Nationalist stabs self outside Japan parliament
(AFP) – 8 hours ago
TOKYO — A Japanese right-wing nationalist stabbed himself in the stomach Monday outside the parliament building in an apparent suicide attempt by ritual seppuku disembowelment, police said.
The 39-year-old man, who survived, had demanded that lawmakers visit Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni war shrine, which has been avoided by most elected politicians in recent years, a local broadcaster reported.
"He carried a warning letter against parliament members," a Tokyo police spokesman said, adding that the man had said he was a member of a right-wing nationalist group.
The man stabbed himself in the stomach with a short Japanese sword with a blade about 20 centimetres (eight inches) long, police said. Television images showed bloody clothes and a wooden sheath on the ground.
Japan's right-wing activists demand that the prime minister and cabinet members as well as Emperor Akihito visit the shrine, which honours some 2.5 million Japanese war dead as well as 14 convicted war criminals.
Most politicians have avoided the site after politicians' past pilgrimages to the shrine, seen as a symbol of its past militarism, angered China, the two Koreas and other Asian neighbours.
Last Saturday, the 64th anniversary of Japan's 1945 defeat in World War II, only one cabinet member, Consumer Affairs Minister Seiko Noda, went to the site while Prime Minister Taro Aso and others stayed away.
Emperor Akihito has never visited the shrine.
Seppuku is a form of ritualistic suicide once practiced by samurai warriors.