Ex-lawmaker Nagata commits suicide in Fukuoka

FUKUOKA, Jan. 4 Kyodo -
Former House of Representatives member Hisayasu Nagata, who resigned as an
opposition parliamentarian in April 2006 after using a fake e-mail message to
grill a ruling party lawmaker, jumped to his death from an apartment building
in an apparent suicide in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, on Saturday.
Nagata, 39, had left a note to his family and an empty 1.8-liter pack of
''shochu'' distilled spirit on a staircase landing between the 10th and 11th
floors of the building, according to local police.
A resident called the police at around 6:30 p.m. Saturday after finding Nagata
collapsed in the apartment's parking lot and his death was confirmed shortly
past 7 p.m. at a hospital where he was taken, the police said.
Nagata had been staying at a hospital in the southwestern Japanese city.
In February 2006, Nagata, who was then a lawmaker of the main opposition
Democratic Party of Japan, claimed on the basis of the e-mail message that
Takafumi Horie, founder of Internet firm Livedoor Co., had ordered a
subordinate to pay 30 million yen to ruling Liberal Democratic Party
heavyweight Tsutomu Takebe's son before the 2005 general election, in which
Horie ran unsuccessfully.
But the message was later found to have been fabricated, and Nagata submitted
his resignation in April 2006 to take responsibility for disrupting
parliamentary business by using the fake message to attack Takebe during a
lower house Budget Committee session.
In Tokyo on Sunday, DPJ President Ichiro Ozawa expressed his condolences over
Nagata's death, telling a press conference it was ''woefully regrettable'' that
a former lawmaker from his party, who was a representative of the people, had
ended up taking his own life.
Nagata attempted to commit suicide in November last year while convalescing in
Munakata, Fukuoka Prefecture.
A University of Tokyo graduate and former Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Nagata
had been elected to the lower house three times since 2000.
==Kyodo