On this day 64 years ago, neofascist Yamaguchi Otoya murdered socialist politician Asanuma Inejirō on live TV

cross‐posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5934015

On October 12th, 1960, Asanuma Inejirō, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, the government’s main opposition, was fatally stabbed on live TV during an election debate. The perpetrator was a 17‐year‐old ultranationalist called Yamaguchi Otoya. Yamaguchi had been a member of a far‐right group called the Greater Japan Patriotic Party (Dai Nippon Aikokutō), whose leader, Akao Bin, was an open admirer of Adolf Hitler.

Dai Nipon Aikokutō had been involved in various protests and counter‐protests during turbulent 1960, during which Yamaguchi was arrested ten times. He came to believe, however, that the group was not going far enough, and resigned a few months before stabbing Asanuma.[2] Having turned himself in after the murder, Yamaguchi admitted that he’d hoped to kill the founder of the Japanese Communist Party and the chairman of the leftist Japan Teacher’s Union as well.[3]

In the figure of Yamaguchi, international fascism and Japanese myth were combined. He consciously espoused [Fascist] rhetoric, ‘worshipped’ Hitler, and was an avid reader of Mein Kampf.[4] The murder weapon, however, was a samurai short sword stolen from Yamaguchi’s father, a colonel in the Japanese Self Defence Forces. Yamaguchi killed himself in prison on November 2nd, having written in toothpaste on his wall ‘long live the emperor’ and, tellingly, ‘would that I had seven lives to give for my country.’

Yamaguchi seemed to have viewed himself as embodying the legend of samurai Kusunoki Masashige, to whom the latter phrase is attributed, who died in the service of emperor Go‐Daigo in 1336. Just as Kusunoki defended his emperor from the forces of the Ashikaga shogunate, so Yamaguchi saw himself as defending Hirohito from communism. His rhetoric makes overt overlaps between fascism and emperor worship.[5]

Yamaguchi quickly became a martyr for the far‐right. They held memorial services in the same hall where Asanuma had been killed, and extremist groups commemorated his sacrifice every November 2nd for years to come.

Copycat assassinations were attempted, including one instance where Communist Party chairman Nosaka Sanzō was nearly killed when a rightist attacked rushed onto a stage with a dagger. A plot was even uncovered to mobilise hundreds of right‐wing youths to assassinate the entire cabinet — amongst the plotters were several retired military officers, a chilling echo of prewar events.[6]

(Emphasis added.)

Related: Violence, Masculinity, and Fascism in 1960s Japan

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:::spoiler Click here for other events that happened today (October 12). 1891: Prince Fumimaro Konoe, Axis head of state who presided over Imperial Japan’s invasion of mainland China, was unkind enough to exist.
1936: The Fascists formed the 65th Infantry Division of Grenadiers, and Nationalist flightcraft sunk the Republican submarine B5 off the coast near Malaga.
1937: The Imperialists captured Gouxian, Shanxi, and Francisco Franco issued a decree declaring null and void all purchases of mining rights in Spain since the beginning of the Civil War.
1940: Axis Governor‐General of occupied Poland, Hans Frank, ordered 138,000 Jews in Warsaw to move into the city’s ghetto. Meanwhile, a new Wehrmacht mission set up in Bucharest to direct the training programme for the Romanian Army.

Axis submarines U‐48, U‐59, and U‐101 attacked Allied convoy HX.77 northwest of Ireland, sinking Norwegian tanker Davanger just after 0000 hours (seventeen died while a dozen did not), Allied ship Pacific Ranger at 1800 hours (entire crew survived), and Allied steamer Saint Malô at 2325 hours (twenty‐eight died but sixteen lived).

Axis reconnaissance aircraft also scouted England between 0650 and 0900 hours, and then between 0900 and 1715 hours several raids attacked southern England, many of which reached London. During this day, the Axis lost nine Bf 109 fighters and one Ar 95 seaplane over the Dover Strait. Overnight, the Axis lightly bombed London while also assaulting Birmingham and Coventry.
1941: The Axis as well as its collaborators exterminated eleven thousand Jews of Dnepropetrovsk, and the Wehrmacht’s 250th Infantry Division of Iberian volunteers deployed on the River Volkhov near Leningrad. The Axis captured Bryansk and Kaluga in Russia, and Heinz Guderian noted in his diary that snow continued to fall amidst the campaign in the Soviet Union. After dark, Axis bombers attacked Manchester, Clayton, Denton, and Oldham in England, causing generally light damage, but slaughtering twenty‐three folk at Oldham.

Axis submarine U‐75 also discovered an Allied fleet thirty‐five miles west of Tobruk and then assaulted it, sinking two landing craft and thereby massacring thirty‐four Allied personnel and two Axis prisoners of war. U‐75 picked up one survivor whom she would deliver to the Third Reich for interrogations.
1942: The Axis killed Polish Catholic priest Roman Sitko (formerly a rector of the theological seminary in Tarnów) at Auschwitz within only a few weeks of his arrival there.
1943: In accord with Berlin, Madrid formally announced the dissolution of the Blue Division (though many volunteers continued fighting anyway).
1944: The Axis occupation of Athens ended, and Axis troops withdrew across the Lower Rhine near Arnhem, the Netherlands. On the other hand, the Germans of the SS‐Police advanced slowly in Val d’Ossola and were practically stationary in Finero, at the end of Val Cannobina.

Likewise, the Axis’s 485 Mobile Artillery Detachment, responsible for launching V‐2 rockets, began its move from Friesland to the Hague in the Netherlands. On the same day, Berlin ordered that London be the only target for V‐2 rockets in Britain; attacks on other continental cities such as Antwerp were to continue. A V‐2 rocket hit Ingworth north of Norwich, slightly injuring two people and causing damage to twenty houses and one school. (This rocket was the 28th rocket to hit the Norwich region, and was to be the last of the current rocket campaign against Norwich. None of the twenty‐eight rockets targeted at this area killed anyone, and property damage was relatively light.)

The head of Wehrmacht intelligence in Vienna (Abwehrstelle Wien) until April 1944, Colonel Rudolf von Margona‐Redwitz, received the death penalty in connexion with the July Plot against his head of state. Lastly, the Axis lost one Me 262 jet fighter which was escorting bombers of Kampfgeschwader 51. This was the first victory of a jet aircraft by a Tempest fighter. The Axis pilot, Unteroffizier Edmond Delatowski, bailed out and survived.
1957: Lev Rebet, leader of the OUN‐z, died.
1973: Peter Aufschnaiter, Fascist mountaineer, departed from the world. :::