After being dismissed from active duty by Lieutenant General Tetsuzan Nagata, one Lieutenant Colonel Saburo Aizawa, smouldering son of a Samurai and an expert fencing master, walked quietly into his superior’s office, drew his Samurai blade, whanged Nagata over the head. As the General tried to escape, his junior ran him through from behind, laid the corpse on a table, slashed up its face.
Details of all this came vividly to light for the first time last week when a Tokyo court martial took up the famed case of Samurai Son Aizawa (TIME, Aug. 26). His defense was that General Nagata had been a friend of Japanese Government “bureaucrats,” politicians, businessmen and other chicken-hearted civilians despised by the Fighting Services. Counsel for the defense loudly objected to the Prosecution’s failure to state in the murder charge “the difference between public and private acts, the intrinsic nature of the Imperial Army, and the fact that the Supreme Army Command had been disturbed by Senior Statesmen and plutocrats.”
This in Japanese eyes put upon the murder an aspect which caused numerous Japanese, including two schoolgirls, to prick themselves last week and write with their blood passionate pleas for mercy which Presiding Judge Major General Seisaburo Sato had read out in court. “Boo-hoo!” sobbed the Samurai’s Son bursting into tears at the tender sentiments of pity penned in “maiden’s blood.”
Said the Prosecutor to the prisoner, “Just explain your motives to your heart’s content.”
“My father taught me to revere the Emperor,” replied the accused. “I intended by assassinating General Nagata to support the Throne!”
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