Author of Anti-U.S. Book to Govern Tokyo

Voters in Japan’s capital said yes Sunday to hawkish politician and well-known author Shintaro Ishihara, who promised to create a “Tokyo That Can Say No” if elected prefectural governor.

The charismatic Ishihara, 66, best known for his largely anti-U.S. policy book, “The Japan That Can Say No,” already has begun to create headaches for U.S. and Japanese officials over his vow to recover the Yokota U.S. Air Force base located on Tokyo’s outskirts.

In reality, however, the Tokyo governor has no direct say in the matter, as embarrassed Foreign Ministry officials pointed out repeatedly during Ishihara’s campaign: The bilateral security relationship is under the central government’s purview.

Nevertheless, the new governor’s demands add heat to the controversial issue of the U.S. military presence in Japan, coming as they do on the heels of vociferous local opposition to U.S. bases in Japan’s southern island of Okinawa. As leader of Japan’s largest city, the governor can be quite influential.

“You cannot say that once Tokyo starts changing, the whole nation will follow,” said Tomoaki Iwai, a political science professor at Tokiwa University, northeast of Tokyo. “But the central government cannot ignore the Tokyo government, and the Tokyo government can set a trend for change.”

Regardless of the base issue, Ishihara will have his hands full just resolving Tokyo’s financial crisis. The Tokyo prefecture--which contains 12 million people and has a $53-billion budget--is operating with a $1.7-billion deficit this year while its economy is in the dumps. The previous governor, Yukio Aoshima, a comedian, succeeded in fulfilling his one-issue campaign promise: to stop a future world exposition, plans for which were well underway. Once that mission was completed, however, he was largely viewed as ineffective.

Analysts attributed Ishihara’s victory--he received 30% of the vote in a field of 16 candidates--to his image as being strong enough to stand up to national legislators as well as the powerful bureaucrats who make things run in Japan. The former transportation minister and parliament member was a strongman in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party until 1995, when he retired from politics to return to novel writing.

He entered the governor’s race as an independent.

Though the dapper candidate had a high profile, many voters apparently voted for Ishihara by default, as at least a quarter of those polled by news media a few days before the election remained undecided.

“I’m a dove, so I’m a little bit anxious about him,” said a retired 70-year-old man listening to Ishihara campaign Friday as the candidate stood atop a small white truck featuring a cartoon of a frowning face. “He says no clearly to America and China, but he’s too outspoken.”

Nevertheless, the retiree, who declined to give his name, said he planned to vote for Ishihara because he’d been reading his books for years (Ishihara is a recipient of Japan’s highest literary award) and is about the same age as the candidate.

Other voters said Ishihara offered the most leadership.

“I agree with what he says in reconstructing Tokyo,” said Hideko Tamaguchi, 55, a homemaker also listening to Ishihara at the brief campaign stop Friday. “We’re in miserable condition here. If he wins, I think the economy will get better and our faces will become brighter.”

Speaking without notes and wearing a blue shirt, loud tie and double-breasted suit with gold buttons--attire that guaranteed he would stand out among the white shirts and conservative single-breasted blue suits favored by most men--Ishihara railed against everything from an epidemic of schoolgirl prostitution to air pollution.

“Tokyo is filled with crises--financial, educational and environmental,” he said. “When I look at present-day Japan, it reminds me of the movie ‘Titanic.’ The largest passenger ship ever bumped into a big iceberg, water got into its central machinery, and the whole ship sank. I’m afraid that might happen to Japan. The crisis of Tokyo is the crisis of Japan.”