League of Blood Incident

The group chose twenty victims but succeeded in killing only two: former Finance Minister and head of the Rikken Minseitō political party, Junnosuke Inoue, and the Director-General of Mitsui Holding Company, Dan Takuma.

Born as Inoue Shirō in 1886 in Gunma Prefecture, Nisshō spent his young adult life as a drifter and adventurer, eventually ending up in north and northeast China gathering information for the Japanese military.

[2] After the October incident, a failed coup d'état by rightist Army officers of the Sakurakai ultranationalist secret society in 1931, Inoue became convinced that national reform could be achieved only through violent confrontation with what he saw as the forces of evil: pro-Western liberal politicians and zaibatsu business interests.

On 9 February 1932, Shō Onuma gunned down Junnosuke Inoue as he stepped from his car at the Komamoto Elementary School in Tokyo, where he was scheduled to give a political speech.

Historically, the most important consequences of the League of Blood Incident sprang from the trial, which gave Inoue and his co-defendants a platform from which to broadcast their ultra-nationalist views.