Japan Legislator Quits Post, Denounces State of Politics

A prize-winning novelist who 27 years ago plunged into politics hoping to reinvigorate a national pride lost in war--even if it meant standing up to the United States--suddenly resigned his seat in Parliament on Friday.

Japanese politics is “despised by the people, and all politicians, myself included, are responsible,” declared Shintaro Ishihara, 62, co-author of a 1989 book that urged Japan to reject unreasonable U.S. trade and security demands. He made his comments after receiving an award for a quarter of a century of service in Parliament.

The two-time Cabinet minister, who lost a bid to become prime minister in 1989, said he was ashamed of the lethargy in Japanese politics. He bemoaned the lack of policy debate now that ideological divisions have been blurred by the end of the Cold War.

Policies of the two largest conservative parties--Ishihara’s Liberal Democrats, which is a member of the Socialist-led coalition government, and the opposition New Frontier Party--differ only in nuance. And, under Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, the Socialists have abandoned many of their left-leaning policies.

“Although numerous problems threaten to disrupt a future that ought to be promising for Japan, hardly any politician today wants to touch any of those issues,” he declared. “All political parties and nearly all politicians act only for the most ignoble forms of egotistic self-preservation.”

Ishihara, whose prize-winning 1955 novel “Season of the Sun” shocked older Japanese with its explicit story of a machismo hero who sought a life of self-gratification, declared that Japan has become a “nation like a eunuch.”

Japan, he said, “is unable to express its will as a nation, like a man who is unable to function as a man.” He blamed the state of affairs on politicians who have “abandoned our responsibility, allowing politics to be controlled by bureaucrats.”

“Nagata-cho (where Parliament is located) and Kasumigaseki (where the government bureaucracies are headquartered) are the only places that don’t understand the world is changing,” he said.

Ishihara has been a member of Parliament since 1968, except for a brief hiatus when he lost the 1975 Tokyo governor’s election.

He won international notoriety with “The Japan That Can Say No,” co-authored with former Sony Chairman Akio Morita. The 1989 bestseller sparked an emotional trade row between Japanese and U.S. leaders.

While Ishihara declared that he would not again run for office, he said he would “not stop thinking about the nation and about politics.” He did not spell out his plans.

He cited as points of pride in his political career his efforts to fight “money politics” and speak out against “one-sided” criticism of Japan by the United States and China.