But Monday's shootout, which erupted after 15 yakuza members went to the offices of a right-wing organization to collect debts, served as a reminder to more sober observers that guns play a role in Japan's rising rate of violent crime. Although Japan has some of the developed world's most stringent gun restrictions, the number of serious crimes committed with handguns here last year was the highest since the National Police Agency began keeping such statistics more than a decade ago. And the rate of gun crimes in the first six months of 2000 promises to exceed that record. But the situation is changing. Japan takes comfort that its incidence of violent crime is still minuscule compared with the United States.
Guns remain a small factor in the violence.
Japanese police say 158 felonies were committed with handguns here in 1998, compared to 364,776 felonies with firearms in the United States, according to the latest FBI figures available. Most gun crimes here involve yakuza members, who flout the police and laws to carry firearms as a badge of their profession. But increasingly, guns are getting into the hands of the general public, police say. He retired, still angry, and took a trip to Singapore, Hong Kong and the United States, apparently smuggling two revolvers back into Japan. Kubo took them to Ohashi's house, shot the man's wife at the door and Ohashi in the bathroom, then took his own life.