Masahiko Amakasu

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Masahiko Amakasu (甘粕正彦, Amakasu Masahiko^?) was a Japanese Lieutenant in charge of a detachment of military police during the Great Kanto Earthquake. On September 16, 1923, Noe Itou, Sakae Osugi and his nephew were killed by Amakasu's detachment, as a result of government paranoia and fear that they would use the opportunity to overthrow the government.

At the court martial, Amakasu was sentenced to serve 10 years in Chiba Prison.

Because he had served in a very good attitude and there were an amnesty by the Imperial family's happy event, he was released from prison at the end of a drastically shortened three-year prison term. After that, Amakasu went to France and later took power over Manchuria as a wirepuller. In 1939 he was named the head of Manchukuo Film Association, where he was essentially the mastermind of cultural invasion in Chinese cinema. Shortly before Soviet forces invaded Shinkyō, the capital of Manchukuo, he killed himself by taking potassium cyanide in August, 1945. Amakasu is the personae of the film, "The Last Emperor," and was depicted as shooting himself to death in the movie.

[edit] References

• The life of Noe Itou (Harumi Setouchi's novel Bi wa rantyou ni ari at Fukuoka Prefectural Itoshima High School); the text of this entry was largely excerpted from this source.