The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on Monday granted a scholarship to the daughter of a Japanese newspaper reporter who was shot dead in 1987.

The murder of Asahi Shimbun reporter Tomohiro Kojiri has not officially been solved and the 15-year statute of limitations on the case has expired, though a suspected rightwing group critical of the daily has claimed responsibility.

Miki Kojiri, 19, a student majoring in law at a university in the Kansai area, has been selected as the recipient of the 2004 FCCJ Swadesh DeRoy Scholarship, worth 300,000 yen.

Respecting the wishes of Kojiri and her mother, the club's scholarship committee agreed to withhold their current address and the name of her university.

Seiichi Karino of the daily's Osaka office attended a reception held at the club in Tokyo on behalf of Kojiri, delivering her letter of gratitude.

"I would like to express my sincere gratitude to you for remembering my father even after the statute of limitations expired on the criminal act," Kojiri said in the letter.

She also said her father's death had led her to become interested in criminology, and to study the topic.

"I have come to think hard why he died and what was behind the incident," she remarked.

Tomohiro Kojiri died in May 1987, when a masked man fired a shotgun at the Asahi's Hanshin Bureau in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture.

A group known as Sekihotai claimed responsibility after the attack, describing itself as a volunteer army championing the independence of the Japanese race.