Shintaro Ishihara
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Image:Ishihara Shintaro.png Image:Ishihara2.jpg Shintaro Ishihara (石原 慎太郎 Ishihara Shintarō; born September 30, 1932), author, outspoken and controversial Japanese nationalist, populist, and current governor of Tokyo, was born in Hyogo Prefecture in Japan. 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.
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Early Life
After winning the Akutagawa Prize (Japan's most prestigious literary prize) when he was a 23-year-old college student, he and his now deceased brother Yujiro Ishihara, who was Japan's most popular movie star, became the center of a youth-oriented cult. Ishihara has stayed in the public limelight since then.
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.
Political career
He entered politics in 1965 via the long-dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), but was often critical of it. 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.
In 1989, Ishihara came to the attention of the West through his book, The Japan That Can Say No, co-authored with then-Sony chairman Akio Morita. The book called on his fellow countrymen to stand up to the United States. He dropped out of national politics in 1995, but remains a national political figure.
Governor of Tokyo
In 1999, he ran on an independent platform and was elected governor of Tokyo. Since then he has undertaken a number of bold and popular moves at the metropolitan government level, such as imposing a new tax on banks' gross profits (rather than net profits), a new hotel tax on occupancy, and holding up a bottle of diesel soot as he restricted the operation of diesel-powered vehicles.
In 2005 Ishihara also declared that Tokyo would bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics and poured cold water on the rival Fukuoka bid.
Allegations of Racism and Sexism
He has also generated controversy over support for Japanese nationalism and several displays of racism, historical revisionism and sexism.
He has made statements referring to Tokyo-based Chinese and Koreans as sangokujin (三国人), an old derogatory term literally meaning "third country person". Ishihara also declared in a 1995 Playboy interview that the Nanjing Massacre "never happened" and was a "Chinese creation."
In November 1999 Ishihara told the superintendent general of the Metropolitan Police Department, Takeshi Noda, in the event of a major natural disaster, "There is a possibility that foreigners who reside illegally will do something out of hand." At the time Japan Traveler published an article saying that the governor needed a bit of a history lesson as it was foreigners who were attacked by Japanese mobs, which included elements of the police and Imperial Army during the last major earthquake to hit the Kanto area in 1923. By some estimates as many as 6,000 people (mostly ethnic Koreans and some Chinese) were murdered after rumors spread that foreigners were poisoning wells and starting fires.
He has also made discriminatory remarks against women, including saying in an interview with Shukan Josei that old women without reproductive functions are useless.
In 2005 he was sued by language schools for saying during an inauguration of a university building in 2004 that French is unqualified as an international language, because it is "a language in which nobody can count." He subsequently refuted comments that he did not respect French culture, professing his love of French literature on Japanese TV news [1].
See also
External links
Categories: 1932 births | Japanese writers | Japanese politicians | Prospect - Foreign Policy Top 100 Public Intellectuals
