A Japanese Secret Group Called ‘The League of Blood’ Tried to Remake Japan Via a Murder Campaign
In the years preceding WW2, Japan was caught in a vice between an urge to preserve its heritage, and the need to modernize lest it succumb to Western imperialism, as most of the rest of Asia had already done. A volatile mix of nationalism and militarism took an already touchy situation and made it worse, ultimately leading to the decision to attack Pearl Harbor. En route, there was plenty of craziness, such as “The League of Blood” – a violent ultranationalist organization, resembling HYDRA from the GI-Joe fictional universal, that sought to change Japan via murder.
The League of Blood was headed by a crackpot Buddhist preacher named Nissho Inoue, who experienced some mystical visions in the 1920s while wandering around China. That left him convinced that he had been chosen as Japan’s savior, and that the country needed a spiritual rebirth. So he returned to Japan and opened a school that pushed an agrarian philosophy that advocated the superiority of farmers over workers, and rural life over urban. Nissho slowly began radicalizing his students, and within a few years, his school had morphed into a training center for ultranationalists pining to make Japan great again, by returning to the Japan of centuries past.
In 1932, Nissho concluded that the best way to reform Japan would be via a campaign of assassinations, whose ultimate aim was to dismantle the secular government, and restore supreme power to the Japanese emperor. So Nissho and his disciples drew up a list of 20 liberal politicians and rich industrialists – pro Western types whom they viewed as evil obstacles, standing in the way of the nationalist rebirth of Japan. Then, with the slogan “one person, one kill“, the League of Blood killers fanned out to remake Japan.
Nissho’s disciples killed a former Finance Minister in February of 1932, and a wealthy industrialist the following month. Nissho turned himself in to the police, who treated him with respect as a “patriot”. In May of 1932, Japanese Navy officers associated wtih the League of Blood assassinated the Prime Minister, Inukaye Tsuyoshi. In a sign of Japan’s weakening democracy, many sympathized with the killers, and all got off with light sentences. Nissho was sentenced to prison in 1934, but was released in an amnesty in 1940, and spent the rest of his life a free man until his death in 1967.
