Ishihara Shintaro is well known for being one of Japan’s least PR-friendly politicians. Always ready with a quip that can offend, marginalise, and alienate potential voters, Ishihara’s volatile political style shows no signs of abating.
Yesterday, when discussing Yokota Megumi, one of the 17 Japanese citizens who were victims of North Korean kidnappings in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ishihara suggested that since Yokota is very pretty, then she must certainly be someone’s concubine.
Cue thousands of disgruntled tweets from Japanese netizens…
From Asahi Digital:
Restoration Party Ishihara “Yokota Megumi Is Definitely A Concubine”
On the evening of July 12, Ishihara Shintaro, co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, stated about Yokota Megumi, one of the victims of kidnapping by North Korea, “she is a real Japanese-style beauty, so she will have been forced to marry and bear children. She’s bound to be the concubine of someone in a high position”. Ishihara said this at a street speech in Yokohama.
Comments from Twitter:
藤本礼奈 :
Hey, hey, what are you saying, grandpa….
富田幸司:
( ) Seems like it’s fine for Ishihara to say stuff like this. Plus it looks like Ishihara’s four boys are believers of Aum Shinrikyo [currently known as Aleph]. Apparently he quit as Tokyo mayor to cover
this up.
นํ้าなーむ :
I really HATE this guy RT
@pongri_ryohei
えびいち:
Low life gerontocrat.
donguri(^_^)san:
( ) Say what?
sucola_mocola:
Ishihara Shintaro’s illustrious life is over. An Akutagawa Prize-winning novelist, elder brother of Yujiro, he gained glory as a politician, lost it all through his remarks of the past year, and is now nothing more than trash.
よねさ :
Had this been before the election, it would have been fodder for the entire internet. QT [This is awful] RT.
ぺんこちゃん NUKE IS OVER！:
To think that he’s this stupid… Deplorable. Absurd. Don’t let the bastard talk!
ちい:
These are the groundless fantasies of a depraved old man, he’s just insulting the victim and their family. He knows no shame.RT @asahi
如月
Just makes me think that the gerontocracy are just getting worse…I wonder why he says such insensitive things like this in public.
eco:
The old man’s saying vulgar things again.
陽の杜:
Oooooh….and….he’s said it.
gataropapa:
How long are they just going to leave kind of XX old man be…? He’s just insensitive. QT @LunarModule7 ‘Restoration Party Ishihara “Yokota Megumi Is Definitely A Concubine”‘ You wanna know what the biggest problem here is? The fact that Ishihara actually intends this as a compliment.
おかママU’×’U(吉良ちゃん応援):
Lowest of the low. He should apologise immediately and quit his post as a Diet member.
≒Vantoch:
Seeing it from Ishihara’s perspective, there was nothing here you could argue with, I guess. But, the thing is, what would Yokota’s family think if they heard this? I’d like to ask Nakayama Kyoko, who’s in the same political party, what she thinks of this. It’s horrible.
暴君虎:
I guess that if he’d been a Democratic Party politician then his supporters would get one hell of a bashing from the netouyo. But because it’s our beloved Ishihara, it’ll be “they took his words of out context and made it up”. In the end, it’s not what was said, but who said it.
