Shintaro_Ishihara - Celebrity Encyclopedia

Shintar- was born in Kobe. His father Kiyoshi was an employee, later a general manager, of a shipping company. Shintar- grew up in Zushi, a beach city, where he started sailing.^[1] He had a younger brother named Yujiro.^[2]

In 1951, his father died suddenly at his office.^[3] In 1952, he entered Hitotsubashi University, and graduated in 1956. Just two months before graduation, Shintar- won the Akutagawa Prize (Japan's most prestigious literary prize) for the novel Season of the Sun^[4] (-- Taiy- no kisetsu^-).^[5] His brother Yujiro played a supporting role in the screen adaptation of the novel, and the two soon became the center of a youth-oriented cult.^[6]

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.^[7]

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 three million votes.^[8] 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.^[6]

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.^[9]

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“ "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. In 1999, he ran on an independent platform and was elected governor of Tokyo.

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. His youngest son, Nobuhiro Ishihara, is a jetsetting painter involved in accusations of nepotism [3]. Nationally famous deceased actor Yujiro Ishihara was his younger brother.

Books written by Ishihara

Political views

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 Shrine 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 crows that populated Tokyo.^[10]

Policies as governor

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."^[9]

Ishihara is deeply interested in the North Korean abduction issue, and is calling for economic sanctions against North Korea.^[16] Following Ishihara's campaign to bid Tokyo for the 2016 Summer Olympics, he has since eased his criticism of the Chinese government. He accepted an invitation to attend the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, and was selected as a torch-bearer for the Japan leg of the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay. [4]

Racism

On April 9, 2000, in a speech before a Self-Defense Forces group, Ishihara publicly stated that atrocious crimes have been committed repeatedly by illegally entered sangokujin (Japanese: (third country national); a term commonly viewed as derogatory) and foreigners, and speculated that in the event a natural disaster struck the Tokyo area, they would be likely to cause civil disorder.^[17] His comment invoked calls for his resignation, demands for an apology and fears among residents of Korean descent in Japan.^[7] Regarding this statement, Ishihara later said:

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, several thousand of whom were killed by mobs of Japanese people following the Great Kant- earthquake of 1923.^[7]

On February 20, 2006, Ishihara also said: "Roppongi is now virtually a foreign neighborhood. Africans - I don't mean African-Americans - who don't speak English are there doing who knows what. This is leading to new forms of crime such as car theft. We should be letting in people who are intelligent."^[18]

Other controversial statements

In 1990, Ishihara stated in a Playboy interview that the Rape of Nanking was a fiction, claiming, "People say that the Japanese made a holocaust but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie."^[19] He continued to defend this statement in the uproar that ensued^[20]. He has also backed the film The Truth about Nanjing, which argues that the Nanking Massacre was propaganda.

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."^[21]

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.^[22]

Contents

Early life and artistic career