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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Background
Early life
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 Template:Nihongo. 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. (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.
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. 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. 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.
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 often said to be a factional leader within the LDP.
In 1989, shortly after losing a highly contested race for the party presidency, Ishihara came to the attention of the West through his book, Template:Nihongo, 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.
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, pouring cold water on a bid by Fukuoka.
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 responded to comments that he did not respect French culture by professing his love of French literature on Japanese TV news [1].
On March 25 2006 at the Tokyo International Anime Fair he attacked Mickey Mouse, saying that Disney's mascot was inferior to Japanese anime, Ishihara stated "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." [2][3]
See also
External links
Template:Wikinews Template:Wikiquote
- Sensenfukoku(Declaration of War) - his official website (in Japanese)
- Foreign outcry over Ishihara's right-wing nationalism
- Report by Japan Civil Liberties Union
- CityMayors.com profile
Template:Governors of Tokyode:Shintarō Ishihara es:Shintarō Ishihara fr:Shintarō Ishihara ja:石原慎太郎 ko:이시하라 신타로 zh:石原慎太郎 zh-min-nan:Isihara Sintarô