Japanese stunned by mayor’s assassination

A woman offers a bouqet and prays at the murder site of Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Ito yesterday

NAGASAKI: Stunned Japanese yesterday laid flowers and called for even tighter controls on guns after the mayor of Nagasaki was shot dead by a member of the nation’s largest underworld gang.
The rare political killing in one of the world’s safest countries led authorities to tighten security around political leaders ahead of local polls this Sunday, in which the mayor was campaigning for re-election.
“This criminal act during the election campaign is a challenge to democracy. It cannot be forgiven no matter what,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in Tokyo.
Sixty-one-year-old Iccho Ito died before dawn yesterday due to massive blood loss hours after being shot outside his campaign offices in Nagasaki.
“This is not an act by a human being. If he had grievances, he should have said them to the mayor instead of shooting him,” said Yoshinori Hirano, 57, a gas company worker, as mourners left flowers at the shooting site.
“To see an important person get killed violently is very shocking because Nagasaki is the city of peace,” he said as he started to weep.
Police said the assailant belonged to the Japanese mafia, or “yakuza,” who hold wide interests in seedy nightlife and are linked to most of Japan’s gun-related violence.
Chief government spokesman Yasuhisa Shiozaki said authorities would look into how criminal groups were able to skirt Japan’s tough gun controls.
“The government will make more efforts to crack down on gun trafficking at ports through co-operation with police, customs houses and coast guards, as well as other countries,” Shiozaki said.
Police said they were investigating how the suspect, 59-year-old Tetsuya Shiroo, obtained the lethal weapon, a 0.38-caliber US-made Smith and Wesson “Bodyguard” revolver.
Amid the widespread condemnation of the attack, gaffe-prone Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma came under fire for saying the shooting would boost the chances of the opposition.
Ito’s son-in-law, a 40-year-old Tokyo-based newspaper reporter who has never held elected office, said he would run in Sunday’s election.
“As a journalist, I have always distanced myself from my father, Iccho Ito,” Makoto Yokoo said. “This is something I never thought about before, but someone has to carry on the job that Iccho Ito wanted to do.”
Police said the assailant was an executive member of a local group affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest criminal syndicate with some 40,000 members nationwide.
Motohisa Mizuta, the local affiliate’s leader, went in person to a police station and handed a letter saying that Suishinkai was disbanding, a senior police officer told reporters.
“Our organisation has caused trouble to society,” the officer quoted the letter as saying.
The Suishinkai, whose membership is estimated to be in the dozens, is the Nagasaki affiliate of the Yamaguchi-gumi, which has more than 40,000 rank and file across Japan.
But police said they were still questioning Shiroo to learn his motives. Shiroo had grievances with the city after his vehicle was damaged at a construction site four years ago, police said.
But a city spokesman said an official who dealt with Shiroo doubted the accident was his real motivation. News reports said the dispute may be linked to a public works contract.