Editing Nobusuke Kishi (section)

==Stabbing incident==

On July 14, 1960, Kishi was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant as he was leaving the prime minister's residence to host a garden party celebrating Hayato Ikeda's impending ascension to the premiership.<ref name=Eldridge>{{cite web|last=Eldridge|first=Robert D.|title=The assassination attempt of Nobusuke Kishi|work=The Japan Times|date=July 13, 2020|access-date=September 21, 2021|url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2020/07/13/commentary/japan-commentary/assassination-attempt-nobusuke-kishi/}}</ref> The assailant was Taisuke Aramaki, an unemployed 65-year-old man affiliated with various right wing groups.<ref name=Eldridge/> Aramaki stabbed Kishi six times in the thigh, causing Kishi to bleed profusely, although Kishi survived because the blade had missed major arteries.<ref name=Eldridge/> Kishi was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he received a total of 30 stitches to close his wounds.<ref name=Eldridge/> Reporters raced after him and climbed on stepladders to peer into his hospital room, with nurses angrily closing the curtains on them.<ref name=Eldridge/>

Aramaki was arrested at the scene, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to three years in prison in May 1962.<ref name=Eldridge/> Despite being unemployed, he had somehow been able to post a substantial bail during the intervening two years.<ref name=Eldridge/>

Aramaki never clearly stated the motivations for his attack. Despite the violent nature of the attack, Aramaki denied that he had intended to kill Kishi, later telling a reporter in an interview, "Yeah, I stabbed him six times, but if I wanted him dead, I would have just killed him."<ref name=Eldridge/> Aramaki told the same reporter that he had visited with the family of [[Michiko Kanba]] prior to his attack, perhaps suggesting that he sympathized with Kanba and blamed Kishi for her death.<ref name=Eldridge/> According to court records, Aramaki told police that he was angry at Kishi's mishandling of the [[U.S.-Japan Security Treaty|Security Treaty]] crisis and wanted to "encourage Kishi to feel remorse".<ref name=Eldridge/><ref name=Sankei>{{cite web|title=岸信介の退陣 佐藤栄作との兄弟酒「ここで二人で死のう」 吉田茂と密かに決めた人事とは…|work=Sankei Shimbun|date=September 23, 2015|access-date=September 21, 2021|url=https://www.sankei.com/article/20150923-DQNPS3D5XBIHREZH3FUJAO43LA/7/|language=Japanese}}</ref>

However, some figures close to Kishi considered Aramaki's supposed anger in relation to the [[Anpo protests]] to be a cover story. In her 1992 memoir, Kishi's daughter Yōko wrote that Aramaki was "a paid assassin, who knew how to use a knife, who was hired by someone who hated my father and wanted to hurt him".<ref name=Eldridge/> In the prewar period, Aramaki had been secretary general of the right-wing ultranationalist Taikakai ("Great Reform Society"),<ref name=Eldridge/> and in the post-war period, he became a member of LDP factional leader [[Banboku Ōno]]'s private extraparliamentary pressure group (''ingaidan''). Many LDP politicians felt that the stabbing had been carried out at Ōno's behest, as Ōno had openly hoped to succeed Kishi as prime minister and was known to be angry that Kishi had thrown his support behind Ikeda.<ref name=Sankei/>

Curiously, Kishi was largely silent on the attack in his memoirs, devoting only two lines to it and saying only that he did not know the reason, and Kishi's brother [[Eisaku Satō]] did not even mention the attack in his diary entry for that day.<ref name=Eldridge/>