A masked assailant pumped four bullets Thursday into Japan's top police official, the man heading the investigation of the deadly nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway.
The early-morning ambush, which left National Police Agency chief Takaji Kunimatsu hospitalized in serious condition, heightened fears of an escalating wave of violence targeting police and others.The March 20 subway attack, which killed 10 people and sickened more than 5,500, was aimed at trains bound for the station just next to the headquarters of the national and city police.
Shortly after the shooting, an anonymous caller telephoned several Japanese news organizations saying the chief of Tokyo Metropolitan Police would be the next target unless police stop raiding a doomsday sect suspected in the subway attack.
A spokesman for the Asahi television network said the caller, a man who refused to identify himself, said the city police chief "would be injured" unless the cult investigation stopped.
Later, a caller to the NTV network said the cult was responsible for the shooting. But the caller did not say whether he was affiliated with the sect.
Tokyo police would not say how seriously they were taking the calls. The cult Aum Shinri Kyo, or Supreme Truth, said it had nothing to do with them, or the shooting.
It has maintained innocence all along in the subway attack, despite the discovery of a huge cache of chemicals that could be used to make sarin, the nerve gas in the attack.
The past 10 days have shaken Japan to its core, and the brazen shooting was the latest blow. Guns are strictly banned in Japan, and attacks on police are rare.
Although Kunimatsu previously held a post that made him a central figure in crackdowns on organized crime, gangsters here are not known for shooting senior government officials.
"This is an attack on our authority," said Hiromu Nonaka, a Cabinet member who heads the government's National Public Safety Commission.