From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- In this Japanese name, the family name is Itoh.
Iccho Itoh or Itchō Itō or
Icchō Itō (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 is 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]. 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
Nagato, Japan
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