Otoya Yamaguchi

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Otoya Yamaguchi bigraphy, stories - Japanese assassin

Otoya Yamaguchi : biography

1943 – 1960

Death

Less than three weeks after the assassination, while being held in a juvenile detention facility, Yamaguchi mixed a small amount of tooth paste with water and wrote on his cell wall, "Seven lives for my country. Long live His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor!" Yamaguchi then knotted strips of his bedsheet into a makeshift rope and used it to hang himself from a light fixture. The phrase "seven lives for my country" was a reference to the last words of 14th century samurai Kusunoki Masashige.

Legacy

A photograph taken by Yasushi Nagao immediately after Otoya withdrew his sword from Asanuma would later go on to win the Pulitzer Prize and the 1960 World Press Photo award. Footage of the incident was also captured.

Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburō Ōe based his 1961 novella Seventeen on Yamaguchi.