Two suspected rightists caught in attack on Japan's leading

Two suspected rightists caught in attack on Japan's leading newspaper

TOKYO (AFP): Two men, apparently members of a rightist group, were arrested six hours after holing up with their hostages at the headquarters of the influential Asahi newspaper yesterday.

The intruders, who claimed to be members of a militant rightist group, surrendered to police six hours after storming into a boardroom on the 15th floor of the building, wielding a gun and a sword, a police spokesman said.

The two hostages, a public relations director and a senior secretary, were released unhurt, the spokesman said.

Police said the intruders belonged to Taihikai, or Grand Sorrow Group, one of dozens of small rightist groups, co-founded in 1975 by the late rightist orator Shusuke Nomura.

In the same boardroom, Nomura committed suicide with a gun during a meeting with newspaper executives in protest against an Asahi magazine caricature which ridiculed his political group.

The two men burst into the building in downtown Tokyo at around 1:30 p.m. (0430 GMT) scattering handbills. Police and Asahi spokesmen could not confirm eyewitness accounts that one of them shot a pistol toward an elevator door.

The handbills blamed the mass media for "poisoning the society," singling out Asahi and its television affiliate TV Asahi as the most wicked.

"The Japanese media must take responsibility for Japan's post- war system," read the handbills, which were signed by Shinichi Furusawa and Kuniyasu Uchiyama who were presumed to be the intruders.

There were nine Asahi executives on the 15th floor when the two men arrived threatening guardsmen with a gun, Asahi spokesman Hiroaki Yamamoto said.

During the hostage drama, the intruders also unfurled an illegible banner from the boardroom windows.

Four black sound trucks, covered with right-wing slogans, were seen in front of the building across the street from Tokyo's central fish market, but they were later forced to move by police.

Police anti-terrorist and bomb squads were deployed at the building amid unconfirmed reports that the intruders were carrying a cylindrical object which could contain dynamite.

Taihikai is one of the most militant among Japan's 980 rightist organizations which have a combined membership of some 120,000, according to police statistics. Of the total, 23,000 are known to be active.

In general, they advocate a stronger emperor's system with nationalistic fervor and are opposed to communism. In recent years, some of them have also turned on corrupt politicians and corporations.

In May last year, a member of Taihikai ripped up the screen at a Tokyo cinema during the screening of a movie which he said was contemptuous of Japan's rising-sun national flag.

Two members of another rightist group were arrested earlier this year for shooting into the house of a publisher whose magazine ran a series of articles critical of Emperor Akihito's household.