12. Getting Away With a Slap on the Wrist for Murder
In May, 1932, Japanese Navy officers associated with the League of Blood assassinated Prime Minister Inukaye Tsuyoshi. Inoue and his co-defendants used their highly publicized criminal trial as a platform to broadcast their radical ultranationalist philosophy. What they had to say fell on quite a few receptive ears. Indicative of Japan’s weakening democracy, many sympathized with the killers, and most of them got off with light sentences. It was a significant step on the road to the erosion of the rule of law in Japan. As to the mastermind, Inoue was sentenced to life in prison in 1934, but was freed in a general amnesty in 1940. After WWII, US occupation authorities tagged him as a fascist, and barred him from politics. Inoue was rehabilitated, however, after the occupation ended, and spent the rest of his life involved in radical right circles, until his death from a stroke in 1967.
