Word: motoshima
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...Shootings are extremely rare in Japan - there were only 53 last year - but it's not the first time in recent memory that political violence has struck Nagasaki, the second Japanese city on which the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb in 1945. In 1990, Itoh's predecessor, Hitoshi Motoshima, was shot by a member of a far-right-wing group after stating that Emperor Hirohito bore responsibility for Japan's actions in World War II. (Hirohito had been exempted from any charges at the Tokyo War Crimes trials, and his guilt - or innocence - remains highly controversial in Japan to this...
...late 1988, as Emperor Hirohito lay dying, Nagasaki Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima broke a widely observed taboo by criticizing the once deified leader. "I experienced military life," said Motoshima in response to a question in the city assembly, "and I believe the Emperor had responsibility for the war." Last week the 67-year-old mayor paid for that statement, very nearly with his life. As Motoshima stepped out of city hall, a gunman shot him in the lung from behind. At week's end the mayor was in stable condition...
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