thumb|280x280px|[[Tokyo Asahi Shimbun describing the May 15 incident and assassination of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi]]

The was an attempted coup d'état in the Empire of Japan, on May 15, 1932, launched by reactionary elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy, aided by cadets in the Imperial Japanese Army and civilian remnants of the ultranationalist League of Blood (Ketsumei-dan).

Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by 11 young naval officers. The following trial and popular support of the Japanese population led to extremely light sentences for the assassins, strengthening the rising power of Japanese militarism and weakening democracy and the rule of law in the Empire of Japan.

Background

As a result of the ratification of the London Naval Treaty limiting the size of the Imperial Japanese Navy, a movement grew within the junior officer corps to overthrow the government, and to replace it with military rule.

Incident

thumb|upright|[[Shūmei Ōkawa]] thumb|Chaplin (third from right) and Sumo wrestlers around the time of the incident

On May 15, 1932, the naval officers, aided by army cadets, and right-wing civilian elements (including Shūmei Ōkawa, Tōyama Mitsuru, and Kōzaburō Tachibana) staged their own attempt to complete what had been started in the League of Blood Incident.

Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was shot by eleven young naval officers, many of whom had only recently turned twenty years of age, in the prime minister's residence. Inukai's last words were, roughly, to which his killers replied .

The original assassination plan had included killing the English film star Charlie Chaplin, who had arrived in Japan on May 14, 1932, at a reception for Chaplin planned by Prime Minister Inukai. "These activists, eager to inject a nativist Yamato spirit into politics, recognised the charged political nature of mass culture". Chaplin's murder would facilitate war with the U.S., create anxiety in Japan, and lead to "restoration" in the name of the emperor. When the prime minister was killed, his son Inukai Takeru was watching a sumo wrestling match with Charlie Chaplin, which probably saved both their lives.

The insurgents also attacked the residence of Makino Nobuaki, the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and head of the Rikken Seiyūkai political party, and tossed hand-grenades into Mitsubishi Bank headquarters in Tokyo, as well as several electrical transformer substations.

In spite of the murder of the prime minister, the attempted coup d'état ultimately came to nothing, and the rebellion as a whole proved a failure. The participants took a taxi to the police headquarters and surrendered themselves to the Kempeitai without a struggle.

Consequences

The eleven officers who murdered Prime Minister Inukai were court-martialed. During the proceedings, the accused used the trial as a platform to proclaim their loyalty to the emperor and to arouse popular sympathy by appealing for reforms of the government and economy. By the trial's end, the court had received 110,000 clemency petitions, either signed or written entirely in blood, from sympathizers around the country pleading for a lenient sentence. Additionally, nine youths in Niigata asked to be tried by the court instead of the accused, and sent the court a jar containing nine of their own pickled severed pinky fingers as a gesture of their sincerity.

  • The incident is discussed at length in Season 2, Episode 5 of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2004). The events of the incident are emulated, and form a significant basis of the story events of that series.
  • In Christian Kracht's novel "The Dead" (2019) the incident is at the core of the story. Instead of a sumo match, Chaplin is visiting a No theatre together with the PM's son.

See also

  • Mikami Taku, one of the 11 young officers who killed the Prime Minister

References

Bibliography

  • National Diet Library Reference