ese author, actor, politician and the governor of Tokyo
since 1999.
Shintarō was born in Suma-ku
, Kobe
. His father Kiyoshi was an employee, later a general manager, of a shipping company. Shintarō grew up in Zushi
. In 1952, he entered Hitotsubashi University
, and graduated in 1956.
Just two months before graduation, Shintarō won the Akutagawa Prize
(Japan's most prestigious literary prize) for the novel . His brother Yujiro
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
.
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 That spacecraft was an outdated one.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."