Assassins!

Every now and again I run into something that reminds me just how much Japan still resembles a third world country. Sometimes it's the little rickshaws. Sometimes its opinions on homosexuality. Sometimes it's political assassinations.

Take for instance the shooting of Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito Tuesday evening.

Ito, who was campaigning for Sunday's mayoral election, was shot twice in the back at about 7:52 p.m. by a man police identified as Tetsuya Shiroo, 59.

Shiroo is second in command of the local gang Suishin-kai, which is affiliated with the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, the nation's largest criminal syndicate with 40,000 members, police said. (The Japan Times)

That the gangsters are accepted as a natural part of Japanese society is tautological. But the rhetoric usually goes that Japanese gangsters are more like businessmen, with a couple shady cards up their sleeves. More and more it's looking like this whole pre-meditated affair has more to do with extremist right-wing politics than it does with "land deals, construction work and other development projects".

It is not the first time a mayor has been shot in Nagasaki. Hitoshi Motoshima was shot and seriously injured in January 1990 by a rightwing extremist after he refused to retract remarks that Emperor Hirohito, known posthumously as Showa, was partially responsible for World War II.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima are the only two cities ever hit by nuclear weapons. Their mayors have traditionally been pacifists who have appealed for world peace.

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The National Police Agency said in its annual report last year that the country's estimated 10,000 hardcore rightists have become increasingly violent in recent years.