TOKYO — Japanese police were trying to determine what may have motivated a high-ranking Nagasaki gangster suspected of shooting the city's mayor at close range Tuesday, fatally wounding the politician and conjuring dark memories of political violence in Japan.
Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito died early today of blood loss and heart failure about six hours after being struck twice in the back by shots fired on a busy sidewalk in front of a major Nagasaki train station. The mayor had just stepped out of a van after a day of campaigning in the southwestern Japanese city perhaps best-known as the second city devastated by an American atomic bomb in 1945.
He was running for a fourth four-year term in municipal elections scheduled for Sunday.
Police identified the suspect as Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, described as the acting chairman of the Suishin-kai, a local gang affiliated with the national Yamaguchi-gumi crime syndicate.
Police raided Shiroo's home this morning in search of a motive. They are focusing on a dispute Shiroo had with Nagasaki city authorities over damage to his Mercedes when he drove it into a hole caused by road construction in 2003.
City officials said he had visited their offices more than 30 times in an attempt to get compensation after the city had sided with the construction firm in rejecting his damage claims.
But there were also reports that Shiroo's Suishin-kai was unhappy over losing what it believed to be its share of city construction contracts.
Witnesses said Shiroo put up little resistance as he was tackled by members of the mayor's staff, who pinned him to the ground until police officers arrived and bundled him into an unmarked police car.
Shiroo was reported to have held the gun aloft in his right hand after the shooting, and police said he confessed to the killing almost immediately.
Acknowledging guilt and providing police with the weapon is a tradition in the culture of Japanese criminal gangs, which operate in a semi-open fashion that includes maintaining offices and informal links to police and politicians. But the \o7yakuza\f7, as they are called in Japan, have generally frowned on the killing of public officials and on violence that intrudes into civilian life.
Observers say that \o7yakuza \f7violence is increasingly creeping into public spaces, as the syndicates have come under greater financial and police pressure in recent years and gangs have been forced to recruit more "part-time" members.
