Shintaro Ishihara

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Shintaro Ishihara

Shintaro Ishihara (石原慎太郎, Ishihara Shintarō^?, born September 30, 1932) is the governor of Tokyo, Japan, and one of Japan's most widely known nationalist and populist politicians. Before entering politics, he was famous as an author.

1 Background
2 Political views
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Background

[edit] Early life and artistic career

Ishihara was born in Kobe, grew up in Zushi, and attended Hitotsubashi University, where he graduated in 1956. Just two months before graduation, he won the Akutagawa Prize (Japan's most prestigious literary prize) for the novel Seasons in the Sun (太陽の季節, Taiyō no kisetsu^?)^{[citation needed]}. Ishihara's younger brother Yujiro Ishihara played the lead role in the screen adaptation of the novel, and the two soon became the center of a youth-oriented cult.^[1] (Yujiro Ishihara died in 1987.)

In the early 1960s, he concentrated on writing, including plays, novels, and a musical version of Treasure Island. He was involved in directing, ran a theater company, traveled to the North Pole, raced his own yacht, and crossed South America on a motorcycle. From 1967 to 1968, he covered the Vietnam War as a reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun.

One of his later novels, Lost Country (1982), speculated about Japan under the control of the Soviet Union. ^[2]

[edit] Legislative career

In 1968, Ishihara ran as a candidate on the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) national slate for the House of Councillors. He placed first on the LDP list with an unprecedented 3 million votes.^{[citation needed]} After four years in the upper house, Ishihara ran for the House of Representatives representing the second district of Tokyo, and again won election.

As a Diet member, Ishihara was often critical of the LDP.^{[citation needed]} In 1973, he joined with thirty other LDP lawmakers in the anti-communist Seirankai or "Blue Storm Group"; the group gained notoriety in the media for sealing a pledge of unity in their own blood.^[1]

Ishihara ran for Governor of Tokyo in 1975 but lost to the popular Socialist incumbent Ryokichi Minobe. He returned to the House of Representatives afterward, and worked his way up the party's internal ladder, serving as Director-General of the Environment Agency under Takeo Fukuda (1976) and Minister of Transport under Noboru Takeshita (1989). During the 1980s, Ishihara was a highly visible and popular LDP figure, but unable to win enough internal support to form a true faction and move up the national political ladder.^[3]

In 1989, shortly after losing a highly contested race for the party presidency, Ishihara came to the attention of the West through his book, The Japan That Can Say No (「NO」と言える日本, "No" to ieru Nippon^?), co-authored with then-Sony chairman Akio Morita. The book called on his fellow countrymen to stand up to the United States.

Ishihara dropped out of national politics in 1995, ending a 25-year career in the Diet. However, in 1999, he ran on an independent platform and was elected governor of Tokyo.

[edit] Family

Ishihara is married to Noriko Ishihara and has four sons. Members of the House of Representatives Nobuteru Ishihara and Hirotaka Ishihara are his eldest and third sons; actor and weatherman Yoshizumi Ishihara is his second son. Nationally famous deceased actor Yujiro Ishihara was his younger brother.

[edit] Political views

Ishihara (right) in a typical election poster pose with local lawmaker Ichiro Akita (left).

Ishihara is generally described as one of Japan's most prominent "right-wing" politicians. He has also generated controversy due to his support for Japanese nationalism, frequent visits to Yasukuni Jinjya and several displays of alleged racism, historical revisionism and sexism. He sometimes implied that he had little affection for Chinese and Koreans. He apparently declares that he is attached to Taiwan (Republic of China) in a possible move to irritate mainland China regarding the Chinese claim of sovereignty over the Taiwanese territory. He has also generated heat from PETA for the reduction of the 37,000 crow population throughout Tokyo.^[4]

[edit] Policies as governor

Among Ishihara's moves as governor, he:

