Amakasu Masahiko

Amakasu in September 1923

Amakasu Masahiko ( Japanese 甘 粕 正彦 ; born January 26, 1891 in Yamagata Prefecture ; † August 20, 1945 ) was a Japanese lieutenant.

At the time of the great Kantō earthquake , Amakasu was head of a division of the military police . On September 16, 1923, 10 socialists as well as the well-known anarchists Itō Noe and Ōsugi Sakae and his six-year-old nephew were murdered by Amakasu's department as a result of irrational feelings of persecution and the government's fear that they would be overthrown by the opportunity of the chaotic conditions. The “ Amakasu Incident ” was later widely received in the Japanese media. Amakasu was sentenced by the military court to 10 years in Chiba Prison . He was released after three years for good conduct.

Amakasu then went to France , was involved in the preparation of the Mukden incident in 1931 and, in China, for the Kwantung Army, was instrumental in establishing the puppet state of Manchukuo . In 1939 he became the head of the "Manchurian Film Society" ( 満 洲 映 画 協会 , manchū eiga kyōkai ), where he became the head of the cultural invasion of Chinese film. He also traded in UFA films and passed them on to Japan. Shortly before the Red Army captured the capital of Manchukuos Shinkyō in August 1945 , he killed himself by ingesting potassium cyanide .

Amakasu is a main character in the film The Last Emperor , in which it is described that he shot himself. He is also one of the protagonists of the 2016 novel Die Toten by the Swiss writer Christian Kracht .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ (en) Revolutionary portraits: Ito Noe - organize # 59
2. ↑ Barth, Johannes; As a German businessman in the Far East, Berlin 1984 ISBN 3-503-02366-6 , p. 114.

Web links

Commons : Masahiko Amakasu  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Amakasu is the family name, Masahiko the first name.