Imagine this scenario: One of your country’s most prominent journalists – a fearless rebel who refuses to knuckle under to government pressure despite heavy fines, police harassment and imprisonment – is suddenly arrested on suspicion of plotting against the monarchy. And after a closed trial by the highest court in the land, in which his defense can neither summon witnesses nor appeal the verdict, is found guilty based on circumstantial evidence and promptly hanged.

That, in a nutshell, sums up the “Great Treason Incident,” one of the most significant events in Japan’s modern history. A century ago this year, Denjiro Kotoku (1871-1911), a journalist, prolific writer and one of Japan’s most radical thinkers, was arrested on the charge of conspiring to assassinate the Meiji Emperor.

Kotoku, a 39-year-old native of Nakamura City, Kochi Prefecture, wrote under the literary name Kotoku Shusui. Shusui, written with the characters “autumn water,” means an exquisitely sharp sword, and via Tokyo’s muckraking, left-leaning Yorozu Choho daily newspaper, Kotoku used his figurative blade to take constant swipes at the autocratic Meiji government, particularly the military.

He later founded the Heimin Shimbun newspaper in Tokyo, which vehemently opposed the Russo-Japanese War and espoused such then-radical ideas as universal suffrage. He also denounced the emperor system at a time when the Constitution defined the monarch as ”sacred and inviolable.”

Earlier this year, discovery of a letter from prison shed new light on the Kotoku case, as reported in the Mainichi Shimbun of Jan. 29.

First some background: In mid-May 1910, a small cell of radicals, including feminist writer and Kotoku’s former lover, Sugako Kanno, was arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate the Meiji Emperor during a public procession on Nov. 3.

Kotoku and Kanno had openly engaged in a love affair, and she was denounced as a harlot.

Realizing she faced the death penalty according to Japan’s Criminal Code, Kanno composed a secret message in the form of a “pinhole letter” (made by punching a pattern of holes on a sheet of washi paper), and somehow managed to slip it to a visitor, possibly via a sympathetic jailer.

The letter, enclosed in an envelope postmarked in Ushigome (Shinjuku) on June 11, 1910, was recently found among the effects of the late Asahi Shimbun journalist (and friend of Kotoku) Sojikan Sugimura, who died in 1945. It is not known whether Sugimura (to whom the letter was addressed) took any action regarding Kanno’s message. The Mainichi article notes that Sugimura apparently “maintained silence about the letter’s contents until his death.”

Kanno’s words, dated June 9, 1910, become clearly visible when held up to the light. Her message, which requested that Kotoku’s attorney be contacted, suggests she was distraught over Kotoku’s arrest as a co-conspirator. As a postscript she wrote, “Kare wa nanimo shiranu no desu (he knows nothing).” This corroborates the orthodox view of historians that Kotoku had neither instigated nor was aware of the bomb plot.

Kanno’s efforts to dissociate herself from Kotoku were futile; the two, along with 10 other alleged conspirators, were found guilty of high treason by the Daishin’in – as Japan’s Supreme Court was called until 1947 – on Jan. 18, 1911. Despite large protest rallies and demonstrations organized by foreign sympathizers at Japanese diplomatic legations in Europe and the U.S., all 12 were hanged at Ichigaya Prison one week later.

The Great Treason Incident of 1910 is remembered for precipitating the expansion of police powers, leading to suppression of progressives that eventually squelched Japan’s nascent “Taisho Democracy,” enabling the jingoist military to hold sway over the government for the next three and a half decades.

Its repercussions were profound. In The Formation of Modern Japan (1962), legal scholar Kichisaburo Nakamura wrote: “Through this affair, the Emperor or the Emperor system became completely taboo. … Thus, under such circumstances, the people gradually lost the courage to insist on their rights, the power to stand up against the authorities, and the spirit of resistance. They became obedient servants.”

A notable exception to the above would be among citizens of Kochi Prefecture, who pride themselves on their stubborn independence and venerate heroic local figures such as Kotoku and Sakamoto Ryoma. Realizing that Kotoku was unlikely to ever receive absolution in the courts, the Nakamura City assembly voted in December 2000 to officially rehabilitate the town’s most famous native son. ❶