ABSTRACT
As Prasenjit Duara observes, ‘Nationalism is rarely the nationalism of the nation, but rather represents the site where very different views of the nation contest and negotiate with each other’.1 There are many instances in modern Japanese history from the mid-nineteenth century to recent times where nationalist contention took a violent turn. During the 1920s and 1930s, the period under consideration in this chapter, this violent turn was manifested, for example, in Asahi Heigo¯’s assassination of Yasuda Zenjiro¯, the head of the Yasuda zaibatsu, on 28 September 1921; the assassination by Nakaoka Kon’ichi of Prime Minister Hara Takashi on 4 November 1921; Sagoya Tomeo’s fatal wounding of Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi on 14 November 1930; the Ketsumeidan murders of the former Finance Minister Inoue Junnosuke and the Director General of Mitsui Dan Takuma on 9 February and 5 March 1932, respectively; the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi on 15 May 1932; and the assassinations, during the short-lived army rebellion of 26 February 1936, of Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo, the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal (and former Prime Minister) Admiral Saito¯ Makoto, and a prominent army general.
