The Assassination of Inejiro Asanuma

With only one frame left in his Speed Graphic, Yasushi Nagao captured the shocking moment an assassin struck.

Photograph by Yasushi Nagao

(日本語版)

In the wake of the tragic assassination of Shinzo Abe, there's been renewed attention to this photo by Yasushi Nagao from October 12, 1960. As Japanese politician Inejiro Asanuma was giving a speech at the Hibiya Public Hall in Tokyo, an assassin leapt on stage and fatally stabbed Asanuma with a sword.

Yasushi Nagao was working as a staff photographer with The Mainichi Shimbun. UPI moved the photo and it was published all over the world, including the front page of The New York Times.

Unfortunately, Yasushi was uncredited, as was his newspaper (sadly, this was the standard at the time).

LIFE and TIME also published Yashushi’s dramatic photo. “Death was a television spectacle of horror in Japan last week,” TIME wrote.

The assassination was also captured on video from several angles, though it lacks the impact of Yasushi's photo. It was pure chaos — unbelievable he was able to make that photo with only one frame left in his camera.

Yasushi can be seen capturing the moment in the following video. Look for two bright flashes at the twelve second mark — one of those is from Yasushi. The other is from a different photographer whose image was soft (see below).

Yasushi won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography — the first non-American to do so. His photo was also named the World Press Photo of the Year in 1961. Here’s Yasushi during the World Press award ceremony, photographed by Harry Pot.

Photograph by Harry Pot

Watch the video, it's bizarre and kinda cool how World Press "revealed" the winning image in 1961.

There are other photos of the assassination. This one by a photographer from The Kyodo News (sorry I couldn't find their name) is remarkable. It's the exact moment Asanuma is first stabbed at the podium (look for the flash in the video below at 1:13).

Photograph from The Kyodo News

LIFE also published that photo alongside several frame grabs from Asahi Newsreel.

The following image was taken just after the stabbing by another photographer from The Asahi Shimbun (sorry, again, couldn’t find their name). I feel for this photographer, missing a moment like this would be devastating.

Below is the photo I referenced earlier. If you watch the video closely you'll see two flashes — Yasushi's and this photographer’s. This image, taken by a Tokyo Shimbun photographer (again, couldn't find their name), was taken a split second before Yasushi's. It's soft but still an extraordinary moment.

Photograph from The Tokyo Shimbun

Here are frame grabs of the exact moments the two photographs were made. A mere fraction of a second separates Yasushi Nagao's iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning photo (right) and another that is mostly forgotten (left).

The New York Daily News published the alternate version of the assassination on October 13, 1960 - heavily retouched. This was an early edition of the Daily News (the city edition has a photo from the Times Square Subway bombing). More on that later.