Mitsuyasu Maeno
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Mitsuyasu Maeno (前野 光保 Maeno Mitsuyasu?, 1955–March 23, 1976) was a movie actor who is remembered mostly for a kamikaze attack on a private residence in 1976.
On March 23, 1976 he went to Chofu Airport in western Tokyo dressed in a World War II kamikaze pilot's uniform. At the airport, he rented a single-engine Piper Cherokee and explained that he was merely flying for a photo-op for advertisements of a new film.
All went as planned for a half an hour or so, but in the middle of the picture-taking, Maeno radioed to the photographer's plane that he had "something to do in Setagaya" (an area of Tokyo where Yoshio Kodama lived). The millionaire ultra-nationalist had been a key member of the Lockheed scandal which rocked Japan in 1976.
Minutes later, as Maeno cut the Piper's engine he shouted the traditional kamikaze pilot's farewell, Long live the Emperor! (天皇陛下バンザーイ Tennō heika banzai!?), into his microphone. He then dove his plane into Kodama's house, where it exploded after crashing into a second-floor balcony. Although Maeno died instantly, noone else was hurt (including Kodama, who was at the time resting in another room)
Maeno was an admirer of Bushido, the ancient Japanese samurai code, and he also looked up to Yukio Mishima, the novelist who committed seppuku six years earlier as a protest against Japan's loss of traditional values. A nationalist himself, many feel that Maneo was seeking to avenge what was seen by many of Japan's right-wing as a mistake by Kodama in serving as the conduit for American bribes.
