A rightwing activist was sentenced to 10 months in prison Friday for throwing a Molotov cocktail at Nikkei Inc.'s Tokyo headquarters last July as a protest over a report in business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun on the late Emperor Hirohito's views on Yasukuni Shrine.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Motohide Hiraoka, 42, carried out the attack because he was angered by the July 20 report that the late monarch was displeased with Yasukuni's enshrinement of wartime Japanese leaders convicted as Class-A war criminals, the Tokyo District Court said.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>'The crime was aimed at suppressing the freedom of speech and the press &#8212; the bedrock of a democratic society &#8212; by terrorism,' presiding Judge Hideyuki Suzuki said. 'It should be harshly reproved because the cowering effect it could have on the media and the general public cannot be ignored.'</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>The Nihon Keizai Shimbun report, carried as the top news in its morning edition, said Emperor Hirohito expressed strong displeasure in 1988 over Yasukuni Shrine's inclusion in the late 1970s of Class-A war criminals on the list of people honored there, citing a memorandum by a former Imperial Household Agency grand steward.</PARAGRAPH> <PARAGRAPH>Hiraoka, a sanitation worker, saw the report as an attempt to discourage public figures' visits to the shrine and decided he 'had no choice but to protest with violent direct action –

the daily regret (would) its attitude," the court said.

In the early hours of July 21 last year, Hiraoka threw a wine bottle containing gasoline — but without setting it alight — at the daily's side door.