80 Years After 2-26 Incident: Capt. Kono’s Wills Discovered

This episode has to do with Japan not of today but 80 years ago, on February 26, 1936, when an armed incident shook up the whole country - an attempted coup d'état that cost the lives of some leading individuals. I'm Nathan Shiga to tell you about a discovery which I'm sure will interest some of you researchers of Japanese history.

A group of young Imperial Army officers set out to organize a coup d'état on February 26, 1936, assassinated some leaders including two former prime ministers, ultimately declared “rebels” and surrendered three days later. Suffice it say for now that they mutiny was silenced with some 19 “ring leaders” executed and 40 more imprisoned.

Now, this episode concerns a young officer, Captain Hisashi Kono, one of the ring-leaders who, together with five others, had schemed the mutiny. On the day of the uprising, Captain Kono led a team of 7 soldiers and 6 civilians to attack Nobuaki Makino, the former Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and former prime Minister then lodging in a hotel in Yugawara with his family.

At 5:45 a.m. Kono and his party assaulted the hotel only to be intercepted by policemen. A gunfight ensued; Lord Makino was rescued out of the hotel. Captain Kono was wounded in the chest and taken to a nearby army hospital, where he was arrested by military police. A week later, he stabbed himself to death. Kono was the last of the rebel officers to commit suicide.

One of his intimate friends in Oyama, Tochigi, discovered, among heaps of letters, Captain Kono’s authentic wills in his hand writing 80 years after the incident. In the one without any addressee Kono expounds his ardent wish to “remove the roots of evil” for the wellbeing of the country; in the one addressed to the Minister of War Kono stresses that his subordinates have only “acted on his orders and should be pardoned of any penalties”.

Prof. Kiyotada Tsutsui evaluates the documents as a vital clue to the circumstances of the incident.