JAPAN: By the Sword

Death was a television spectacle of horror in Japan last week. Before TV cameras, nearly all Japan’s top politicians were gathered together on the same platform in Tokyo’s Hibiya Hall. There was conservative Premier Hayato Ikeda, Democratic Socialist Leader Suehiro Nishio and Socialist Party Chairman Inejiro Asanuma. They were there to debate the issues with each other publicly, to open the general campaigning for next month’s elections.

Bayonet-like Blade. The first speaker was bull-necked Asanuma, who lumbered to the rostrum a few moments after 3 p.m., and in a deep, rasping voice began denouncing Japan’s much-debated security pact with the U.S. Hecklers of a Nazi-style group called the Great Japan Patriots’ Party showered the stage with leaflets and shouted “Shut up, Communist” and “Banzai the U.S.A.” Asanuma ignored them. As he went on speaking, a youth leaped onto the stage. He was wearing boots, a student’s high-collared black uniform and a thick jacket. He clutched a slightly curved sword with a bayonet-like blade a foot long. Catching sight of the youth racing toward him, Asanuma raised his left hand, almost as in a benediction. Then his eyes widened and his mouth opened in horror when he turned his head and saw the sword. Holding the sword in a two-handed samurai-style grip, the youth rammed into Asanuma like a blocking back, plunging the blade deep into Asanuma’s 225-lb. bulk. It pierced his lower abdomen and liver. The thudding collision sent Asanuma’s speech notes sailing through the air, jarred off the student’s glasses. Then, in a kind of macabre dance, dying politician and youthful assassin fell away from each other. The observant camera caught it all.

Asanuma stumbled, his huge face contorted in agony. The youth whirled, took a fresh grip on the sword, and made a second thrust into the left side of Asanuma’s chest. As horrified onlookers grabbed the assassin, Asanuma wobbled, then collapsed. He was rushed in a police car to a nearby hospital, but he was dead on arrival.

Ironically, Asanuma was largely responsible for creating the atmosphere of violence that has recently plagued Japanese politics. A rabble-rouser who never tired of praising Red China, or of calling the U.S. “the common enemy of China and Japan,” Asanuma organized the snake-dancing demonstrations that kept President Eisenhower away from Japan last June. Since then, ex-Premier Nobusuke Kishi and Socialist Jotaro Kawakami have both been stabbed by fanatics. This did not deter the Socialists from launching further violent demonstrations. Crying “Down with Ikeda,” left-wing Zengakuren students charged police barricades at the Diet, began their ritualistic snake dance before the Premier’s official residence.

At police headquarters, the assassin calmly identified himself as Otoya Yamaguchi, 17, told detectives his only regret was failing to kill Communist Sanzo Nosaka and Japan Teachers’ Union Chairman Takeshi Kobayashi as well as Asanuma. He had planned to bag all three. The sword, he explained, was a wakizashi, the kind worn by samurai until 1876, when the government forbade people to carry them. He had found it only the week before in the bottom of his father’s closet.

Fanatic Past. The assassin’s father, Colonel Shimpei Yamaguchi, resigned from the army but defended his son, saying: “A rightist is better than a leftist.” Great Japan Patriots’ Party Leader Bin Akao, whose hero is Hitler, praised young Yamaguchi as “a paragon of Japanese virtue,” and called Asanuma’s end a “heaven-sent punishment.” Hundreds of mourners burned incense before a shrine set up in the yard of Asanuma’s Tokyo home, and the Socialists plainly hope to use his murder to gain them votes in the election.

Despite all the benefits of democratic government. Asia’s highest literacy rate and the world’s fastest-growing economy, Japan still often seems a nation with one foot planted in the fanatic past. Chief worry of responsible Japanese is that Asanuma’s murder may be only the first of a renewed wave of political killings in a country where, before the war, political assassination was almost a tradition.