Cut metropolitan spending projects, including plans for a new Toei Subway line, and proposed the sale or leasing out of many metropolitan facilities. ^[2]
Imposed a new tax on banks' gross profits (rather than net profits). ^[5]
Imposed a new hotel tax based on occupancy. ^{[citation needed]}
Imposed restrictions on the operation of diesel-powered vehicles, following a highly publicized event where he held up a bottle of diesel soot before cameras and reporters. ^[6]
Proposed opening casinos in the Odaiba district. ^[2]
Declared in 2005 that Tokyo would bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, which discouraged a bid by Fukuoka. ^[7]

[edit] Foreign relations

Ishihara has often been critical of Japan's foreign policy as being non-assertive. Regarding Japan's relationship with the US, he stated that "The country I dislike most in terms of U.S.-Japan ties is Japan, because it's a country that can't assert itself." ^[3]

Ishihara has also long been critical of the PRC government. He invited the Dalai Lama and Taiwanese president Lee Teng-hui to Tokyo in an effort to agitate the government of the People's Republic of China.^[2]

Ishihara is deeply interested in the North Korean abduction issue, and is calling for economic sanctions against North Korea.^[8]

[edit] Alleged racism

In the 1983 general election, Ishihara's first public secretary (Toshiki Kurihara) violated the public office election law by pasting 5000 black seals which read "Shokei Arai came from North Korea" on election posters of rival candidate Shokei Arai.^{[citation needed]} Arai and Ishihara belonged to same party (LDP) and both were competing for the same election district (Tokyo-2). Kurihara was soon arrested by the police, but Ishihara did not acknowledge any connection with this violation, and did not apologize to Arai. ^{[citation needed]}

On April 9, 2000, in a speech before an SDF group, Ishihara publicly speculated that in the event a natural disaster struck the Tokyo area, foreigners would be likely to cause civil disorder, and stated that illegal immigrants in the Tokyo area were a major cause of crime. He referred to these immigrants as sangokujin (三国人), a term commonly viewed as derogatory.^[2] Regarding this statement, Ishihara later said:

I referred to the "many sangokujin who entered Japan illegally." I thought some people would not know that word so I paraphrased it and used gaikokujin, or foreigners. But it was a newspaper holiday so the news agencies consciously picked up the sangokujin part, causing the problem.

... After World War II, when Japan lost, the Chinese of Taiwanese origin and people from the Korean Peninsula persecuted, robbed and sometimes beat up Japanese. It's at that time the word was used, so it was not derogatory. Rather we were afraid of them.

... There's no need for an apology. I was surprised that there was a big reaction to my speech. In order not to cause any misunderstanding, I decided I will no longer use that word. It is regrettable that the word was interpreted in the way it was. ^[3]

Much of the criticism of this statement involved the historical significance of the term: sangokujin historically referred to ethnic Chinese and Koreans, working in Japan, many of whom were actually attacked by mobs of Japanese people following the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923.^[2]

Ishihara has made several other statements viewed as derogatory to non-Japanese. For instance, in a highly publicized statement at the Tokyo International Anime Fair on March 25, 2006, he said: "I hate Mickey Mouse. He has nothing like the unique sensibility that Japan has. The Japanese are inherently skilled at visual expression and detailed work."^[9]

[edit] Other controversial statements

Ishihara stated in a 1995 Playboy interview that the Nanjing Massacre "never happened" and was a "Chinese creation." ^{[citation needed]}

Ishihara stated in a 2001 interview with women's magazine Shukan Josei that he subscribed to a theory that "old women who live after they have lost their reproductive function are useless and are committing a sin," adding that he "couldn't say this as a politician." He was criticized in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly for these comments, but responded that the criticism was driven by "tyrant" "old women."^[10]

During an inauguration of a university building in 2004, Ishihara stated that French is unqualified as an international language because it is "a language in which nobody can count," referring to the counting system in French, which he believed to be based on units of twenty rather than ten (as is the case in Japanese and English). The statement led to a lawsuit from several language schools in 2005. Ishihara subsequently responded to comments that he did not disrespect French culture by professing his love of French literature on Japanese TV news. ^[11]