Philip Patrick Philip Patrick

A day of violence in Tokyo

Are politicians safe?

The vehicle crashed into a barricade near the prime minister's office (Getty Images)

It has been an alarming day in Tokyo as political terror returned to the streets of the capital. A man was arrested for throwing Molotov cocktails at the headquarters of the ruling party Jiminto (LDP) in the centre of the city. The bombs hit a police vehicle and the resultant fire was soon extinguished.

Today’s attack marks the third time homemade weapons were employed

The man who threw the Molotovs, identified as 49-year-old Atsunobu Usuda from Saitama, near Tokyo, then tried to drive his car into the grounds of the prime minister’s office, but he couldn’t get through the metal barrier. After that he tried to throw a smoke bomb at police. Then he was arrested. The man’s wrecked van was found to contain 10 unused firebombs. Mercifully no one was hurt in any of this mayhem.

Usuda’s motivations are not yet known, but one rumour is that he is a member of an anti-nuclear protest group. Prime Minister Ishiba has recently announced that nuclear power, which he had once disavowed, would be a part of Japan’s energy mix.

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