The Tokyo District Court sentenced a former gangster to six years in prison Thursday and his adopted son to four years for stabbing the son of writer Atsushi Mizoguchi in January, following the publication of an article about the major underworld syndicate Yamaguchi-gumi.
Takao Ueno, 54, and Hiroshi Ueno, 43, stabbed Mizoguchi's 34-year-old son in the right thigh with a scissors on Jan. 8 on a street in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, causing a wound that took two weeks to heal, according to the court.
Judge Satomi Matsubara of the court's Hachioji branch said the defendants "attempted to violate acts of speech and expression through the cowardly means of attacking a relative. It had a major impact on society."
The prosecution told the court that a member of a group associated with Yamaguchi-gumi asked Takao Ueno to hurt Mizoguchi's son because the writer had criticized the boss of the syndicate in an article published in December.
Mizoguchi has written many books about yakuza and was severely wounded in a 1990 attack after the publication of a book about Yamaguchi-gumi. The crime remains unsolved.