Did you know that Japanese militarists tried to murder Charlie Chaplin in 1932?

[Bucky]

I ran across this historical incident in a Christmas book I got last week. On May 19th, 1932 a group of nine army officers belonging to the Cherry Society--one of several right wing secret societies that were pushing for a more aggressive policy
in China and a lot less democracy back home--barged into Prime Minister Tsuyoshi "Ki" Inukai's office with the intention of shooting him and his scheduled guest from Hollywood, Charles Chaplin.

Chaplin to them represented American decadence (despite his own decidedly leftish politics and British nationality). Inukai represented representation. Together, they should die. Fortunately, the Little Tramp was not there--they got his scheduled tea with the PM off by one day. The possibly naive Prime Minister Inukai stood up and offered his visitors cigarettes and asked them to come in for a chat. Their leader replied "No use talking!" and shot him. Then each of them other also shot Inukai, Roman senator-style. Then they looked about for the silent film star, but he wasn't there.

Apparently Chaplin himself had been put off by the politically charged environment of the day and suspected he was being set up for some nefarious purpose earlier in his visit. He'd encountered some bullying seemingly set up by he and his brother's official tour guide. But on the day of the murder, he was not actually avoiding murder plots. Charles and Sydney Chaplin had met with Tokyo's mayor earlier that day and were attending a sumo match with Ken Inukai, the Prime Minister's son, that afternoon when he received news of his father's murder. I wonder

Here's an on-line article about the incident, although they get the details slightly different than how the Time Magazine WW2 Timeline book reports is.

The officers were given pretty light sentences, which they didn't bother to serve anyway. A signed-in-blood petition to the court martial 300,000 strong convinced them to give the killers a slap on the wrist. I wonder if it would have played out differently had the Little Tramp gotten gunned down along with the PM.

[necso]

1. Not to argue details,

but "Cherry Blossom" is more consistent with Japanese traditions.

The Samurai fall,
like cherry blossoms cast down
by a sudden breeze.