Shintaro Ishihara - Political Career

Political Career

In 1968, Ishihara ran as a candidate on the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) national slate for the House of Councillors. He placed first on the LDP list with an unprecedented 3 million votes. After four years in the upper house, Ishihara ran for the House of Representatives representing the second district of Tokyo, and again won election.

In 1973, he joined with thirty other LDP lawmakers in the anti-communist Seirankai or "Blue Storm Group"; the group gained notoriety for sealing a pledge of unity in their own blood.

Ishihara ran for Governor of Tokyo in 1975 but lost to the popular Socialist incumbent Ryokichi Minobe. Minobe was 71 at the time, and Ishihara criticized him as being "too old".

Ishihara returned to the House of Representatives afterward, and worked his way up the party's internal ladder, serving as Director-General of the Environment Agency under Takeo Fukuda (1976) and Minister of Transport under Noboru Takeshita (1989). During the 1980s, Ishihara was a highly visible and popular LDP figure, but unable to win enough internal support to form a true faction and move up the national political ladder. In 1983 his campaign manager put up stickers throughout Tokyo slandering Ishihara's political opponent as an immigrant from North Korea. Ishihara denied that this was discrimination, saying that the public have a right to know.

In 1989, shortly after losing a highly contested race for the party presidency, Ishihara came to the attention of the West through his book, The Japan That Can Say No (「NO」と言える日本, "No" to ieru Nihon?), co-authored with Sony chairman Akio Morita. The book called on his fellow countrymen to stand up to the United States.

According to politician Kōichi Hamada, Ishihara gave financial and political support to Aum Shinrikyo, a religious cult that was involved in several murders and assassination attempts during the early 1990s. Immediately after the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, Ishihara dropped out of national politics, suddenly ending a 25-year career in the Diet.

In 1999, he ran on an independent platform and was elected as Governor of Tokyo.

On October 25, 2012, Ishihara announced he would resign as Governor of Tokyo in order to form a new political party, in preparation for upcoming national elections. Following his announcement, Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly had approved his resignation on October 31, 2012, officially ending his tenure as a Governor of Tokyo for 4,941 days, the second-longest term after Shunichi Suzuki.

Ishihara's new national party was expected to be formed with members of the right-wing Sunrise Party of Japan, which he had helped to set up in 2010. When announced by co-leaders Ishihara and SPJ chief Takeo Hiranuma on November 13, 2012, The Sunrise Party incorporated all five members of SPJ. SP will look to form a coalition with other small parties including Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto's Japan Restoration Party (Nippon Ishin no Kai).