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Japan's Shōwa Restoration Movement: Pawns and Dire Threats

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Brian Victoria
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Abstract

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This article seeks to explain the disparity in treatment received by two groups of terrorists in 1930s Japan. First, Inoue Nisshō, head of a band of terrorist assassins popularly known as the Blood Oath Corps (Ketsumeidan), received lenient, if not supportive, treatment from powerful forces in Japanese society even before he surrendered to police on 11 March 1932. Second, a group of young Imperial Army officers and their troops attempted a coup d'état on 26 February 1936. However, in the aftermath of the failed coup, the leaders were arrested and, shortly thereafter, executed by firing squad. Both Inoue and his band of assassins as well as the young army officers were proponents of a movement known as the “Shōwa Restoration” (Shōwa Isshin). Despite the goal they shared in common, and despite the assassinations of important Japanese figures they both carried out, why was the treatment they received at the hands of the Japanese authorities so completely different?

Keywords

AssassinationInoue NisshōShōwa RestorationBlood Oath Corps Incident (Ketsumeidan)26 February 1936 IncidentEmperor HirohitoPrime Minister Konoe FumimaroTōyama MitsuruGeneral Araki SadaoPrince ChichibuPrince TakamatsuTokugawa YoshichikaImperial Way faction and Control faction (in the Imperial Army)
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 6 , March 2022 , e3
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2022

References

Notes

1 Brian Victoria, Zen Terror in Prewar Japan: Portrait of an Assassin. (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), p. 107.

2 See Kita Hiroaki, Ni Niroku Jiken Zenkenshō. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun, 2003), p. 199-200. An additional sign of Konoe's sympathies for the Imperial Way faction can be seen in his choice of Araki, now a civilian, as his Minister of Education in 1938. This placed Araki in an ideal position to promote military-oriented “spiritual education” (seishin kyōiku), a pillar of Imperial Way ideology, throughout the nation's schools and among the general populace.

3 The Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies can be accessed at: http://www.jocbs.org/index.php/jocbs/article/view/248 (subscription required up until Nov. 2023, freely available thereafter).

4 See Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 291.

5 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 75.

6 See Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 104.

7 Nakano Masao, Kakumei wa Geijutsu nari: Tokugawa Yoshichika no shōgai (Tokyo: Gakugei Shorin, 1977), p. 135.

8 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 130.

9 Roger H. Brown, “Desiring to Inaugurate Great Peace: Yasuoka Masahiro, Kokutai Preservation, and Japan's Imperial Rescript of Surrender.” Saitama Daigaku (Kyōyō-gakubu), No. 50-2, 2015, pp. 199-231, p. 212.

10 Note that Marquis Tokugawa Yoshichika arranged, with the aid of then Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro, for Ōkawa to be released from prison after serving only two years of his five-year sentence.

11 See Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 130.

12 See reference in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 135.

13 Danny Orbach, “Pure Spirits: Imperial Japanese Justice and Right-Wing Terrorists, 1878–1936.” (Asian Studies VI (XXII), 2 (2018), pp. 129–156), p. 129.

14 Herbert Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. (New York, HarperCollins, 2000), p. 299.

15 Bix, Hirohito, p. 301.

16 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, pp. 283-84.

17 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 285.

18 Quoted in Brij Tankha, Kita Ikki and the Making of Modern Japan: A Vision of Empire. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press/University of Delhi Press, 2006), p. 282.

19 Bix, Hirohito, pp. 100-101.

20 Fukuda Kazunari, Shōwa Tennō Daiyonbu 2:26 Jiken. (Tokyo: Bunshun Bunkō 2013), p. 242.

21 Joseph C. Grew, Ten Years in Japan. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1944), p. 174.

22 Grew, Ten Years in Japan, p. 176.

23 Quoted in New York Times: “Butler for Bonus out of Wall Street,” December 10, 1933. Retrieved January 10, 2011.

24 Congressional committee's comments are contained in Sally Denton, “Why is so little known about the 1930s coup attempt against FDR?” The Guardian, 11 January 2022. Available on the Web (accessed 9 February 2022).

25 Quoted in Sally Denton, “Why is so little known about the 1930s coup attempt against FDR?” The Guardian, 11 January 2022.

26 Mike Thompson, “The White House Coup, 1933.” BBC Radio4, 23 Jul 2007. Available on the Web (accessed 20 February 2022).

27 FDR quoted in Seymour Martin Lipset and Gary Marks, “How FDR Saved Capitalism”, Hoover Digest, 2001, no. 1. Available on the Web (accessed 13 February 2022).

28 Fukuda, Shōwa Tennō Daiyonbu, p. 269.

29 See Bix, Hirohito, p. 301. For a translation of Saionji's diary entries, see f.n. 46 on p. 722.

30 Bix, Hirohito, p. 302.

31 Gerhard Krebs, Spannungen Im Japanischen Kaizerhaus. (Munich: IUDICIUM Verlag, 2021), p. 40.

32 See Krebs, Spannungen, pp. 36-37.

33 Krebs, Spannungen, p. 34.

34 See Krebs, Spannungen, p. 45.

35 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 208.

36 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 208.

37 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 115.

38 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, pp. 117-18.

39 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 119.

40 For further discussion of this topic, see Victoria, Zen Terror, pp. 191-92.

41 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 157.

42 Bix, Hirohito, p. 179.

43 Bix, Hirohito, p. 181.

44 Bix, Hirohito, p. 178.

45 Brown, “Desiring to Inaugurate Great Peace,” pp. 200-01.

46 Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 103.

47 Brown, “Desiring to Inaugurate Great Peace,” p. 216.

48 For further discussion of this question, see Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 103.

49 Brown, “Desiring to Inaugurate Great Peace,” p. 216.

50 The Strike South strategy of the Imperial Navy was initially opposed by many Army leaders, especially those affiliated with the Imperial Way faction. For their part, these Army leaders promoted a Strike North strategy (Hokushin-ron) since in their view communism in the form of the Soviet Union was Japan's primary enemy. However, the Army's decisive defeat by Soviet forces at the time of a months-long border conflict (Nomonhan Jiken) in Manchuria in 1939 resulted in an overall shift toward the Strike South faction. A military strike south would make it possible for Japan to procure key resources, especially oil, in Southeast Asia. This brought with it the imperative to neutralize the threat posed by Western naval forces, primarily those of the United States, in the Pacific. This, in turn, led to the preemptive strike on US naval forces at Pearl Harbor.

51 Quoted in Victoria, Zen Terror, p. 187.

52 For further details concerning the emperor's wealth, see Bix, Hirohito, pp. 94-5 & p. 552.