League of Blood Incident

The League of Blood Incident (血盟団事件, Ketsumeidan Jiken^?, also translated as Blood-Pledge Corps Incident) was a 1932 assassination plot in Japan in which extremists targeted wealthy businessmen and liberal politicians. The group chose twenty victims but succeeded in killing only two: former Finance Minister and head of the Rikken Minseitō political party, Junnosuke Inoue, and the Director-General of Mitsui Holding Company, Dan Takuma.

The arrest of the assassins led to the discovery of the existence of a civilian ultranationalist group led by a Buddhist preacher, Nissho Inoue. He was never ordained.

Born as Inoue Shirō in 1886 in Gunma Prefecture, Nissho spent his young adult life as a drifter and adventurer, eventually ending up in north and northeast China gathering information for the Japanese military. After a series of mystical experiences in 1923-24, Inoue became convinced that Japan required spiritual rebirth and that he was called to be its savior. He established a school in Ibaraki Prefecture to promote agrarianism and social reform, which gradually evolved into a training center for ultra-rightist radicals. He adopted the name Nissho ("Called by The Sun") along with ideas and symbols derived from Nichiren Buddhism.

After the October incident, a failed coup d'état by rightist Army officers of the Sakurakai ultranationalist secret society in 1931, Inoue became convinced that national reform could be achieved only through violent confrontation with what he saw as the forces of evil: pro-Western liberal politicians and zaibatsu business interests. He devised the slogan "ichinin issatsu" ("one person, one kill") and drew up a list of twenty politicians and business leaders whose assassination would be the first step toward restoring supreme political power to the Emperor, a platform known as the "Shōwa Restoration".

...
Wikipedia