Way back a few months ago, Ishihara Shintaro, governor of the Tokyo Metropolitan District, started making noises about starting up a new "true conservative" political party -- because Japan obviously has too few national political parties. Ishihara flirted with Hiranuma Takeo (adopted son of executed Class A war criminal), Hashimoto Toru (the man from the mud who through gumption, brass and effort has become overlord of Japan's #3 city) and Kamei "Pavarotti and Leonardo" Shizuka, the now defenestrated leader of the People's New Party and a man who has never met a reform he could not oppose.
All this mutual batting of eyelashes between reactionaries came to naught, however. Hiranuma and Hashimoto in particular were charry of sharing the limelight with the flamboyant Ishihara.
As a consequence, Ishihara went to Plan B: buying three of the Senkaku Islands from their private owner.
That purchasing plan having gone sour a few weeks back with hardly any repercussions of note, Ishihara today went back to Plan A, the founding a new "true conservative" party -- a dream whose realization is so daunting Ishihara will give up his day job in order to pursue it.
Of course, had he ever been doing his day job, rather than farming out all but the ceremonial and lectern pounding parts to Inose Naoki (Link), he would never had had the time for all these extracurricular activities.
A mixed blessing have we in the TMD enjoyed these last 13 years. Voters normally vote for politicans expecting them to do their jobs. However, the voters of the TMD returned Ishihara to the the governorship three times precisely because he refused to do his job, and instead foisted it upon an unelected writer, researcher and critic who just so happened has been really, really interested in running a metropolis.
Now that the pretend governor is leaving the stage, how can we still enjoy the labors of the real one?
I love your stuff. But let me suggest that Inose will be a brilliant Governor. Big cities around the world are organized through such initiatives as C40, 3GF and etc, where the real energy-water-climate initiatives are happening. It's been sad to watch Tokyo sidelined because of its incompetent titular leadership. Imagine NYC Bloomberg calling the city's major trading partners names, as Ishihara does with the Chinese. Given our common crises, his behaviour is simply incredible. Now Tokyo has a chance to play a central role in green-city leadership. That's a market that's worth at least 8 times Japan's current GDP cumulatively by 2030, esp in China where there are no fewer than 400 smart city projects and Japan's been a laggard. Hardly just Ishihara's fault (the complacent monopolists in the utilities helped), but he's central to the problem.
ReplyDeleteI, for one, shall miss Ol' Blinky. How will we even know that we have a governor if he doesn't come out with insane rants of hate occasionally. I suppose he will have that opportunity in his new nutjob party, but will anyone actually care? Did anyone actually care when he ranted while he was acting governor?
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