About Otoya Yamaguchi
Otoya Yamaguchi (山口 二矢, Yamaguchi Otoya; 22 February 1943 – 2 November 1960) was a Japanese right-wing ultranationalist youth who assassinated Inejirō Asanuma, chairman of the Japan Socialist Party, on 12 October 1960. Yamaguchi rushed the stage and stabbed Asanuma with a wakizashi-like short sword while Asanuma was participating in a televised election debate at Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo. Yamaguchi, who was 17 years of age at the time, had been a member of Bin Akao's far-right Greater Japan Patriotic Party, but had resigned earlier that year, just prior to the assassination. After being arrested and interrogated, Yamaguchi committed suicide while in a detention facility. Yamaguchi became a hero and a martyr to Japanese far-right groups, who as of 2022, have continued to hold commemorations to this day. Yamaguchi's actions inspired a number of copycat crimes, including the Shimanaka incident in 1961, and inspired Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kenzaburō Ōe's novellas Seventeen and Death of a Political Youth. A photograph of the assassination taken by Japanese photojournalist Yasushi Nagao won World Press Photo of the Year for 1960 and the 1961 Pulitzer Prize. Yamaguchi participated in these counter-protest activities, and was arrested and released 10 times over the course of 1959 and 1960, within his first six months since joining Akao's party. Over the course of his participation in the Anpo protests, Yamaguchi became further disillusioned with Akao's leadership, which he felt was not radical enough.
Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.