TOKYO: Beijing-baiting Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, whose bid to buy disputed islands ignited a smouldering row between Japan and China, resigned yesterday to start his own national political party.
The outspoken 80-year-old Ishihara said Japan’s pacifist post-war constitution was “ugly” and needed to be reframed.
“As of today, I will resign as Tokyo governor,” Ishihara told a news conference, brandishing a white envelope, in an announcement that took Japan’s political and media establishment by surprise.
“I’m planning to return to national politics. I want to do so by forming a new party with my associates.”
Newspaper reports earlier yesterday said Ishihara wanted to forge a grouping big enough to rival the two largest established parties before an expected general election.
But they had made no mention of the four-term Tokyo governor stepping down from a position he has held for more than 13 years.
Ishihara, whose pronouncements on history have irked China -- he once denied the 1937 Rape of Nanking ever happened -- said he saw much wrong with national politics.
“There are several contradictions, big contradictions, which we hope the state itself will solve,” he told reporters.
“One contradiction, bigger than anything, is the Japanese constitution, which was imposed by the (post World War II US) occupying army, and is rendered in ugly Japanese.”
Like many on the right of politics, Ishihara objects, among other things, to Article 9 of the constitution, which bars Japan from waging war.
Ishihara, an irascible voice for decades in Japan’s national dialogue, will co-opt members of the tiny right-wing Sunrise Party for his new venture, the daily Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
He will also seek to join hands with the mayor of Osaka Toru Hashimoto, a straight-talking maverick whose recently-formed Japan Restoration Party has ambitions to seize control of the powerful lower house.
Embattled Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is under pressure to call a general election after telling opposition parties he would go to the polls “soon” if they supported his unpopular bill to double the consumption tax.
His own approval ratings are low and his ill-disciplined Democratic Party of Japan is likely to be given short shrift by voters disillusioned with its three years in office.
Afp
