Inejiro Asanuma

Stabbed on 12 October 1960 in Tokyo by the seventeen year old ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi during a televised election debate.

Overview

Asanuma, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party and leader of the opposition, was famous for vigorous oratory and for a 1959 Beijing speech describing American foreign policy as the common enemy of Japan and China. At a televised public debate before the election, Yamaguchi, a member of an ultranationalist youth group, rushed the stage with a traditional short sword and stabbed him once in the abdomen; he died within minutes. The killing was filmed live and photographed, and the pictures won the Pulitzer and World Press Photo awards. Yamaguchi hanged himself in a juvenile detention cell weeks later, becoming a martyr to fringe rightists. The murder deprived the left of its most magnetic leader on the eve of the massive Anpo protests, and chilled Japanese political rhetoric for a generation.