Killing of mayor jolts Japan
The Associated Press
Published: April 17, 2007
TOKYO: When Nagasaki's mayor was fatally shot in southern Japan, it was not much of a surprise that a gangster was arrested. In a country where regular citizens face strict gun laws, the mob does most of the shooting.
Iccho Ito, 61, died early Wednesday after being shot twice in the back Tuesday evening. Tetsuya Shiroo, a senior member of Japan's largest crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi, was captured at the scene and admitted to the attack, police said.
"This murder, which took place in the middle of an election campaign, is a threat to democracy," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Wednesday. "Though Japanese law enforcement is already severe by international standards, we must clamp down on gun crime even further."
The killing — reportedly linked to Shiroo's demands for city compensation for car damage caused by a pothole — focused attention on the role of the Japanese mafia, or "yakuza," in the country's rare shootings.
Of the 53 gun attacks reported in 2006, two-thirds — 36 — were blamed on organized crime groups, the National Police Agency says.
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Handguns are strictly banned for Japan's ordinary citizens. Only police and some others with job-related reasons can own them. Hunting rifles are strictly regulated.
But crime syndicates have the money, numbers and international connections to smuggle in guns.
Even fellow gangsters seemed to think Shiroo had gone too far.
Motohisa Mizuta, leader of Suishinkai — Shiroo's Yamaguchi-gumi branch — notified police Wednesday that the branch was disbanding, according to Nagasaki police official Koji Minami.
Minami gave no reason, but said Suishinkai most likely "wanted to take responsibility" for the slaying.
Tuesday's attack came despite a sharp drop in shootings in recent years.
The number of reported gun attacks have plunged from 158 in 2002 — with 70 percent blamed on yakuza — to 53 last year.
The number of illegal guns seized by police dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2002 to 2006, when 458 firearms were confiscated.
Even gangsters prefer knives for mob hits, because gun murders typically carry heavier sentences. Instead, mobsters sometimes use guns for intimidation, for example shooting the outside of an office to warn occupants.
Still, public concern remains high amid a widely publicized turf war between Japan's two largest underworld gangs earlier this year. The feud ended a yearlong lull in gang violence.
The boss of a gang affiliated with the Tokyo-based Sumiyoshi-kai syndicate was shot dead in February, in a killing believed to have prompted at least three more shootings at gangland headquarters in Tokyo.
"I want Japanese laws to protect the general public," said Shinichi Tada, a 44-year-old manufacturing company worker in Tokyo.
"I do not want Japan to be like the U.S.," he added, referring to Monday's massacre in Virginia that killed at least 33 people.
Japan's organized crime groups are typically involved in real estate and construction kickback schemes, extortion, gambling, the sex industry, drug trafficking and gunrunning.
Noriyoshi Takemura, criminologist at Toin University in Yokohama, said tight weapons laws make Japan an attractive market for gunrunners.
"There are not many guns made in Japan. The tighter the control is, the higher the price goes up," he said.
Tuesday's attack appeared linked to a dispute between Shiroo and Nagasaki city.
Shiroo reportedly clashed with city officials in 2003 after his car was damaged when he drove into a hole at a public works site.
In a typical mob extortion attempt, he tried unsuccessfully to get compensation from the city after his insurance company refused to pay, according to public broadcaster NHK.
It also reported that Shiroo intended to kill himself after shooting Ito.
Ito, backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, had been campaigning for his fourth term in office in Sunday elections. He was an active figure in the movement against nuclear proliferation.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "shock and regret" at Ito's assassination, calling him "a champion of peace for a world where nuclear war would never happen again," the U.N. said.
The secretary-general, visiting Rome, "expresses his deepest condolences to his family and friends, to the citizens of Nagasaki and Japan, to the many who work for a world without nuclear weapons," said U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe.
"As mayor of the second city that had been destroyed by atomic weapons in 1945, Mayor Ito was a champion of peace for a world where nuclear war would never happen again," Okabe said.
Ito's brother-in-law and a local journalist, Makoto Yokoo, said Wednesday he would run for Nagasaki mayor in Ito's place, according to Kyodo News agency. |
