Japanese editorial excerpts -3-

TOKYO, May 21 Kyodo

Selected editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

SHOOTING IN NAGAKUTE (IHT/Asahi as translated from the Japanese-language Asahi Shimbun's editorial published May 20)

The hostage drama that left one police officer dead and three others injured highlights the menace that guns pose to Japanese society. A former gangster held his ex-wife hostage while he holed himself up in his home in Nagakute, Aichi Prefecture. During the ordeal, he even shot his eldest son and second daughter.

The incident flared in a quiet neighborhood in a Nagoya suburb that hosted the Expo 2005 Aichi two years ago. A junior high school and a university are located nearby.

The gunman, Hisato Obayashi, shouted, ''I have got 100 bullets,'' before firing on police. While the police were certainly caught off-guard, there were alarming portents of a tragedy in the making.

Did police respond appropriately to the early warning signs? Could they have discovered the gun hidden at his home if they had intervened in a domestic dispute when approached by his family? It's a shame that we have to ask such questions.

The death of the young police officer, Kazuho Hayashi, is tragic. The first police officer to arrive at the scene was shot at the entrance to the home. Then, during an attempt to rescue him, Hayashi, who was a member of a special assault team (SAT), was shot and killed.

Police must examine the rescue operation afresh to determine whether the SAT members were properly equipped with bulletproof gear and shields. Also, the police need to look at how the members were positioned. It is an important duty of police management to protect the lives of their front line officers.

The Nagakute siege unfolded last Thursday, exactly one month to the day since former Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh was gunned down during his election campaign. On the same day, a meeting was held in Nagasaki by people calling for the banishment of violence.

In another shooting incident in April, a man holed himself up in a public apartment in Machida, Tokyo, and fired shots at police.

The National Police Agency was instructing prefectural police departments nationwide to tighten their crackdowns on crime organizations and illegal firearms just before the Nagakute siege.

All three recent gun crimes were carried out by people with yakuza connections. In fact, crime syndicates are responsible for about 70 percent of all gun crimes in this nation. Police efforts to reduce gun crimes, therefore, should focus on these groups. Law enforcement authorities, however, confiscated only 458 guns last year, one quarter of the figure for 1995.

Most of these guns were smuggled into Japan. Police need to work more closely with other law-enforcement organizations like the Japan Coast Guard and custom offices to prevent gun smuggling and seize hidden guns.

We must not wait until shootings have become an everyday occurrence. This situation sorely tests the ability of Japanese police to deal with a serious threat to public safety.

(May 21)

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