Shintaro Ishihara
Overview
is a Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese author, actor, politician and the governor of Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 since 1999.
Shintarō was born in Suma-ku
Suma-ku, Kobe
is one of 9 wards of Kobe City in Japan. It has an area of 30.0 km², and a population of 168,400 .There is a white sandy beach in this ward, which attracts tourists to the Kansai region for sun bathing and popular events during the summer season. The same beach has appeared in the classic...

, Kobe
Kobe
, pronounced , is the fifth-largest city in Japan and is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture on the southern side of the main island of Honshū, approximately west of Osaka...

. His father Kiyoshi was an employee, later a general manager, of a shipping company. Shintarō grew up in Zushi
Zushi, Kanagawa
is a city located in Kanagawa, Japan. As of 2010, the city had an estimated population of 58,793 and a population density of 3,390 persons per km². The total area was 17.34 km².-Geography:...

. In 1952, he entered Hitotsubashi University
Hitotsubashi University
is a national university specialised in the social sciences in Tokyo, Japan. The University has campuses in Kunitachi, Kodaira, and Kanda.Hitotsubashi is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. It is ranked 25th in the world in 2011 by École des Mines de Paris.Hitotsubashi...

, and graduated in 1956.
Just two months before graduation, Shintarō won the Akutagawa Prize
Akutagawa Prize
The is a Japanese literary award presented semi-annually. It was established in 1935 by Kan Kikuchi, then-editor of Bungeishunjū magazine, in memory of author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa...

 (Japan's most prestigious literary prize) for the novel . His brother Yujiro
Yujiro Ishihara
was a Japanese actor and singer born in Kobe. His elder brother, Shintaro Ishihara, is an author, politician, and the current Governor of Tokyo. Yujiro debuted in 1956 in "Season of the Sun," based on a novel written by his brother...

 played a supporting role in the screen adaptation of the novel, and the two soon became the center of a youth-oriented cult.
In the early 1960s, he concentrated on writing, including plays, novels, and a musical version of Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...

.
Quotations

Regarding the Rape of Nanjing: "They say we made a holocaust there, but that is not true. It is a lie made up by the Chinese."

About himself: "I’m an existentialist--freedom and passion are the most important things to me. I was horribly disappointed when I learned that Sartre was a Communist."

On political parties: "A party is a political tool. If it's no longer useful, it should be crumpled up and thrown away."

On the status of politicians in Japan: "in Japan people avoid going into politics. I was really looked down on in literary circles [when I went into politics]."

About the United States: "Fifty years of subservience to the interest of the United States has deprived the Japanese of a national purpose and engendered a paralyzing identity crisis." [After all, Japan] "is the only non-Caucasian society to have created a modern superpower."

In response to China's first successful launch of a man in space: "The Chinese are ignorant, so they are overjoyed. That spacecraft was an outdated one. If Japan wanted to do it, we could do it in one year."

“Let them bomb Japan with that nasty missile. Their missile cannot load a nuclear warhead.”

Regarding the bomb-planting at the private residence of Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka: "A bomb was planted there. I think it was deserved."

 
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