Jirō Shiizaki (椎崎二郎, ''Shiizaki Jirō'') (30 September 1911 – 15 August 1945) was a lieutenant colonel in the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. He served as a member of the staff of the domestic affairs section of the Military Affairs Bureau's War Affairs Section. Shiizaki was one of several members of that staff to participate in a ''coup'' (the Kyūjō incident) in the early morning of 15 August 1945, the day the Emperor would declare Japan's surrender. The coup was organized primarily by Major Kenji Hatanaka, and though quite a number of men were involved in the plot at one point or another, Shiizaki was one of the few to be involved in the climactic action; the rebels, with the help of the First Imperial Guard Division, seized the Imperial Palace, essentially held emperor

Hirohito , Posthumous name, posthumously honored as , was the 124th emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, from 25 December 1926 until Death and state funeral of Hirohito, his death in 1989. He remains Japan's longest-reigni ...

under house arrest, and sought to destroy the phonographic recordings which had been made of the emperor's surrender speech. Sometime around seven o'clock on the morning of August 15, the plot began to fall apart. General Shizuichi Tanaka, commander of the Eastern District Army, arrived at the Palace and harangued the conspirators on their duty to their country, and demanding that the dishonor brought by their treason could only be absolved through ''

seppuku , also known as , is a form of Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honor, but was also practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa era (particularly officers near ...

''. Shiizaki, along with a number of others, committed ritual suicide that morning, on the grounds of the Imperial Palace.

References

*Brooks, Lester (1968). "Behind Japan's Surrender: The Secret Struggle That Ended an Empire." New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company. {{DEFAULTSORT:Shiizaki 1911 births 1945 suicides 1945 deaths Imperial Japanese Army officers Imperial Japanese Army personnel killed in World War II Japanese military personnel who died by suicide Japanese nationalists Japanese rebels Kyūjō incident