The Dark History Behind A Tombstone
In an ordinary graveyard there stand an over 90 years-old tombstone. The toy train and toy figure lying in front of the old black tombstone suggest it belongs to a young child. As well as the fresh apples indicate that visitors still visit the tombstone to make offerings. The tombstone seems just as ordinary as the others despite its old look. But the inscription “brutally murdered by lapdogs” on the back of the tombstone reveals a glimpse of its dark history. The tombstone’s fading away inscription on the front reads as Mr. M. Tachibana born in Portland, Oregon, 12.04.1917, U.S.A. It belongs to Munekazu Tachibana who was one of the three civilians who have been murdered by the Japanese military police on September 16, 1923, and soon became known as the “Amakasu Incident” (Amakasu jiken). The victims of this police brutality were Ōsugi Sakae along with his wife Itō Noe and his child nephew Munekazu Tachibana.
When the Great Kantō Earthquake struck on September 1st, 1923, the Tokyo-Yokohama areas were hit the worst due to its populous regions filled with clustered buildings. The earthquake was not the only disaster that occurred because the fire took over the cities killing 100,000 people and leaving 70–80% of the residents homeless (The Asahi Shinbun, 2007). Soon enough, rumors began to emerge allegedly reporting that Korean residents were committing various crimes such as setting fires and looting. Consequently, the local vigilante organizations were formed to punish the Koreans but ended up murdering them with a death toll of at least several hundred, and possibly thousands. This chaotic occasion gave the police an opportunity to arrest and interrogate not only looters and rioters but the others that considered to be leftwing troublemakers (Ibid, 2007). One of the dissidents who were executed along with the ethnic Koreans during the chaos happened to be Tachibana, his uncle, and aunt. Ōsugi Sakae was an informal leader of the Japanese anarchist movement, and his wife Itō Noe was an anarcha-feminist. They were arrested by the squad of military police, known as Kenpeitai, led by Lieutenant Masahiko Amakasu (1891–1945). The victims were taken to the Kameido Police Station and beaten up and strangled to death in their cells (Setouchi, 1993). The civilians’ bodies were found wrapped in tatami mats in an abandoned well. Tachibana’s story is a heartbreaking one, the innocent young boy was likely murdered to be silenced.
The death of the three victims angered many. The leader Lieutenant Mashiko Amakasu who led the military police squad which carried out the murder was sentenced to 10 years in prison; however, he was released three years later and was sent as a special agent to assist in the Imperial Japanese Army in Manchuoko (Cybriwsky, 2011). Amasaku took his own life when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II.
Munekazu’s father installed the tombstone dedicated to his son four years after the incident in 1927. As a merchant from the Aichi prefecture, he chose the location of the tombstone at the compound burial ground of a Nittaiji Buddhist temple located in the Chikusa Ward of Nagoya city. The tombstone had been forgotten until 1972 when a local woman discovers its existence of it and wrote about it in a letter sent to the newspaper (Horiguchi, 2022). The memorial service began to be held in 1975 by a group formed to commemorate Tachibana. I came to know Tachibana’s story from The Japan Times’ recent article about it. The Japan Times article and along with other articles written about the memorials at the tombstone were published newly in 2022 because 2023 will mark the 100-year anniversary of the Amakasu Incident. However, the fact that Tachibana’s story re-emerges in the public’s memory 49 years long after his death indicates that there has been no space allowed to commemorate the victims of such incidents done by the Japanese military. Even Tachibana’s father had to secretly erect the tombstone even though he could face the same faith as his son if he got caught. It would have been impossible to make memorial services to the victims of the Amakasu incident at least until Imperial Japan’s surrender in 1945. J. Victor Koschmann recounts everything in the past as “the incident and its suppression by media under the thumb of government censorship provide the occasion to reflect on more recent human rights abuses at the hands of government agents and the circumstances that allow them to continue” (The Asahi Shinbun, 2007).
References
Cybriwky, Roman. 2011. “Amakasu Incident.” In Historical Dictionary of Tokyo, 21. N.p.: Scarecrow Press.
Horiguchi, Toru. 2022. “FEATURE: Memorials continue for child victim of 1923 massacres in Japan.” Kyodo News. https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2022/09/c299a047a544-feature-memorials-continue-for-child-victim-of-1923-massacres-in-japan.html.
Horiguchi, Toru. 2022. “Memorials continue for child victim of 1923 massacres in Japan.” The Japan Times. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/09/29/national/history/amakasu-incident-memorial/.
“Murder of an Anarchist Recalled: Suppression of News in the Wake of the 1923 Tokyo Earthquake.” 2007. Japan Focus. https://apjjf.org/-The-Asahi-Shinbun-Cultural-Research-Center-/2569/article.html.
