“If We Talk, We Will Understand”: The Assassination of Inukai Tsuyoshi and the Silencing of Peace

“History is not what happened. History is what we remember.” —James W. Douglass

It was a May evening in Tokyo—calm, almost too quiet. The city's silence was broken not by the winds of spring or the shouts of children, but by footsteps. They were precise, rehearsed, and resolute. Nineteen men coordinated across the city like ghostly threads in a tight net. What they carried was not merely arms or grenades. They had conviction, zeal, and something even more dangerous: the belief that peace was the enemy.

At the center of this tale is an old man, dignified and weary. His name was Inukai Tsuyoshi, Japan’s 29th Prime Minister. On the night of May 15, 1932, Inukai would sit in his official residence for the final time. By morning, he would be dead, shot by young naval officers in a plot to spark a “Shōwa Restoration” through chaos, martyrdom, and the dismantling of democracy.

His final words, spoken in calm defiance, haunt the conscience of history: “If we talk, we will understand.” まあ待て。まあ待て。話せばわかる。話せばわかるじゃないか

They shot him anyway.

The Road to May 15: A Nation Unmoored

To understand May 15, one must experience the despair of a nation that had lost its center. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Japan was drowned in the aftershocks of the Great Depression. Rice prices collapsed, exports vanished, and unemployment climbed to millions. In the countryside, children were sold into servitude, and in the cities, soldiers in ragged uniforms returned to families living in cardboard homes.

The dream of Taishō democracy—a time when political parties blossomed and the emperor's role remained ceremonial—began to rot from within. Intertwined with the great industrial zaibatsu, the suffering masses saw the political elite as aloof and corrupt. Party politics had delivered Western luxuries to the rich and starvation to everyone else.

Into this void stepped the military, not yet as a hammer, but as a torch. The military, particularly its younger officers, preached national rebirth. They imagined Japan purified through sacrifice and guided by a divine emperor. They wanted a return to agrarian simplicity and imperial strength. To them, civilian governance was decadent, weak, and treacherous.

And they found their prophets.

The Prophets of Blood: Inoue Nissho and the Brotherhood

Among those prophets was Inoue Nissho, a Buddhist preacher who fused spiritual purity with militant nationalism. He mentored a secretive group called the Ketsumeidan, or “Blood Brotherhood League.” Their motto: “One person, one kill.”

In 1932, Ketsumeidan members assassinated key financial and political figures in the so-called “Blood Brotherhood Incident.” The murders shocked the nation, but not in the way one might expect. Rather than widespread horror, many newspapers—and the public—responded with sympathy. The assassins were seen as idealists who had acted from righteous anger.

This reaction was not lost on others.

In the wake of the Ketsumeidan attacks, young naval officers began plotting a larger, more coordinated strike. It would not just assassinate men; it would assassinate a system.

They would target the banks, the parties, the infrastructure, and above all, the man at the top: Inukai Tsuyoshi.

Inukai Tsuyoshi: The Last of the Constitutionalists

Inukai was no tyrant. He was, in fact, one of the few remaining defenders of civilian rule. Born in Okayama and an ally of Ozaki Yukio, Inukai had spent decades fighting for universal suffrage, press freedom, and party governance. He had opposed Japan’s participation in World War I, resisted military expansion, and warned against the rising ultranationalist tide.

As prime minister in 1932, he tried to heal the fractured economy through civilian reform. But the military also viewed him with suspicion. His greatest offense? Attempting to de-escalate Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and negotiate with Western powers.

To the conspirators, he was a traitor to their vision of a renewed Japan. They called him a puppet of the parties, a servant of the zaibatsu, a symbol of everything they sought to destroy.

May 15, 1932: The Gun and the Silence

The plan was simple in its malevolence.

That evening, four strike teams mobilized. One team attacked substations. Another hit the Bank of Japan. Yet another assaulted the headquarters of the Seiyukai Party. But the key group—led by naval officers Koga Kiyoshi, Mikami Taku, and others—drove to the Prime Minister’s residence.

Inukai was there, unarmed, with only a few guards.

According to testimony, Inukai welcomed them. He was calm. He offered tea.

“If we talk,” he said, “we will understand.”

They refused to talk. They shot him. Once. Twice. More.

The official time of death: 11:26 PM.

Inukai died alone, in the same room where he had met ministers, journalists, and foreign dignitaries. In the end, there was no grand speech, no military tribunal: just bullets, and the echo of what might have been had they chosen conversation over violence.

A Trial Without Justice

The assassins did not flee. Most turned themselves in to the Tokyo Military Police that night, carrying manifestos. They demanded the dissolution of political parties, a new military-led cabinet, and national rebirth.

But Japan did not respond with swift justice.

Instead, a stunning phenomenon unfolded. Over a million petitions poured in from across the country asking for leniency. Newspapers romanticized the perpetrators. Naval Academy classmates organized letter-writing campaigns. Public opinion, shaped by frustration and nationalist fervor, began to see the assassins not as criminals, but as heroes.

By 1933, the military courts had rendered their decisions. The heaviest sentence given was 15 years in prison, but some received as little as four.

Shoichi Watanabe, historian and professor, later called this failure to issue the death penalty “one of the greatest mistakes in modern Japanese history”. The state had rewarded the murder of a Prime Minister with mercy—and signaled to others that violence was not only tolerable, but effective.

What Changed That Night

The death of Inukai was not just an end; it was a beginning.

The last party cabinet of the prewar period died with him. His successor, Saitō Makoto, was a former admiral appointed not by parliament but by imperial fiat. Thus, the fragile balance between civilian and military rule was broken. From that moment, the army and navy would increasingly dictate national policy.

The once vibrant press grew timid. Right-wing organizations flourished. Students sang militarist hymns. Teachers taught children that sacrifice for the state was the highest virtue.

They indirectly achieved what the conspirators could not achieve through their limited attacks—martial law, a new constitution, and a total purge. They had broken the back of democracy not through strength, but through symbolism. They killed not just a man, but the idea that talking was still possible.

February 26, 1936: The Next Domino

Four years later, it happened again. But this time, on a larger scale.

On February 26, 1936, hundreds of army soldiers occupied the heart of Tokyo in a full-blown coup attempt. They assassinated Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Saitō Makoto, and others. They demanded a “Shōwa Restoration” and direct imperial rule. Unlike May 15, they held territory and expected reinforcements.

But this time, the military did not support them.

The coup failed, and the perpetrators were executed. Yet the damage was done. The event further discredited party politics and emboldened the military to claim legitimate power through legal means.

In contrast, May 15 was the door—February 26 was merely the hallway beyond.

Echoes of Inukai

What might have happened if the conspirators had accepted Inukai’s offer? If they had sat, talked, listened?

History does not offer such mercies. But it does offer lessons.

Inukai’s assassination is not merely a political turning point. It is a spiritual rupture—the refusal to listen, the triumph of ideological certainty over shared humanity. In killing Inukai, the conspirators rejected the very core of what holds society together: the belief that talking, earnest, humble dialogue, can lead to understanding.

The May 15 Incident teaches us that democracies do not fall overnight. They are dismantled word by word, law by law, until all that remains is the gun.

The Whisper Beneath the Noise

James W. Douglass wrote that “the Unspeakable” is the system that kills peacemakers and justifies their deaths. Inukai was no saint, but he was a man who believed in civility over coercion. His final words—“If we talk, we will understand”—were not naïve. They were prophetic.

He spoke not to his killers, but to the future.

Today, those words remain etched into the stone of Japan’s political memory, and into the conscience of any society that flirts with forgetting that dialogue is the last defense against despair.