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the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Information and Assistance group
Those who stubbornly cling to the belief that America is somehow uniquely cursed with xenophobic bigoted fools, would do well to observe the news coming from Tokyo today.
It seems that the voters of Tokyo prefecture proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are stubbornly committed to having the most obnoxious public figure in Japan as their executive, reelecting Ishihara Shintaro to a fourth term as their governor.
Ishihara Shintaro (Kyodo News)
In a crowded field Ishihara prevailed with more that a million vote margin over his closest competitor. Though this time he did not win an absolute majority, he did manage to coast to reelection. It really goes to show that there is almost nothing for which the people of Tokyo will hold this man accountable. Ishihara had said that he was going to retire after this term, but then decided that he really enjoyed being the center of attention and would run for another term. He made the announcement of his candidacy on March 11. Yes, that's right. That March 11. When the killer quake and tsunami that wreaked such terrible havoc on the people of Japan struck later that day, his announcement was promptly bumped from the front page. Whether in an attempt to recapture attention or just because that's the kind of guy he is, Ishihara soon made the following declaration:
The biggest shock from the last year was that there was a woman who had been collecting the pension checks of her grandfather who had been dead for 30 years. In the whole world the only nation that is this way is the Japanese. I'm sorry to say that our identity has become nothing but selfishness. It's a shame, but when you have a feckless cabinet this sort of thing is bound to happen. It was the same with the Murayama Cabinet [and the Kobe earthquake]. Government is tied up in selfishness and doing things for the sake of populism. We have to use this tsunami to maximum advantage in order to push that away in one thrust, to wash away the filth that has accumulated in the hearts of Japanese over the years once and for all. This was divine retribution on us as a people. Those affected by this disaster were truly unfortunate.
Ishihara later apologized for these comments and then with typical hypocrisy sought to establish himself as the nation's chief mourner for the departed, declaring that Tokyo would not sponsor any of the hanami (cherry blossom-viewing) parties that it normally does and that the government should prohibit people from engaging in these annual festivities. One begins to suspect that he is on the verge of ordering the blossoms not to bloom this year. This transparent act of hypocritically self-assertive holier-than-thou pennace would be bad enough for its own egotism, but what makes it worse is that he is hurting the very people whose cause he pretends to champion. Shortly after Ishihara made his sanctimonious decision to cancel the annual festivals, the sake brewers of Tohoku, Japan, the region hardest hit by the earthquake and tsunami have taken to the internet to beg their countrymen not to show restraint because this season, along with New Years, is the time of year they reap the largest profit. Ishihara, in fact, has managed to severely damage the service economy of his own prefecture. But that is a fact that should matter little to him. Ishihara has always been a self-centered asshole and he has never cared for anyone but himself.
This much has been clear from the time he first made his appearance on the public scene more than half a century ago, writing trashy novels about self-centered and sadistic protagonists. As Ian Buruma once noted in the New York Review of Books, Ishihara "and his friends affected the nihilistic attitudes of yakuza mobsters. Values and morals, in their eyes, were all crap." Ishihara summed up his attitude in the opening of one of his novels, The Punishment Room, thus:
They talk about resistance, responsibilities, and morality. Why should I care? What others think never bothers me! Doing only what I want--that's all I can do!
For more than fifty years that is essentially all he has done, and when the opportunity presented itself, he did not hesitate to leap for and yet the voters of Tokyo continue to flock to him like junior high-school girls swooning of the class juvenile delinquent. For a megalopolis that is supposed to be the most cosmopolitan and sophisticated area of Japan, Tokyo has, for more than a decade, stubbornly clung to one of the most loathsome politicians to ever enter the arena.
There is virtually no one that Ishihara will shrink from insulting and there is nothing that he won't say when he believes it to his advantage.
In an 1990 interview with Playboy Magazine, Ishihara asserted:
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
Of course, it should come as no surprise that Ishihara would think that the Japanese army did nothing wrong in Nanjing, for in his view, Chinese aren't really people anyway, especially those that are living in his city. In October, 2001, Ishihara bluntly asserted that Chinese "have no ethics and live like animals."
Nor is he any more enlightened about women's issues. In the same year, giving an interview to a women's magazine, he essentially stated flat-out that women were useless for any role save vessels of reproduction:
old women who live after they have lost their reproductive function are useless and are committing a sin
He has never hesitated to play the race card, even where it is clearly absurd to try to do so. In playing on the national siege mentality that Japan has with regard to its bogus "scientific" whaling program and its desire to continue whaling in the face of international opposition, Ishihara declared:
Of the forty countries that are presently members of the IWC, the only ones advocating whaling are Norway and Japan. Since the implementation of the strategy of the White Man's Alliance of anti-whaling countries, to forcibly cut off debate by allowing twenty-five countries to newly join the IWC, scientific authority has been continually ignored. Because it had become so foolish Iceland withdrew from the IWC in 1992.
Norway and Iceland, as everyone knows, are just bursting at the seams with people of color.
It seems that no matter how outrageous or ridiculous the things that Ishihara does, the voters of Tokyo prefecture will just go back to him. Those despairing the intelligence of the American electorate would do well to look to Japan and see what kind of jackasses get elected there.
The really sad thing about this is that Ishihara will have a fairly big say in how the recent disaster in Tohoku is handled. He has already insulted the victims and followed that up by injuring them economically. Moreover, he is doing his best to make sure that the tsunami and earthquake work to his political advantage and has not missed any opportunity to snipe at the central government and Prime Minister Kan Naoto, doing anything in his power to prevent Kan from exercising real leadership and bringing relief to the people on the ground who desperately need it.
Because of people like Isihara and Japan's poisonous political culture more generally, the government is likely to be far less effective in dealing with the disaster than many of the NGO's that are on the ground. If you can, please donate to one of these organizations that might actually bring about some improvement in the lives of people whose government is often either ineffective or indifferent.
Japan Disaster Relief Donations
Shelter Box
the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Information and Assistance group