45 Facts About Shintaro Ishihara

Shintaro Ishihara was a Japanese politician and writer, who served as the Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to 2012.

Shintaro Ishihara resigned from the governorship to briefly co-lead the Sunrise Party, before he joined the Japan Restoration Party upon his return to the House of Representatives in the 2012 general election.

Shintaro Ishihara unsuccessfully sought re-election in the general election of November 2014, and officially left politics the following month.

In October 2021, Shintaro Ishihara was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer while his wife, Noriko had ruptured aortic aneurysm, and given only three months to live amid a routine physical exam.

Shintaro Ishihara died from its complications on 1 February 2022, at the age of 89.

Shintaro Ishihara was born on 30 September 1932 in Suma-ku, Kobe.

Shintaro Ishihara grew up in Zushi, Kanagawa, parts of Greater Tokyo Area.

In 1952, Shintaro Ishihara entered Hitotsubashi University, and he graduated in 1956.

Just two months before graduation, Shintaro Ishihara won the Akutagawa Prize for the novel Season of the Sun.

Shintaro Ishihara had dabbled in directing a couple of films starring his brother.

Shintaro Ishihara ran a theatre company, and found time to visit the North Pole, race his yacht The Contessa and cross South America on a motorcycle.

Shintaro Ishihara wrote a memoir of his journey, Nanbei Odan Ichiman Kiro.

Shintaro Ishihara was mentored by the influential author and political "fixer" Tsusai Sugawara.

In 1968, Shintaro Ishihara ran as a candidate on the Liberal Democratic Party national slate for the House of Councillors.

Shintaro Ishihara placed first on the LDP list with an unprecedented 3 million votes.

Shintaro Ishihara ran for Governor of Tokyo in 1975 but lost to the popular Socialist incumbent Ryokichi Minobe.

Minobe was 71 at the time, and Shintaro Ishihara criticized him as being "too old".

Shintaro Ishihara 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 and Minister of Transport under Noboru Takeshita.

In 1983, his campaign manager put up stickers throughout Tokyo stating that Shintaro Ishihara's political opponent was an defector from North Korea.

Shintaro Ishihara denied that this was discrimination, saying that the public had a right to know.

In 1989, shortly after losing a highly contested race for the party presidency, Shintaro Ishihara came to the attention of the West through his book The Japan That Can Say No, co-authored with Sony chairman Akio Morita.

On 25 October 2012, Shintaro Ishihara announced he would resign as Governor of Tokyo to form a new political party in preparation for upcoming national elections.

Shintaro Ishihara is generally described as having been one of Japan's most prominent extreme right-wing politicians.

Shintaro Ishihara was called "Japan's [Jean-Marie] Le Pen" on a program broadcast on Australia's ABC.

Shintaro Ishihara was affiliated with the openly ultranationalist organization Nippon Kaigi.

Shintaro Ishihara was a long-term friend of the prominent Aquino family in the Philippines.

Shintaro Ishihara is credited with being the first person to inform future President Corazon Aquino about the assassination of her husband Ninoy Aquino, a former senator and exiled critic of Ferdinand Marcos, on 21 August 1983.

Shintaro Ishihara was often critical of Japan's foreign policy as being non-assertive.

Shintaro Ishihara was long critical of the communist government of the People's Republic of China.

Shintaro Ishihara invited the Dalai Lama and the President of Taiwan Lee Teng-hui to Tokyo.

Shintaro Ishihara was deeply interested in the North Korean abduction issue, and called for economic sanctions against North Korea.

Shintaro Ishihara 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 Summer Olympics torch relay.

On 9 April 2000, in a speech before a Self-Defense Forces group, Shintaro Ishihara said crimes were repeatedly committed by illegally entered people, using the pejorative term sangokujin, and foreigners.

Shintaro Ishihara speculated that in the event a natural disaster struck the Tokyo area, they would be likely to cause civil disorder.

Shintaro Ishihara's comment invoked calls for his resignation, demands for an apology and fears among residents of Korean descent in Japan, as well as being criticised by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

On 17 April 2010, Shintaro Ishihara said "many veteran lawmakers in the ruling-coalition parties are naturalized or the offspring of people naturalized in Japan".

Shintaro Ishihara backed the film The Truth about Nanjing, a Japanese film that denies the atrocity, framing it as Chinese communist propaganda.

Shintaro Ishihara subsequently responded to comments that he did not disrespect French culture by professing his love of French literature on Japanese TV news.

At a Tokyo IOC press briefing in 2009, Governor Shintaro Ishihara dismissed a letter sent by environmentalist Paul Coleman regarding the contradiction of his promoting the Tokyo Olympic 2016 bid as 'the greenest ever' while destroying the forested mountain of Minamiyama, the closest 'Satoyama' to the centre of Tokyo, by angrily stating Coleman was 'Just a foreigner, it does not matter'.

In 2010, Shintaro Ishihara claimed that Korea under Japanese rule was absolutely justified due to historical pressures from Qing dynasty and Imperial Russia.

Shintaro Ishihara has said that Japan ought to have nuclear weapons.

On 15 April 2012, Shintaro Ishihara made a speech in Washington, DC, publicly stating his desire for Tokyo to purchase the Senkaku Islands, called the Diaoyu Islands by mainland China and Diaoyutai Islands in Taiwan, on behalf of Japan in an attempt to end the territorial dispute between China and Japan, causing uproars in Chinese society and increasing tension between the governments of China and Japan.

In October 2021, Shintaro Ishihara was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given only three months to live.

Shintaro Ishihara repeatedly told his son, Nobuteru, "Dying and boring", and "Please take care of everything else", as he wrote manuscripts on his sickbed.

Shintaro Ishihara acted in six films, including Crazed Fruit and The Hole, and co-directed the 1962 film Love at Twenty.