Yoshihara wasn’t the one killed (his wife was stabbed but is still alive).
Popons has said in the Wikipedia notes that he mistakenly annotated the wrong person as being killed.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%88%A9%E7%94%A8%E8%80%85%E2%80%90%E4%BC%9A%E8%A9%B1:Popons

Putting the machinations of the masturbatory Mainichi and their efforts to escape public mastication to one side – (I enjoyed writing that!)

So there are at least 64 million suspects? Not including the relatives of those who have been affected by the pension scandal.

It must surely be the opinion of the perpetrator of these killings that they are doing a public service. The government failed to sufficiently punish those overseeing the pension program and the perpetrator is ‘balancing the books’ so to say.

For too long there has been a disparity in the letter of the law in Japan. Members of the public are prosecuted to the full extent of the law, while those in positions of ‘authority’ escape with slapped wrists and a good telling-off. How many politicians have gone to prison in Japan? I’ve only found:
– (sorry folks, it’s a JapanTimes link.) Prison terms for politicians happen from time-to-time in the US, UK and many other countries – but it’s not a regular occurrence in Japan – please feel free to find elected politicians who have gone to prison.

There is a beyond the normal ‘One law for us and one for them’ in Japan. Sure, rich and powerful people escape justice every day in other countries – but SOME rich and powerful people fail to escape justice and go to jail. The ‘Livedoor’ incident, Horie – maybe his persistent denials led to the 2.5 year jail sentence.

and more here

Horie is going to the supreme court to appeal, so he may still escape. Aside from the link I supplied above relating to the politician, Joji Yamamoto, the number of rich and powerful escapees from Japanese justice far outweigh those that have paid the price.

There is a current case in the press of a top Tokyo cop who was driving drunk, hit a car, left the scene of the accident, was pursued, dumped his car, chased on foot and caught smelling of alcohol. Only a few days ago he was regarded as a responsible officer – advising the public “Don’t drink and drive” – and we believed him! What kind of role model is he? To date, all that has happened is that he has been dismissed from the police force… I’ll be following developments in this story.

Those in positions of responsibility are not above the law. In fact, those in positions of authority who break the law should be made example of, as a warning to others in authority who may be tempted to shirk their duty and line their pockets.

These recent killings, unfortunate as they are, may also serve as a warning to other incompetents in successive inept Japanese governments and a resident bureaucracy that the public can only take so much of ‘One law for us and one for them’, before taking the law into their own hands.

This is not terrorism, this is the work of someone who regards themselves as a vigilante.

This story has it all: an error that should not have made it past the most rudimentary fact checking, baseless accusations thrown toward “netizens”, removal of the article followed by flimsy apologies; are they purposedly trying to troll 2ch or something? Someone should tell them it can be done easily without compromising their credibility.

And of course the guy who delivered timely and accurate information on this matter (Popons) is the one who ends up apologizing. There isn’t enough eye-rolling in the world to react to this.

They ran an article in the morning edition, claiming that the attacks were declared beforehand on Wikipedia, speculating that it was yet another case of netizens announcing crimes on the Net.
Their reason was that the name of the assassinated minister was annotated as being assassinated on the wikipedia, and the timestamp was apparently before the actual crime. They even claimed police were investigating connections.

Except there’s one catch.

The Wikipedia article edit timestamp was in GMT, not JST (GMT +9:00).
The edit was about 3 hours after the crime, but Mainichi assumed it was 6 hours *before* the stabbing, and jumped the gun.

As soon as it was published on the web, 2channelrs caught on to the flub and the big lulz started, and Mainichi pulled the web article but couldn’t stop the presses, and this wound up on the morning edition.
web screencap
article scan

They even plastered the name of the poor wikipedia editor, “Popons” in huge font on the Osaka edition.
article photo

The morning TV shows, whose “journalism” consists of reading and summarizing the newspaper for the viewers didn’t bother to check their facts as well and were caught with their pants down.

Since then, Popons has apologized on the Wikipedia notes for being the cause of such confusion.
Mainichi featured a tiny “apology” on an obscure place on their site around noon.
Later on, they placed a correction their evening edition but not before blaming Popons for making the confusing entry.