February 26 Incident: Attack on the PM Official Residence

The February 26 Incident (二・二六事件) was an attempted coup d'état by ultranationalist young officers of the Imperial Japanese Army on February 26, 1936. Approximately 1,400 troops seized key government buildings in central Tokyo and attacked senior statesmen, with Prime Minister Okada Keisuke among the principal targets. The Prime Minister's Official Residence in Nagatacho, designed by Shimomoto Muraji of the Finance Ministry's building section, had been completed in 1929; Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi had been shot dead there by naval officers in the May 15 Incident of 1932.

At about 5:10 a.m. on 26 February, a contingent of some 300 men under First Lieutenant Kurihara Yasuhide of the 1st Infantry Regiment stormed the residence. The police guard returned fire and four policemen were killed, and the building suffered heavy gunfire damage. In the confusion, the rebels killed Colonel Matsuo Denzō — a retired army colonel and Okada's brother-in-law, who lived in the residence and assisted the Prime Minister — mistaking him for Okada, and for a time announced that they had achieved their aim.

Okada himself was hidden by maids in a storage closet of the maids' room. His secretaries Fukuda Ko and Sakomizu Hisatsune (Okada's son-in-law), working with Kempeitai Sergeant Major Kosaka Keisuke, planned his rescue: when the rebels allowed mourners into the residence on 27 February, Okada was smuggled out among those who had come to pay respects to the 'Prime Minister's body' — in effect disguised as a mourner at his own funeral. The earlier text said he hid for two days; Japanese sources indicate that he escaped on the day after the attack, after rather more than one day in hiding.

The rebellion was suppressed by February 29, and its leaders were subsequently tried by court-martial and executed, Kurihara among those shot in July 1936. Although Okada survived, his cabinet resigned on 9 March. The old residence remained in use until the new Kantei opened in April 2002; the building was then moved bodily to a new position and has served since 2005 as the Prime Minister's living quarters (Kotei). The bullet scars from the attack are still preserved in the building's entrance hall: according to Japanese sources, a hole about 1 cm across, believed to be a bullet mark, remains in the glass of the main entrance.