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Shintaro Ishihara, an outspoken Japanese nationalist, populist, and
current governor of Tokyo, was born in Hyogo Prefecture in Japan. After
winning Japan's most prestigious literary prize when he was a 23-year-old
college student, he and his now deceased brother, 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.
He entered politics in 1965 via the long-dominant Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP), but was often critical of it. In 1989, he came to the attention
of the West through his book, A Japan That Can Say No, co-authored with Sony
chairman Morita Akio. The book called on his fellow countrymen to stand up
to the US. He dropped out of national politics in 1995.
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 and holding up a bottle of diesel soot as he restricted the
operation of diesel-powered vehicles. At the same time, he has gained
notoriety for statements referring to Tokyo-based Chinese and Koreans
sangokujin (三国人), an offensive term literally meaning "third-country
person." He does, however, say exactly what he thinks, and that is a rarity
in present-day Japanese politics.
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