Iccho Itoh

Iccho Itoh (伊藤 一長, Itō Itchō, August 23, 1945 – April 18, 2007), born Kazunaga Itō (伊藤 一長, Itō Kazunaga), was the mayor of the Japanese city of Nagasaki; he first took office in 1995. He was a graduate from Waseda University, and majored in political science.

Career

He served as a member of the city assembly and later the prefectural assembly before he was elected as the mayor.^[2] As the mayor of the city where an atomic bomb was dropped just two weeks before his birth, he made a speech at the International Court of Justice in the Hague on November 7, 1995 and stressed that the use of nuclear weapons is a violation of international law.

Assassination

On April 17, 2007, while campaigning for re-election for his fourth term, he was shot twice in the back at point-blank range in front of his campaign office outside the Nagasaki train station.^[2] Itoh was taken to the Nagasaki University Hospital, where he died early the next morning due to loss of blood.^[3] Police arrested Tetsuya Shiroo on suspicion of the murder after he was detained by Itoh's entourage following the shooting. Shiroo was a senior member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, an organized crime group.^[2] As for the motive, "Shiroo reportedly clashed with Nagasaki city officials in 2003 after his car was damaged when he drove into a hole at the construction site."^[4] There are also rumours that it was related to city construction projects.^[5] The Nagasaki District Court sentenced Shiroo to death on May 26, 2008,^[6] but the Fukuoka High Court revoked the death sentence.^[7]

A new mayoral election was held on April 22, 2007. Makoto Yokoo (橫尾 誠, Yokoo Makoto), Itoh's son-in-law, and Tomihisa Taue (田上 富久, Taue Tomihisa), a city official, filed for candidacy.^[8] Taue was elected.^[9]

Itoh was the second mayor of Nagasaki to be shot; his immediate predecessor Hitoshi Motoshima (本島 等, Motoshima Hitoshi) was shot in 1990, but survived.

Name

His first name was originally pronounced Kazunaga with kun-yomi, but he elected to use more euphonious on-yomi form of Itchō for his mayoralty.^[10]

Itoh's name was romanized as Itcho Ito by Mainichi Shimbun,^[11] Reuters,^[3] and Al-Jazeera.^[12] CNN used the Iccho Ito romanization.^[13] The Asahi Shimbun used Iccho Itoh.^[14] Itoh spelled his name as Iccho Itoh in his English letter to George W. Bush.^[15]

References

External links

• Japan PM denounces mayor's death BBC, April 18, 2007
• Reuters article