Kusunoki Masashige
Following the assassination, Yamaguchi was arrested and imprisoned awaiting trial. Throughout his imprisonment, Yamaguchi remained calm and composed and freely gave extensive testimony to police. Yamaguchi consistently asserted that he had acted alone and without any direction from others. Less than three weeks after the assassination, on 2 November, Yamaguchi mixed a small amount of toothpaste with water and wrote on his cell wall, "Long live the Emperor" and “Would that I had seven lives to give for my country” (七生報国, "shichishō hōkoku"), the latter a reference to the famous last words of fourteenth-century samurai Kusunoki Masashige. Yamaguchi then knotted strips of his bedsheet into a makeshift rope and used it to hang himself from a light fixture.