February 26 Incident
About 1,400 soldiers of the Japanese First Division occupied central Tokyo before dawn on 26 February 1936 and killed several members of the government. The officers who led it belonged to the Kōdōha, the Imperial Way faction, whose programme was a Shōwa Restoration — the removal of the politicians, bureaucrats and financiers they held responsible for rural poverty and corruption, and the return of direct rule to the emperor, who would then govern with the army's guidance. Rural distress was the fuel. The collapse of the silk trade and the Depression had ruined farming villages that supplied most of the army's conscripts, and officers read reports of families selling daughters. The killing squads went out simultaneously. The finance minister Takahashi Korekiyo, who had cut military spending, was shot and cut with swords in his bed; the lord keeper of the privy seal Saitō Makoto was killed; the inspector-general of military education was killed. The prime minister Okada Keisuke survived because his brother-in-law, who resembled him, was shot instead and he hid in a cupboard. The rebels held the government quarter for three days expecting the emperor to endorse them. Hirohito did the opposite, and it is the clearest intervention of his reign. He was furious that his closest advisers had been murdered, called the rebels rebels, and demanded they be suppressed at once, saying he would lead the guards himself if necessary. They surrendered. Nineteen were executed after secret trials. The rival Tōseiha faction took control, and the army's grip on government tightened rather than loosened.
- Year: 1936 CE
- Category: Political
