Career
Less than three weeks after the assassination, while being held in a juvenile detention facility, Yamaguchi mixed a small amount of toothpaste with water and wrote on his cell wall, "Seven lives for my country. Long live His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor!" Yamaguchi then knotted strips of his bedsheet into a makeshift rope and used it to hang himself from a light fixture. The phrase "seven lives for my country" was a reference to the last words of 14th century samurai Kusunoki Masashige.
Legacy
Footage of the incident was also captured.
Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburō Ōe based his 1961 novellas Seventeen and The of a Political Youth on Yamaguchi.