Mayor of Japanese city dies after being shot by gangster
Pastor Dale Morgan
Wednesday April 18, 7:37 AM Reuters
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Mayor of Japanese city dies after being shot by gangster*
By George Nishiyama
TOKYO (Reuters) - The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki died early
on Wednesday after being shot by a gangster, police said.
Itcho Ito, 61, seeking re-election for a fourth term on Sunday, was shot
at least twice in the back outside his campaign office just before 8
p.m. (12:00 p.m. British time) on Tuesday.
Ito's death comes as a shock to a nation where there are very strict gun
control laws and where attacks against politicians are rare.
Police arrested Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, a senior member of a local gang
affiliated with Japan's largest crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi Gumi, and
seized a revolver he had with him.
The motive for the shooting remained unclear, but public broadcaster NHK
said Shiroo was upset at the city's handling of a traffic accident four
years ago in which his car was damaged as it passed a public works
construction site.
Ito's predecessor was also shot and seriously injured in 1990 by a
right-wing group member after making comments that Emperor Hirohito
should be held liable for war responsibilities.
After an emergency operation that lasted for around four hours, Ito was
kept alive for some time by an artificial heart and lungs but died at
2:28 a.m. (6:28 p.m. British time) due to loss of blood, a police
spokesman said.
Doctors had told a news conference that two bullets had reached his heart.
TV footage earlier showed the mayor lying face down on a sidewalk with
his eyes closed as paramedics treated him.
The Asahi Shimubn newspaper said in an editorial that "such base terror
cannot be tolerated".
"If the use of violence is tolerated when others do not do as one says,
the freedom of speech will be lost," it said. "It risks pushing the
country back to its wrong, dark years before the war."
STRICT GUN CONTROLS
Japan has very strict gun control laws and firearms are mostly in the
hands of "yakuza" gangsters or hunters.
The last known murder of a politician in Japan was in October 2002, when
lower house member Koki Ishii was stabbed to death by a member of a
right-wing group in front of his Tokyo home.
Politicians expressed shock at the shooting, which came as many
campaigned ahead of local elections across the country on Sunday.
"We cannot tolerate the use of bullets to attack political views,"
Hidenao Nakagawa, secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party was quoted as saying on Kyodo news agency.
Nagasaki, on the southernmost main island of Kyushu and some 980 km (610
miles) southwest of Tokyo, was the second city to suffer an atomic
bombing by the United States on August 9, 1945.
Ito had previously been critical of U.S. nuclear arms policies and has
been a strong advocate of Japan sticking to its decades-old ban on
nuclear arms.
Last year, on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city, Ito
criticised Iran and North Korea for their nuclear programmes and had
harsh words for the United States for failing to halt nuclear
proliferation.