May 15 Incident

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The May 15 Incident (五・一五事件, Goichigo Jiken^?) was an attempted coup d'état in Japan, on 15 May 1932, launched by radical elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy, aided by cadets in the Imperial Japanese Army and civilian remnants of the 'League of Blood Incident'.

As a result of the ratification of the London Naval Treaty limiting the size of the Japanese Navy, a movement grew within the junior officer corps to overthrow the government, and to replace it with military rule. This movement had parallels in the Sakura Kai secret society organized within the Japanese Army. The naval officers established contacts with the ultranationalist Inoue Nissho and his 'League of Blood', and agreed with his philosophy that to bring about a 'Shōwa Restoration', it would be necessary to assassinate leading political and business figures.

In March 1932, in the 'League of Blood Incident', Inoue's group only managed to kill former Finance Minister and head of the Rikken Minseito, Inoue Junnosuke, and Director-General of Mitsui Holding Company, Takuma Dan.

On 15 May 1932, the naval officers, aided by Army cadets, and right-wing civilian elements (including Shumei Okawa, Mitsuru Toyama, and Kosaburo Tachibana) staged their own attempt to complete what had been started in the League of Blood Incident.

Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated by eleven young Naval officers (most were just turning twenty years of age) in the Prime Minister's residence. Inukai's famous last words were 話せば分かる "hanaseba wakaru" (roughly If we can talk we will understand) to which his killers replied 問答無用 "mondō muyō" (Dialogue is useless).^{[citation needed]}

The original assassination plan included killing the film star Charlie Chaplin, who happened to be visiting Japan at the time. When the prime minister was killed, his son Ken Inukai 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, the residence and office of Kimmochi Saionji, head of the Rikken Seiyukai political party, and tossed hand-grenades into Mitsubishi Bank, and several electrical transformer substations.

Aside from the murder of the Prime Minister, the attempted coup d'état 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.

The eleven murderers of Prime Minister Inukai were court-martialed; however, before the end of the trial a petition arrived at court containing over 350,000 signatures in blood, which had been signed by sympathizers around the country to plead for a lenient sentence. 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. In addition to the petition, the court also received a request from eleven youths in Niigata, asking that they be executed in place of the Navy officers, and sending eleven severed fingers to the court as a gesture of their sincerity.

Punishment handed by the court was extremely light, and there was little doubt in the press that the murderers of Prime Minister Inukai would be released in a couple of years, if not sooner. Failure to severely punish the plotters in the May 15th Incident further eroded the rule of law and the power of the democratic government in Japan to confront the military. Indirectly, it led to the February 26 Incident and the increasing rise of Japanese militarism.

[edit] In the Media

This historical event is referenced in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GiG. The show parallels a terrorist group known as the Individual Eleven in the name of the eleven assassins who stood trial for the assassination of Inukai Tsuyoshi. Their interests included assassination of the show's Prime Minister Kayabuki and reform to Japan's refugee situation after World Wars III and IV. The show also references Yukio Mishima through a fictional character Patrick Sylvestre. Mishima's novel Runaway Horses, the second volume of his Sea of Fertility tetralogy, which is set in 1932-33 and concerns a young right-wing nationalist, refers directly to the Incident.