Seppuku Politics: Hamada Kunimatsu’s Defiance in the Imperial Diet

The events of January 21, 1937, unfolded with the inevitability of a tragedy. The air was charged with tension inside the newly inaugurated Imperial Diet Building in Tokyo. Long silenced by fear of the military’s growing grip, politicians prepared for yet another day of uneasy acquiescence. Yet by the time the session concluded, the chamber had been thrown into chaos, the government shaken to its core. This confrontation—later immortalized as the Harakiri Debate—would expose the rift between military and civilian leadership and the fragility of Japan’s political order on the eve of war.

A Fragile Democracy Under Siege

To understand the Harakiri Debate is to grasp the dark forces suffocating Japan’s political system in the 1930s. A year earlier, in February 1936, the nation had been shocked by the sight of young army officers marching through Tokyo’s streets, staging a bloody coup against their government. The February 26 Incident failed militarily, but its aftershocks were profound. In the following weeks, the military cemented its dominance, not through open declarations but through fear—a cold, unspoken understanding that civilian leaders who crossed them did so at their peril.

By 1937, this fragile equilibrium was cracking. Hamada Kunimatsu, a grizzled political veteran in his seventies, had seen enough. A former Speaker of the House of Representatives and one of the most senior members of the Diet, Hamada had witnessed Japan’s democracy in its better days. Yet now, as the Army’s shadow loomed over every aspect of governance, he felt compelled to speak.

On that fateful January morning, he rose in the chamber of the 70th Imperial Diet, his voice cutting through the suffocating decorum. “Military personnel should not be involved in politics,” he began. His critique was blistering. He spoke of how the Army’s growing interference threatened the delicate harmony between civilian and military spheres, how dissent was being strangled, and the creeping specter of dictatorship. The chamber fell silent as if the collective weight of decades of acquiescence pressed on its members.

A Rhetorical Duel

Hamada’s words landed with a force that demanded a response. Army Minister Terauchi Toshikazu, his face taut with fury, rose to deliver it. Terauchi’s rebuke was sharp, accusing Hamada of insulting the military. But Hamada, far from cowed, counterattacked. “What, specifically, in my words, was an insult to the military?” he demanded.

The exchange escalated with each volley. Terauchi could offer no specifics, only vague accusations of disrespect. Sensing an opportunity, Hamada struck the fatal blow: “Check the transcript. If I have insulted the military, I will commit seppuku and apologize. But if no insult can be found, you must commit seppuku.” Seppuku was the traditional self-disembowelment that the samurai performed to expunge shame. The chamber erupted in pandemonium. Shouts and jeers echoed through the hall, with some members aghast at Hamada’s audacity and others thrilled by his courage.

The drama of the Harakiri Debate was not just rhetorical. It was visceral, a public duel fought with words but steeped in the grim symbolism of the samurai tradition. Seppuku (or Harakiri) was no idle metaphor. It represented the ultimate test of honor, a demand for accountability in its most brutal form. By invoking it, Hamada forced a reckoning that neither Terauchi nor the military could ignore.

The Aftermath: A Government in Crisis

The fallout was immediate and catastrophic for the civilian government. The chaos in the Diet prompted the suspension of its proceedings for two days while the Emperor himself was consulted. Terauchi, furious and uncompromising, demanded that Prime Minister Hirota Kōki dissolve the Diet altogether. Hirota caught between the military’s demands and the public’s growing dissatisfaction with their interference, could find no way forward. By March, the Hirota cabinet had resigned en masse, a casualty of the military’s unrelenting pressure.

For all its drama, the Harakiri Debate resolved nothing. Terauchi survived the incident unscathed, and the military’s dominance only deepened in the following months. By the summer of 1937, Japan was at war with China, and the Diet had become little more than a ceremonial body under military control.

A Moment of Clarity

Yet the Harakiri Debate endures in memory, not because it changed the course of Japan’s history, but because it illuminated the stakes of that history so starkly. Hamada Kunimatsu’s defiance, however fleeting, was a rare act of resistance in an age of submission. His words and the fury they provoked laid bare the conflict at the heart of Japan’s descent into authoritarianism: the struggle between civilian ideals and militaristic ambitions.

Hamada died two years later, a relic of a more democratic age. But his actions on that January day remain a reminder of what was lost. In the spectacle of his confrontation with Terauchi, the people of Japan glimpsed both the courage of resistance and its futility. It was a moment of clarity before the darkness descended completely.