Shintaro Ishihara

Shintaro Ishihara (石原 慎太郎, Ishihara Shintarō, born September 30, 1932) is a Japanese politician and author who was Governor of Tokyo from 1999 to 2012.

His arts career included a prize-winning novel, best-sellers and work also in theater, film and journalism. His 1989 book, The Japan That Can Say No, co-authored with Sony chairman Akio Morita (1991 in English), called on the authors' countrymen to stand up to the United States.

After an early career in the arts, he served for more than 25 years in the Parliament, leaving after the Tokyo subway attack in 1995. He subsequently served as Governor of Tokyo from April 1999 to October 2012, resigning to briefly co-lead the Sunrise Party, and then the Japan Restoration Party. He was elected to the Japanese lower house in the 2012 general election and unsuccessfully sought re-election in November 2014; he officially left politics the following month.

Early life and artistic career

Shintaro Ishihara was born in Suma-ku, Kobe. His father Kiyoshi was an employee, later a general manager, of a shipping company. Shintaro grew up in Zushi, Kanagawa. In 1952, he entered Hitotsubashi University, and he graduated in 1956. Just two months before graduation, Ishihara won the Akutagawa Prize (Japan's most prestigious literary prize) for the novel Season of the Sun. His brother Yujiro played a supporting role in the movie adaptation of the novel (for which Shintaro wrote the screenplay), and the two soon became the center of a youth-oriented cult. Ishihara had dabbled in directing a couple of films starring his brother. Regarding these early years as a filmmaker, he stated to a Playboy interviewer in 1990 that "If I had remained a movie director, I can assure you that I would have at least become a better one than Akira Kurosawa".