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TOKYO - The mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki died early on Wednesday after he was gunned down by a man police identified as a gangster, stunning a nation where shooting deaths are extremely rare.
Itcho Ito, 61, seeking re-election to a fourth term in an election this Sunday, was shot at least twice in the back outside his campaign office just before 8pm (11pm NZT) on Tuesday.
Ito's death sent shock waves across a nation where gun control laws are strict and violent attacks on politicians are infrequent.
Police arrested Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, who they said was 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 some media 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.
Police declined to comments on details of the case, but other reports said Shiroo believed the city was denying public works contracts to a construction company to which his gang was closely linked.
Doctors told a news conference that two bullets had reached the victim's heart.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe strongly denounced the shooting, as media expressed concern that the death would stifle freedom of speech in campaigns for local elections across Japan on Sunday.
"The atrocity committed during an election campaign is a challenge to democracy and it must never be forgiven," Abe told reporters.
"We must eradicate violence like this resolutely," he said.
The Asahi 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."
Ito's predecessor was also shot and seriously injured in 1990 by a member of a right-wing group after he made comments that the late Japanese Emperor Hirohito should be held responsible for World War 2.
Japan has strict gun control laws and firearms are mostly in the hands of hunters or "yakuza" gangsters, known for their short and tightly permed hair, elaborately tattooed backs and missing pinkies -- from finger-cutting rituals held to apologise for misdeeds and show loyalty to the boss.
Police figures show yakuza official membership numbered 41,500 in 2006, down slightly from 2005, but the number of hangers-on rose marginally to 43,200.
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.
Nagasaki, on the southernmost main island of Kyushu some 1000km 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 US nuclear arms policies and has been a strong advocate of Japan's sticking to its long-standing 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.
- REUTERS
