A man almost completely lopped off his left hand with a machete Tuesday in front of the Diet, apparently to protest Japan's policy toward North Korea, police said.

The 54-year-old man approached the front gates of the building by car, stepped out, silently placed his left hand against the hood of the vehicle and swung the 40-cm blade down across his left wrist, Tokyo police official Hideyuki Yoshioka said.

The man, who identified himself as a member of a rightwing organization, then mumbled a few words about the way Tokyo has dealt with Pyongyang's abductions of Japanese in the 1970s and 80s. Police seized the machete and rushed him to a hospital.

The man "appeared to be in a lot of pain and his hand was hanging by a piece of skin," Yoshioka said.