Fumiko Kaneko, Japanese Egoist and Nihilist. Involved with Anarchists in Tokyo and was very much influenced by Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche. Was arrested for plotting against the Japanese imperial family, was sentenced to death but then commuted to life in prison. While in prison she wrote that death was freedom. Four months into her sentence she hung herself in her cell.
“We have been taught that the emperor is a descendant of the gods, and that his right to rule is bestowed upon him by the gods… We have in our midst someone who is supposed to be a living god, one who is omnipotent and omniscient, an emperor who is supposed to realize the will of the gods. Yet his children are crying because of hunger, suffocating to death in the coal mines, and being crushed by factory machines. Why is this so? Because, in truth, the emperor is a mere human being. We wanted to show the people that the emperor is an ordinary human being just like us. So we thought of throwing a bomb at him to show that he too will die like any other human being…”