Thread by @LCuliberg

As much as today's assassination attempt on the former PM Abe Shinzō is a horrible and shocking event, what it certainly is not is "unprecedented in Japanese history". 🇯🇵🧵#JapaneseHistory #日本歴史

Leaving aside the frequent assassinations during the revolutionary period of the 19th century Japan and focusing only on the 20th century, Japan has seen its fair share of political assassinations. #JapaneseHistory

In fact, Japan's very first Prime Minister, Itō Hirobumi, was assassinated. This former samurai of the Chōshū domain was shot at the Harbin railway station on 26 October 1909. #JapaneseHistory

Itō drafted the Constitution for the newly formed Empire of Japan and then became the first PM, a position he went on to hold four times. In 1905, following the Russo-Japanese War, he was sent to Korea to negotiate the treaty that turned Korea into a Japanese protectorate.

He returned there as resident general (1906–09), where he pursued a gradualist policy of economic and bureaucratic reform. Itō arrived at the Harbin railway station on 26 October 1909 for a meeting with Vladimir Kokovtsov, a Russian representative in Manchuria.

There An Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist and independence activist, fired six shots, three of which hit Itō in the chest. He died shortly thereafter. The following year, Japan annexed Korea to its empire.

In the 1930s there were so many attempts at political assassination in Japan that Hugh Byas, Foreign Correspondent for The New York Times, described the political situation in Japan as "Government by Assassination"

For example, on May 15, 1932 Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was shot by eleven young naval officers. The May 15 Incident (五・一五事件, Goichigo Jiken) was an attempted coup d'état in the Empire of Japan, launched by reactionary elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The naval officers, aided by army cadets, and right-wing civilian elements staged their own attempt to complete what had been started in the League of Blood Incident 血盟団事件 in which right-wing extremists targeted wealthy businessmen and liberal politicians.

Apparently "The original assassination plan had included killing the English film star Charlie Chaplin who had arrived in Japan on May 14, 1932, at a reception for Chaplin, planned by Prime Minister Inukai." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_15_In…

Even before these events, there were political assassinations in Japan. On 4 November 1921, Prime Minister Hara Takashi was stabbed to death by Nakaoka Kon'ichi, a right-wing railroad switchman, at Tōkyō Station while catching a train to Kyoto.

But assassinations were not only a feature of the pre-war political instability and the rise of militarism in the 1930s. Political violence continued in the post-war period as well. #JapaneseHistory

Asanuma Inejirō 浅沼 稲次郎, leader of the Japan Socialist Party was assassinated with a wakizashi, a traditional short sword, by a right-wing ultranationalist Yamaguchi Otoya while speaking in a televised political debate in Tokyo.

His violent death was broadcast live on national television NHK. This is the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Yasushi Nagao, taken directly after Yamaguchi stabbed Asanuma and is here seen attempting a second stab, although he was restrained before that could happen.

The same year, in 1960, when Asanuma was assassinated, there was another attempt on the then Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke 岸 信介, who was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant as he was leaving the prime minister's residence.

"The assailant was an unemployed 65-year-old man affiliated with various right wing groups. Aramaki stabbed Kishi six times in the thigh, causing Kishi to bleed profusely, although Kishi survived because the blade had missed major arteries." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_…

After WW II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a suspected Class A war criminal. He was not prosecuted and later returned to serve as Prime Minister. Most interestingly, he is the grandfather of the Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, who died today as a victim of assassination.

This is not, of course, an exhaustive thread on all political assassinations and assassination attempts in Japan, but only a few of the most high-profile cases involving Prime Ministers and political leaders. #JapaneseHistory #日本歴史

There are other, more recent cases. In 1990, then-Nagasaki City Mayor Motoshima Hitoshi was seriously injured after being shot by a right-winger. In 1992, a right-wing gunman fired shots at the Liberal Democratic Party's then-Vice President Kanemaru Shin giving a public speach.

In 1994, former Prime Minister Hosokawa Morihiro was shot at in a Tokyo hotel by a former member of a right-wing group but was unharmed. The National Police Agency's then-Commissioner General Kunimatsu Takaji was shot and wounded in front of his residence in Tokyo in 1995.

Another Nagasaki mayor, Ito Itcho, died in 2007 after being gunned down by a member of an organized crime group. www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/ne…

In short, while gun violence is extremely rare in Japan, political violence and assassinations have by no means been rare in Japanese history. #JapaneseHistory #日本歴史 /End

Most political assassinations of the 19th and 20th centuries are summarised in the list below.