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Undid revision 1017399288 by NO I IN DENIAL (talk) I don't think you understand bad writing, edit-warring, coat-racking, or page ownership. You're distracting the focus of the article with immaterial differences. You can take it up at Proud Boys, it's irrelevant here, just the nationalism is parallel
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Nobel Prize-winning author [[Kenzaburō Ōe]] based his 1961 novellas ''Seventeen'' and ''Death of a Political Youth'' on Yamaguchi.<ref name="Weston 1999 295"/>
Nobel Prize-winning author [[Kenzaburō Ōe]] based his 1961 novellas ''Seventeen'' and ''Death of a Political Youth'' on Yamaguchi.<ref name="Weston 1999 295"/>


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 [[far-right]], [[neo-fascist]], [[chauvinist]], [[White nationalism|white nationalist]] organization founded by McInnes)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys|title=Proud Boys|publisher=[[Southern Poverty Law Center]]|access-date=17 October 2018}}</ref> in New York City.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2018/10/12/state-gop-distances-itself-from-mcinnes-following-vandalism-648200|title=State GOP distances itself from McInnes, following vandalism|publisher=[[Politico]]|date=12 October 2018|access-date=8 July 2019|author=Dana Rubinstein}}</ref><ref name=PlasticSword>{{citation|url=https://observer.com/2018/10/gop-metropolitan-republican-club-fight-gavin-mcinnes-proud-boys-vs-antifa/ |title=How Gavin McInnes' Proud Boys and Antifa Turned the Upper East Side Into Hell |first1=Davis |last1=Richardson |date=15 October 2018 |newspaper=Observer, New York|access-date=29 October 2018}}</ref> After the performance, McInnes left the club holding the plastic samurai sword used in the reenactment.<ref name=PlasticSword/>
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]] in New York City.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2018/10/12/state-gop-distances-itself-from-mcinnes-following-vandalism-648200|title=State GOP distances itself from McInnes, following vandalism|publisher=[[Politico]]|date=12 October 2018|access-date=8 July 2019|author=Dana Rubinstein}}</ref><ref name=PlasticSword>{{citation|url=https://observer.com/2018/10/gop-metropolitan-republican-club-fight-gavin-mcinnes-proud-boys-vs-antifa/ |title=How Gavin McInnes' Proud Boys and Antifa Turned the Upper East Side Into Hell |first1=Davis |last1=Richardson |date=15 October 2018 |newspaper=Observer, New York|access-date=29 October 2018}}</ref> After the performance, McInnes left the club holding the plastic samurai sword used in the reenactment.<ref name=PlasticSword/>


==Notes==
==Notes==

Revision as of 22:52, 12 April 2021

Otoya Yamaguchi
山口 二矢
A photograph taken by Yasushi Nagao of Otoya Yamaguchi attempting to stab Inejirō Asanuma for a second time.
Born(1943-02-22)22 February 1943
Taitō, Tokyo, Japan
Died2 November 1960(1960-11-02) (aged 17)
Nerima, Tokyo, Japan
Cause of deathSuicide by hanging
Resting placeAoyama Cemetery, Minami-Aoyama, Tokyo
Known forAssassination of Inejirō Asanuma

Otoya Yamaguchi (山口 二矢, Yamaguchi Otoya, 22 February 1943 – 2 November 1960) was a Japanese right-wing ultranationalist youth who assassinated Inejirō Asanuma, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, on 12 October 1960. Yamaguchi rushed the stage and stabbed Asanuma with a wakizashi short sword while Asanuma was participating in a televised election debate at Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo. Yamaguchi, who was 17 years of age at the time, had been a member of Bin Akao's far-right Greater Japan Patriotic Party, but had resigned earlier that year.[1] After being arrested and interrogated, Yamaguchi committed suicide while in a detention facility.

Yamaguchi became a hero and a martyr to the Japanese far-right, and commemorations in his honor continue to this day.[2] Yamaguchi's actions inspired a number of copycat crimes, including the Shimanaka Incident in 1961, and inspired Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kenzaburō Ōe's novellas Seventeen and Death of a Political Youth.[3][4] A photograph of the Asanuma assassination taken by Japanese photojournalist Yasushi Nagao is considered one of the most famous press photographs of the 20th century, and won World Press Photo of the Year for 1960 and the 1961 Pulitzer Prize.

Early life

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]

1960 Anpo protests

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]

Assassination of Inejirō Asanuma

Main article: Assassination of Inejirō Asanuma

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.

Imprisonment and suicide

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]

Legacy

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 in New York City.[14][15] After the performance, McInnes left the club holding the plastic samurai sword used in the reenactment.[15]

Notes

  1. ^ The sword was a slightly undersized replica of a famous sword forged in the Kamakura Period by the swordsmith Rai Kunitoshi, and thus is better considered a wakizashi than a full-sized tachi or katana.[8]

References

  1. ^ a b Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 252–53.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 254.
  3. ^ Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 257.
  4. ^ a b Weston, Mark (1999). Giants of Japan: The Lives of Japan's Most Influential Men and Women. New York: Kodansha International. p. 295. ISBN 1-568362862.
  5. ^ a b c Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 252.
  6. ^ Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 253.
  7. ^ a b Kapur, Nick (2018). Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 253–54.
  8. ^ 沢木, 耕太郎 (1982). 『テロルの決算』文藝春秋. 文春文庫. pp. 10, 238. ISBN 978-4167209049.
  9. ^ "JAPAN: Assassin's Apologies". TIME Magazine. Time Inc. 14 November 1960. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  10. ^ a b Newton, Michael (17 April 2014). "Inejiro Asanuma (1898–1960)". Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. ABC-CLIO. pp. 234–235. ISBN 978-1-61069-286-1.
  11. ^ "四月廿九日 山口二矢及び筆保泰禎兩氏之墓參 於港區南青山「梅窓院」". Douketusya (in Japanese). 3 May 2013. Retrieved 2 July 2018.
  12. ^ Zelizer, Barbie (1 December 2010). About to Die:How News Images Move the Public. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 183–4. ISBN 978-0199752133. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
  13. ^ Inejiro Asanuma Assassination Footage (1960) (Digital video). YouTube.com (published 18 May 2006). 12 October 1960. Retrieved 11 June 2010.
  14. ^ Dana Rubinstein (12 October 2018). "State GOP distances itself from McInnes, following vandalism". Politico. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
  15. ^ a b Richardson, Davis (15 October 2018), "How Gavin McInnes' Proud Boys and Antifa Turned the Upper East Side Into Hell", Observer, New York, retrieved 29 October 2018

Further reading

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