In March 1976, he carried out a suicide attack on Yoshio Kodama, a multi-millionaire right-wing leader and leading figure in the Lockheed bribery scandals.

[8] In contrast to the vocal right-wing, numbering approximately 120,000 in 1976, the "secret" or "romantic" rightists which Maeno joined harbored a hatred of Japan's 1947 "Peace Constitution", and idolized the samurai beliefs of bushidō.

The lyrics to the song, which the meeting promoted as the new national anthem, called for an overthrow of the government and a restoration of Japan's World War II Imperial policies.

[18] He was accused of accepting more than seven million dollars from the Lockheed Corporation to bribe Japanese officials to facilitate sales of their airplanes.

[8] Maeno, disillusioned by a man he had previously respected, told friends that he believed Kodama had betrayed the right-wing and the samurai code which he espoused.

[5] Before 9:00 a.m., the actor posed in his uniform, with white scarf, rising-sun images on his sleeve, and a headband[5] in front of the Piper Cherokee plane he had rented.

[2] An amateur radio operator reported that at 9:50 a.m. he heard Maeno call out "JA3551" – the number of his plane – and then saying emotionally, "Sorry I haven't replied for a long time.

[2] When news of the attack became known, a group of approximately twenty right-wing demonstrators arrived on the scene and clashed with the police in front of Kodama's home.

The scandal had shown an unsavory side of Japanese politics to the world, and there was a sense of frustration that the high-ranking politicians who had dealt with Kodama would never be revealed or brought to justice.

An editorial in the Mainichi Shimbun asked the question, "Is it imaginable that a young German, not a wartime officer, would commit suicide in a Nazi uniform, shouting 'Heil Hitler!'?

Coming more than 30 years after the end of World War II, Maeno's kamikaze flight revived the ghost the Japanese wanted to forget.

"[9] Keiichi Ito, the director-general for training of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, said that Maeno's act was tainted by self-serving motives, not in self-sacrifice for the country.

[19] Ito, who was a surviving member of the tokkōtai, or kamikaze units, said "Maeno was performing an egotistical, grandstand play to win publicity, not unlike Mishima's suicide.

"[19] Lockheed scandal historian David Boulton writes that the attack on one of the leading figures by a pornographic actor, "aptly summed up the obscenity of it all.

Shortly before his death, the right-wing leader had expressed the view that he was being punished for taking money from Lockheed, a company that had built aircraft to fight Japan during World War II.