In prewar Japan, middle schools were elite institutions accessible to only one in ten boys. The young officers who emerged from this system experienced deep poverty and perceived social injustice firsthand. This essay traces how left-wing ideology disguised as right-wing thought infiltrated their sense of justice and led to political violence such as the May 15 Incident.

2017-06-13
The following is a continuation of the previous section.
Communist ideology entering the Army.
In prewar Japan, middle schools were elite institutions that only about one in ten Japanese boys could enter.
Especially in rural areas, it was common for only one student from an entire village to be admitted to a former middle school once every few years, making it an extremely rare opportunity.
Simply attending middle school was enough to earn admiration from the entire neighborhood at the time.
In my neighborhood, I was the only one, so it was quite something (laughs).
Among the first- and second-year students at these former middle schools, only those who ranked around first to third academically, were physically robust, athletically capable, academically excellent, and did not become nearsighted could proceed to the Army’s preparatory schools.
By the fourth or fifth year, they would advance to the Naval Academy or the Army Cadet School.
Thus, military officers at the time truly represented the elite of the elite.
The son of Fleet Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku was extremely talented and naturally intended to follow his father into the Naval Academy, but he failed the entrance exam due to nearsightedness or something similar.
Instead, he went on to enter the University of Tokyo.
Such outstanding individuals became second lieutenants at around twenty years of age.
They were then assigned approximately 120 soldiers armed with rifles and machine guns.
However, second lieutenants, lieutenants, and captains were poor, and their soldiers were even poorer.
Yet when they looked around, they noticed that some ordinary civilians were clearly living in luxury.
The soldiers came from extremely impoverished regions such as Tohoku, and the officers themselves were poor as well.
They began to feel that society itself was wrong.
These were the young officers.
Into this environment quietly slipped what was left-wing ideology under the name of right-wing thought.
Right-wing ideology was easy for the military to accept because it proclaimed, “Eliminate the upper classes, landlords, managers, and capitalists—but revere the Imperial Household.”
What made young officers dangerous was that they commanded subordinates.
The first uprising, the May 15 Incident, resulted in the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai, but at the time the general public did not fully grasp its significance.
The idea originating from the Russian Revolution—that it was unacceptable for there to be both the rich and the poor—felt morally correct to many.
As a result, even young officers who assassinated the prime minister received numerous petitions for clemency during their trials.
The soldiers who killed the prime minister in broad daylight were not sentenced to death but to fifteen years in prison, and later, upon the birth of the Crown Prince (the current Emperor), they were released under an imperial amnesty.
Seeing such circumstances, it is not unreasonable that some people began to think that assassinating a prime minister was not such a serious matter.
To be continued.