Otoya Yamaguchi

Otoya Yamaguchi (山口 二矢, Yamaguchi Otoya; 22 February 1943 – 2 November 1960) was a Japanese radical anti-communist and ultranationalist youth who assassinatedInejirō Asanuma, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, on 12 October 1960.

Yamaguchi rushed the stage and stabbed Asanuma with a wakizashi-like short sword while Asanuma was participating in a televised election debate at Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo. Yamaguchi, who was 17 years of age at the time, had been a member of Bin Akao's far-right Greater Japan Patriotic Party, but had resigned earlier that year, just prior to the assassination. After being arrested and interrogated, Yamaguchi committed suicide while in a detention facility.

Yamaguchi became a hero and a martyr to Japanese far-right groups, who as of 2022, have continued to hold commemorations to this day. Yamaguchi's actions inspired a number of copycat crimes, including the Shimanaka incident in 1961, and inspired Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kenzaburō Ōe's novellas Seventeen and Death of a Political Youth. A photograph of the assassination taken by Japanese photojournalist Yasushi Nagao won World Press Photo of the Year for 1960 and the 1961 Pulitzer Prize.