1930: Shot at Tokyo Station, the Lion Prime Minister Died of the Wound Nine Months Later
Hamaguchi Osachi, the Japanese prime minister known for his dignified bearing and mane-like hair, was waiting on the platform at Tokyo Station on 14 November 1930 when a young ultranationalist named Tomeo Sagoya stepped close and shot him in the stomach. Sagoya belonged to Aikokusha, a right-wing society that despised Hamaguchi's liberal policies. Bystanders carried the wounded premier from the platform as Sagoya was seized on the spot.
Surgeons at Tokyo Imperial University Hospital managed to save him, and Hamaguchi even returned briefly to public life. But the wound never properly healed. A bacterial infection took hold in the damaged tissue, and nine months after the shooting, on 26 August 1931, it finally killed the man his own countrymen had once nicknamed the Lion Prime Minister.
