Iccho Itoh

In this Japanese name, the family name is Itoh.

Iccho Itoh
伊藤 一長
Mayor of Nagasaki
In office May 1, 1995 – April 18, 2007
Preceded by	Hitoshi Motoshima
Succeeded by	Tomihisa Taue
Personal details
Born	(1945-08-23)August 23, 1945 Nagato, Yamaguchi, Japan
Died	Nagasaki, Japan
Political party	Liberal Democratic Party
Alma mater	Waseda University

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. 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. Itoh was taken to the Nagasaki University Hospital, where he died early the next morning due to loss of blood. 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. 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." There are also rumours that it was related to city construction projects. The Nagasaki District Court sentenced Shiroo to death on May 26, 2008, but the Fukuoka High Court revoked the death sentence.

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. Taue was elected.

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.

Itoh's name was romanized as Itcho Ito by Mainichi Shimbun, Reuters, and Al-Jazeera. CNN used the Iccho Ito romanization. The Asahi Shimbun used Iccho Itoh. Itoh spelled his name as Iccho Itoh in his English letter to George W. Bush.

External links

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