May 15 Incident
The
May 15 incident ("・一"事件
Go-ichigo jiken) of
15 May,
1932, was the assassination of then-
Prime Minister of
Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi. Inspired in part by the '
League of Blood Incident' two months earlier, Naval officers, Army cadets and
right-wing civilian elements (including
Shumei Okawa,
Mitsuro Toyama, and
Kosaburo Tachibana) staged a minor rebellion. Tokyo's electrical power supplies were also targeted.
Inukai was assassinated, as eleven young Naval officers (most were just turning twenty years of age), attacked 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"無" "mondō muyō" (
Dialogue is useless).
Kimmochi Saionji and
Shiro Makino were also assaulted. The attempt at a
coup d'état came to nothing, and the rebellion as a whole proved a failure. Naval officers, military cadets, and civilians were arrested and speedily put to trial.
The eleven were
court-martialed, and at the end of the trial a petition containing 350,000 signatures was collected in favor of a reduction of the sentence from
death. During the proceedings, the accused aroused popular sympathy by appealing for reforms. Eleven severed fingers were sent to the court house, as it was traditional in ancient Japan to cut off the little finger of the left hand as a punishment for a crime. (This ensured that the criminal would be unable to properly hold a sword.) Punishment was comparatively light.
The system of
party government in
Japan was sundered by the "5-15 Incident". It was one of the main reasons
Japan's party-based government ended, afterward making the military an influential voice in the rule of the country — which would last until the end of
World War II. The rise of Japanese
militarism and
expansionism led it, in the end, to
attack China and the
United States.
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.
