Gunshots Miss Japan Party Leader
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TOKYO — One of Japan’s top politicians narrowly missed assassination in an incident at first dismissed as a hoax, police said today. Police said they had determined that a young man held after Friday’s incident at a political rally in Ashikaga, north of Tokyo, fired three bullets at the podium.
One of them narrowly missed Shin Kanemaru, the 77-year-old kingmaker of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, they added.
Nobody was hurt in the incident, which was dismissed at first as a hoax attack with a toy gun.
Police said today they had formally arrested the man held at the rally. They identified him as Hiroshi Watanabe, 24, a member of a small right-wing group.
“I thought wind or an insect was passing by me,” Kanemaru told aides, according to Kyodo news agency.
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