In April 1927, after Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiichi Tanaka came to power, he forcibly demanded the right to railway in northeast China from Zhang Zuolin, which directly caused an anti-Japanese upsurge among the people of northeast China. On September 4, nearly 20,000 people in Shenyang carried out anti-Japanese demonstrations, and in this upsurge, Zhang Zuolin also delayed agreeing to the conditions of the Japanese army, and the Japanese cabinet was very dissatisfied with this, and even more suspected that the anti-Japanese demonstrations of the people in northeast China were caused by Zhang Zuolin's incitement.
Just at this time, Chiang Kai-shek decided to carry out a second Northern Expedition against Zhang Zuolin in order to expand his territory, and Zhang Zuolin decided to withdraw from Beijing and return to the northeast when he saw that his general situation had gone. And Japan has already issued an ultimatum for Zhang Zuolin, not only to solve the outstanding cases of Manchuria and Mongolia but also to put forward 10 clauses to him, for which Zhang Zuolin still sternly refused, so the Japanese army began to conspire to sit down on Zhang Zuolin's way back to the northeast.
On May 17, the Japanese envoy Fang Ze came to meet Zhang Zuolin, and the two talked for a full three hours, at this time the Japanese army was still threatening and tempting Zhang Zuolin to agree to the conditions, but Zhang Zuolin had already felt strong dissatisfaction with the Japanese army's persecution behavior, and this time Zhang Zuolin not only verbally refused Fang Ze's advice, but also issued a written statement to the Japanese army.
When the Japanese army saw that Zhang Zuolin was still unwilling to compromise and continue to exert pressure on him, Zhang Zuolin was still unwilling to pay attention to it, and decided to retreat to the northeast under the pressure of internal and external conditions. At this time, the Japanese staff had already placed 30 bags of explosives and a stormtrooper near the Huanggutun Railway Station, which was only one and a half kilometers away from Shenyang. In fact, before Zhang Zuolin left, he had received secret reports from his subordinates, so he repeatedly changed the departure time to confuse others, but in the end it had no effect.
At 6 p.m. on June 3, 1928, Zhang Zuolin set off from the Marshal's Office in Beijing for the northeast, and the special car he was riding in was a "float" used by Empress Dowager Cixi, whose decoration was very luxurious, and in front of the special car, in order to ensure Zhang Zuolin's safety, there was also an avant-garde car. However, even such a thorough protection still failed to save Zhang Zuolin's life.
In the early morning of June 4, on this day, The Japanese Consul General in Fengtian, Hayashi Kujiro, got up early and looked at the Sandong Bridge with a telescope on the roof. At nearly 5:30 a.m., when Zhang Zuolin's special car was approaching the Three-Hole Bridge, the Japanese Kwantung Army Lieutenant who was watching from a distance directly pressed the button, and only heard a loud noise. The special car car in which Zhang Zuolin was riding was bombed and only one chassis was left, and the people in the carriage were traumatized to varying degrees.
Zhang Zuolin was also blown three miles away due to the explosion, and his throat ruptured and he eventually died. This plan was actually a plan by the Japanese staff officer Kawamoto, before Zhang Zuolin's death, he did not inform his superiors, he thought that after Zhang Zuolin's death, the Northeast Army would fall into chaos, and the Japanese army could also take this opportunity to seize the Northeast, but the fact was not as simple as he thought, Zhang Zuolin's death was instead after Zhang Xueliang took over, the entire Northeast Army was ready to wait for the annihilation of the Japanese army at any time.
The Japanese emperor originally wanted to swallow the northeast by the tactic of boiling frogs in warm water, and now blowing up Zhang Zuolin is directly equivalent to tearing his face, and Japan's decades of efforts have been destroyed by Zhang Zuolin's death. The Japanese Emperor was furious when he learned of Zhang Zuolin's death, and although no Japanese high-level person knew about the plot of this matter in advance, the entire Japanese army was implicated in this matter, and the Japanese army commander Shirakawa Yoshitomo was forced to resign under the oppression of the emperor, and Prime Minister Yoshiichi Tanaka also stepped down under the pressure of the emperor, and finally ended up depressed because of this matter, and the mastermind of this matter, Kawamoto Daisaku, was dismissed under the cover of many high-ranking figures of the Japanese army.