Japanese See a Threat to Democracy in Shooting of Nagasaki Mayor

Citizens and officials expressed outrage Friday over the attempted assassination of Nagasaki’s mayor by an ultranationalist who said he “couldn’t condone” the mayor’s comments about the late Emperor Hirohito.

About 300 city employees rallied outside City Hall, one day after Hitoshi Motoshima was shot there by a right-wing extremist.

Motoshima had received death threats since he said in December, 1988, that he believed Hirohito, at the time dying of cancer, bore some responsibility for World War II.

“The mayor was shot, but he was not the only target. Democracy is being threatened,” said Yukiyoshi Sato, secretary general of the Nagasaki City Hall Workers Union.

“They’ve caught the assailant, but that’s just the tip of the rightists. They’ll just keep coming back,” Sato said as he sat at the wheel of a van carrying a large banner reading, “Bullets cannot kill democracy.”

Motoshima was shot once in the back, with the bullet slightly damaging his left lung. Doctors said he could leave the hospital in a month.

Police arrested Kazumi Tajiri, an avowed right-wing militant from Tokyo, and searched offices of The Sane Thinkers School, the rightist group to which he belonged, a police official said.

Tajiri, 40, admitted shooting Motoshima and said he “couldn’t condone” Motoshima’s remarks, police told reporters. The 67-year-old mayor also said at the time that Hirohito could have prevented the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, and of Hiroshima three days earlier. The nuclear attack on Nagasaki left at least 70,000 people dead.

The comments infuriated Japan’s small but radical right-wing fringe, who revere the imperial family, and they descended on City Hall in sound trucks demanding “Death to Motoshima.” Police protection was provided until Motoshima asked that it be discontinued last month.

After the shooting, the National Police Agency urged local authorities to increase their vigilance over the nation’s 820 right-wing groups and recommended tighter security for public figures.

At the City Hall rally, Sato said the mayor “risked his own life in fighting to protect freedom of speech and democracy. We declare our resolve to resolutely uphold these principles in the wake of this attempt to suppress them with a pistol.”

Government officials were quick to condemn the attack.

“It cannot be tolerated in the context of freedom and democracy,” said Chief Cabinet Secretary Mayumi Moriyama, the top government spokeswoman.

In an editorial, the daily Asahi Shimbun said such violence “will lead to fascism.”