Oh yeah, feels like the ages long tradition of japanese political assisinations is alive and well.
It all begun during the shogun era. Some noble or samurai gets assigned a post by the emperor or shogun and his rivals would kill him to free the way for the assignment of the opposing faction.
Since japs became modernized it subsided a bit in the late 19th century as they were all driven towards expansion under the emperor's banner.
But starting after wwI it started wind up more and more, year after year. I think many know about the prominent bitter rivalry between Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) and Imperial Japanese Army (IJA). They were so separated that they had their own navies (yes, army navy and and navy navy), ground forces, air service etc. Only in theory theie spheres were separated into land and sea.
And they didn't hold back- there were coup attempts after coup attempts and assasination after assasinations. And its not only the highest generals and admirals and prime ministers who were affected. Anyone could be a target if they stood in the way of the opposing faction. An army major get assigned into the position which allows him to influence the way steel is distributed between army and navy? Be sure navy will try to outright kill him to get thir officer into the position. And Im not exaggerating- I believe from 1930 to 1941 over 40 high ranking officers were assasinated
Funiest part of all this- it was all under the pretext of defending the emperor, follow their duties etc. So de-jure emperor couldn't interfere directly and just send offenders into the prison for life, even if they were caught. Same with the coups- under the guise of "getting system cleaned of disloyalty" and "helping the god-emperor".
Long post is long, but I found it an interesting and often overlook part of japanese history.