaguchi withdrew his sword from Asanuma won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize,[12] and the 1960 World Press Photo award. Footage of the incident was also captured.[13]

On 15 December 1960, just weeks after Yamaguchi's suicide, a nationwide coalition of Japanese right-wing groups held a “National Memorial Service for Our Martyred Brother Yamaguchi Otoya" in the same Hibya Public Hall in Tokyo where Yamaguchi had assassinated Asanuma.[2] Since then, right-wing groups have held an annual commemoration of Yamaguchi's death anniversary each year on 2 November.[2] In October 2010, right-wing groups staged a large-scale celebration of the 50th anniversary of Yamaguchi's assassination of Asanuma in Hibiya Park.[10]

Yamaguchi's actions and the massive publicity they received inspired a rash of copycat crimes, as a number of political figures became targets of assassination plots and attempts over the next few years.[2] One of the notable crimes inspired by Yamaguchi's attack was the Shimanaka Incident of February 1961, in which another 17-year-old rightist, Kazutaka Komori, attempted to assassinate the president of Chūō Kōron magazine.

Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburō Ōe based his 1961 novellas Seventeen and Death of a Political Youth on Yamaguchi.[4]

On 12 October 2018, right-wing provocateur Gavin McInnes reenacted the murder as part of a skit to entertain members of the Metropolitan Republican Club and the Proud Boys (a neo-fascist hate group founded by McInnes)[14] in New York City.[15][16] After the performance, McInnes left the club holding the plastic samurai sword used in the reenactment.[16]