Tokyo Stabbing
Photographer: Yasushi Nagao
Date: October 12, 1960
Location: Hibiya Hall, Tokyo, Japan
Yasushi Nagao of Mainichi Shimbun photographed the assassination of Japan Socialist Party chairman Inejiro Asanuma by 17-year-old right-wing ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi at Hibiya Hall in Tokyo on October 12, 1960. Yamaguchi rushed the stage during a nationally televised political debate and stabbed Asanuma with a yoroi-tōshi, a short sword, twice in the abdomen. The attack was broadcast live on NHK television. Asanuma died within minutes. Yamaguchi was arrested and later hanged himself in a juvenile detention facility using strips of his bed sheet, inscribing on the wall the words 'Seven lives for my country' — a reference to a famous samurai poem. Nagao's photograph won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1961 and the World Press Photo of the Year in 1960. The image remains one of the most dramatic political photographs ever taken.
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