Iccho Itoh


Iccho Itoh, born Kazunaga Itō, 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, Itoh's son-in-law, and Tomihisa Taue, a city official, filed for candidacy. Taue was elected.
Itoh was the second mayor of Nagasaki to be shot; his immediate predecessor Hitoshi Motoshima 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.