TOKYO - A JAPANESE court sentenced a gangster to death on Monday for gunning down the mayor of Nagasaki in a rare assassination that led the country to tighten controls on guns.

Tetsuya Shiroo, 60, who was associated with Japan's largest criminal syndicate, was convicted of shooting Mayor Iccho Ito as he campaigned for re-election in April last year.

Shiroo's 'crime was premeditated with a strong intention of murder. Shiroo made the decision to assassinate him immediately after he expressed his candidacy,' Judge Yoshimichi Matsuo said, as quoted by Jiji Press.

Shiroo had previously had a dispute with the city administration over compensation for a traffic accident.

The accused 'tried to carry out his grudge by thwarting the former mayor's campaign for a fourth term. He tried to flaunt his power by committing the act,' Matsuo added.

Shiroo said during the trial that he was ready to be hanged, according to Jiji Press.

'I would like to sincerely receive the ultimate punishment,' he was quoted as saying.

A court official confirmed that the death sentence was handed down.

Ito was an outspoken pacifist born just weeks after Nagasaki's best-known event - the world's second and last atomic attack.

His assassination led Japan, which already had strict gun control laws, to raise punishments for illegal possession of firearms.

Japan is the only major industrial nation other than the United States to administer capital punishment, but it is rare for courts to give a death sentence to people who have killed only one person.

Prosecutors called for the death penalty, saying that the assassination was 'a very atrocious act, an act of terrorism aimed at an election.'

Shiroo 'planned to prevent a re-election and obstructed the right to have an election in a way that has no precedent in the criminal history of our country,' said a closing statement read out by a prosecutor.

Japan has one of the world's lowest crime rates. Most gun violence is linked to gangs, which have vast interests in nightlife and other underworld businesses.

The country has seen several attacks on politicians in recent years. In 2002, an ultra-nationalist stabbed to death Koki Ishii, an opposition lawmaker known for his aggressive investigations of corruption. -- AFP