Japan mourns slain Nagasaki mayor

JAPAN: Mourners paid their final respects Thursday to the slain mayor of Nagasaki as his son-in-law pledged to stand for election in his stead to continue his legacy.

Mayor Iccho Ito’s coffin was borne in a hearse through the streets and past the city hall of Nagasaki, in southern Japan, where he had been widely tipped to win re-election in a weekend poll.

Elsewhere police tried to piece together the motive of the gangster now in custody for the crime, a rare shooting in one of the world’s safest nations.

The son-in-law, Makoto Yokoo, a Tokyo-based journalist who has never held elected office, joined the family in a private wake where his wife held up a picture of Ito and the mayor’s widow sobbed inconsolably.

“He reaped and sowed the land and the flowers bloomed,” Yokoo said. “He was about to finish his work and then this happened.

“I am so sad and disappointed.”

A black hearse carried the mayor’s body in a simple procession through the streets on its way to cremation.

Outside city hall, municipal workers — ranging from employees in suits to janitors — stood at attention, many dressed in black and some holding prayer beads.

“He was like a friend. He was the type of person who would come to share snacks with you when you were working in the back office,” said Nanae Shimayama, 34, an events planner who had collaborated with Ito.

Ito, 61, was an outspoken pacifist born just weeks after a US nuclear bomb devastated his home city.

Police say gangster Tetsuya Shiroo fired twice at Ito outside his campaign office near the central train station Tuesday evening.

Told that the mayor had died of his wounds, Shiroo responded simply, “Yeah, I thought he’d die,” according to a police officer.

“He is responding to questions in the investigation calmly and does not come off as disturbed,” said Hideaki Hasegawa, deputy chief of the city police.

Shiroo belonged to a local group affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest criminal syndicate with some 40,000 members nationwide and interests in underworld businesses, police said.

After the shooting the head of the local group, the Suishinkai, told police that the group was disbanding, law enforcement officials said.

Police declined to speculate on the announcement, but Hasegawa said Shiroo had not been informed that the group was disbanding.

Shiroo allegedly had grievances with the city authorities after his vehicle was damaged at a construction site four years ago and had obsessively demanded compensation. “We will further investigate his motive, including the traffic accident, the case that the suspect had complained about to the city,” Hasegawa said.

Some news reports said Shiroo had disputes over bidding for public works. The killing has thrown a big question mark over Sunday’s local election, in which Ito, the mayor since 1995, was seen as a shoo-in for re-election.

Yokoo, a 40-year-old who covered the prime minister’s office for a regional newspaper, acknowledged he was unfamiliar with local issues.

He is up against a communist candidate and two other independents. “I believe the people of Nagasaki will understand the sincere sentiment that a son feels for his father,” Yokoo’s wife Yuko, who is Ito’s eldest daughter, told reporters.

Nagasaki, Thursday, AFP