{"id":16982,"date":"2022-02-02T09:15:57","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T17:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=16982"},"modified":"2024-08-24T14:01:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-24T21:01:19","slug":"ruminations-on-ishihara-shintaros-death-good-riddance-to-an-evil-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/?p=16982","title":{"rendered":"Ruminations on Ishihara Shintaro’s death: Good riddance to an evil man."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hi Blog. It was with some measured amount of joy that I saw that a quintessentially awful man, Former Tokyo Governor and Political-Resident Racist Ishihara Shintaro, recently died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 89.<\/p>\n

Predictably, the eulogies and hagiographies have minced their words about what an awful man this was, watering down their modifiers to call him a “brash” “hawk” “firebrand”, a ‘fiery nationalist” with “controversial views”<\/a>\u00a0etc. \u00a0(Check out the utter gloss job the NY Times Obits did here<\/a>.) \u00a0Even after some admit that he deliberately used his political power to try to start a war with China over some island scraps, and to publicly denigrate and persecute people not only because they crossed him, but also because they were born a certain way. Simply saying he was not a force for good is to have a fundamental misconception of what evil is.<\/p>\n

Debito.org has commented on Ishihara’s evil activities umpteen times<\/a> (most famously here<\/a>), so I see no need to dwell further. I think Kaori Shoji writes an excellent obit in the Japan Subculture Research Center (aptly titled “A Farewell To Japan\u2019s King of Toxic Masculinity: Shintaro Ishihara<\/a>“) where she sums up:<\/p>\n

The man was a rightist, elitist, racist, misogynist, patriarchal pig. I hope I didn\u2019t leave out anything.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But even she winds up succumbing to a begrudging admiration for a person in power who was granted even more power and wielded it. That’s a pity. \u00a0Yes, Ishihara had power — the power of yet another racist toxic masculinist born into rich privilege who did everything he could to make sure that privilege is perpetuated for his ilk. And his ilk have caused (and then denied) things like genocides, and should never be allowed to come near power and public service. Alas, an early showing with a prestigious literary award catapulted Ishihara into fame, and people are suckers for celebrities.<\/p>\n

Returning to my opening, I say “measured amount of joy” because my joy was restrained by the fact that a recurrence of pancreatic cancer took Ishihara. I hope it hurt real bad in your final days, Ishihara. But no amount of pain you would ever experience would be enough payback for all the pain and suffering you caused other people.<\/p>\n

Rot in hell, you monster. Arudou Debito, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

======================
\nPS. Other Debito.org Readers have already commented on Ishihara’s demise in a separate blog post here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

PPS: \u00a0Here’s my more thorough Ishihara Obituary for the Shingetsu News Agency, Feb 20, 2022<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

======================
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It was with some measured amount of joy that I saw that a quintessentially awful man, Former Tokyo Governor and Political-Resident Racist Ishihara Shintaro, recently died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 89. Predictably, the eulogies and hagiographies have minced their words about what an awful man this was, watering down their modifiers to call him a \u201cbrash\u201d \u201chawk\u201d \u201cfirebrand\u201d, a \u2018fiery nationalist\u201d with \u201ccontroversial views\u201d etc. Even after some admit that he deliberately used his political power to try to start a war with China over some island scraps, and to publicly denigrate and persecute people not only because they crossed him, but also because they were born a certain way. Simply saying he was not a force for good is to have a fundamental misconception of what evil is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,22,44,35,52,20,4,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-embedded-racism","category-cultural-issue","category-discussions","category-good-news","category-hate-speech","category-history","category-japanese-government","category-japanese-politics","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16982"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17497,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16982\/revisions\/17497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.debito.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}