Otoya Yamaguchi

Otoya Yamaguchi

Otoya Yamaguchi was a Japanese right-wing ultranationalist youth who assassinated Inejirō Asanuma, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, on 12 October 1960. He stabbed Asanum with a wakizashi short sword while he was participating in a televised election debate at Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo. A photograph of the assassination taken by Japanese photojournalist Yasushi Nagao is considered one of the most famous press photographs of the 20th century.

About Otoya Yamaguchi in brief

Summary Otoya YamaguchiOtoya Yamaguchi was a Japanese right-wing ultranationalist youth who assassinated Inejirō Asanuma, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, on 12 October 1960. He stabbed Asanum with a wakizashi short sword while he was participating in a televised election debate at Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo. A photograph of the assassination taken by Japanese photojournalist Yasushi Nagao is considered one of the most famous press photographs of the 20th century, and won World Press Photo of the Year for 1960 and the 1961 Pulitzer Prize. He committed suicide while in a detention facility.

His actions inspired a number of copycat crimes, including the Shimanaka Incident in 1961, and inspired Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kenzaburō Ōe’s novellas Seventeen and Death of a Political Youth. He became a hero and a martyr to the Japanese far-right, and commemorations in his honor continue to this day. He was the second son of a high-ranking officer in the Japan Self Defense Forces, and the maternal grandson of the writer Namiroku Murakami, famous for his violent novels.