viewers. The photograph of Asanuma's assassination won its photographer Yasushi Nagao both the Pulitzer Prize and World Press Photo of the Year. Yamaguchi was captured at the scene of the crime, and a few weeks afterwards committed suicide by hanging while in police custody. Commemoration Asanuma was modest and hardworking and had earned respect from fellow lawmakers across the political spectrum. His assassination truly shocked Japan's political establishment. Shortly after his death, conservative prime minister erstwhile electoral rival Hayato Ikeda captured the mood of his fellow lawmakers when he gave a heartfelt eulogy for Asanuma on the floor of the Diet. Commemorating Asanuma as a "speech-giving everyman" (enzetsu hyakushō), Ikeda declared: According to reportage at the time, Ikeda's short speech was met with thunderous applause and left many lawmakers in tears. Legacy The Japan Socialist Party had been an unhappy marriage between far left socialists, centrist socialists, and right socialists, who had been forced together in order to oppose the consolidation of conservative parties into the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955. Asanuma was a charismatic figure who had been able to hold many of these mutually antagonistic factions together through the force of his personality. Under Asanuma's leadership, the party had won an increasing amount of seats in the Diet in every election over the latter half of the 1950s and seemed to be gathering momentum. Asanuma's untimely death deprived the party of his adroit leadership, and thrust Saburō Eda into the leadership role instead. A centrist, Eda rapidly took the party in a more centrist direction, far faster than the left socialists were ready to accept. This led to growing infighting within the party, and drastically damaged its ability to present a cohesive message to the public. Over the rest of the 1960s and going forward, the number of seats the Socialists held in the Diet continued to decline until the party's extinction in 1996. References Works cited External links |- |- 1898 births 1960 deaths 1960 murders in Japan Assassinated Japanese politicians Japanese socialists Members of the House of Representatives from Tokyo Members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly Waseda University alumni Filmed assassinations Filmed killings in Asia Male murder victims People murdered in Japan Deaths by stabbing in Japan Members of the House of Representatives (Empire of Japan) Social Democratic Party (Japan) politicians People from the Izu Islands People of Shōwa-period Japan People notable for being the subject