Inejiro Asanuma, leader of the Japan Socialist Party, was mid speech at a political debate in Tokyo on 12 October 1960 when a seventeen year old ultranationalist named Otoya Yamaguchi sprinted across the stage and drove a short samurai sword into his chest, twice. Cameras were rolling for a live broadcast, and the killing was captured in full, shown and reshown to a horrified nation.
Yamaguchi was no stranger to the far right; he had trained with militant nationalist groups and viewed Asanuma, who had made friendly overtures toward Communist China, as a traitor to Japan. Arrested at the scene, he spent weeks in juvenile detention before hanging himself in his cell with a bedsheet, leaving behind a message of loyalty to the emperor.
His death meant he was never tried, and the killing remains one of the most notorious political murders of postwar Japan, preserved on film as it happened.
