Shanghai violence and Japan's May 15 coup attempt

Anti-Japanese protests after the invasion of Manchuria escalated into fighting at Shanghai. There is disagreement over whether Japanese activists instigated the demonstrations or merely inflamed them. Japanese ultranationalist Buddhist priests were sent to the city, and the killing of one priest was followed by a Japanese riot in which a factory was burned and two Chinese people were killed. The League of Nations failed to restrain events, and the eventual truce called for Japanese withdrawal and an end to Chinese boycotts. Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi had studied China, worked as a journalist, and reported on the Satsuma Rebellion before building a long political career. Soon afterward, eleven young naval officers assassinated him in the May 15 Incident, an attempted coup aided by army cadets. Their initial plan also contemplated killing Charlie Chaplin in the hope of provoking war with the United States, but that part was not carried out. Public sympathy and light sentences for the assassins signaled that militarism could advance without a decisive institutional check. Treaty limits on Japanese naval construction formed part of the officers' anger and gave Royal Navy observers another reason for alarm.