Otoya Yamaguchi


Otoya Yamaguchi was a Japanese ultranationalist who assassinated Inejiro Asanuma, head of the Japan Socialist Party. Yamaguchi was a member of a right-wing uyoku dantai group, and assassinated Asanuma with a yoroi-dōshi on 12 October 1960, at Tokyo's Hibiya Hall during a political debate in advance of parliamentary elections.

Death

Less than three weeks after the assassination, while being held in a juvenile detention facility, Yamaguchi mixed a small amount of toothpaste with water and wrote on his cell wall, "Seven lives for my country. Long live His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor!" Yamaguchi then knotted strips of his bedsheet into a makeshift rope and used it to hang himself from a light fixture. The phrase "seven lives for my country" was a reference to the last words of 14th-century samurai Kusunoki Masashige.
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. His ashes were interred in Aoyama Cemetery.

Legacy

A photograph taken by Yasushi Nagao immediately after Yamaguchi withdrew his sword from Asanuma won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize, and the 1960 World Press Photo award. Footage of the incident was also captured.
Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburō Ōe based his 1961 novellas Seventeen and The Death of a Political Youth on Yamaguchi.
In October 2010, right-wing groups celebrated the 50th anniversary of the assassination in Hibiya Park.
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. After the performance, McInnes left the club holding the plastic samurai sword used in the reenactment.