My mother in law and my wife are voting for Ishihara for crying out loud.

Asano needs to focus on what he can do for the people of Tokyo. Not how evil Ishihara is.

People choose the governor for different reasons, but I guess most people choose the governor judging what s/he can do for Tokyo, the living condition of Tokyoites.

As for me, it is safety, economy, convenience, social welfare of Tokyo and the ability to execute the policy s/he has promised that matter.

As for abolishing the policy of “coercing” teachers to sing national anthem, it might be an interesting topic. But that is mainly for the leftist teacher union.

For my part, Ishihara might become a good provocative commentator, but I am a bit getting sick and tired of Ishihara as being a governor. Regardless, I am not quite happy with other candidates either.

Of course both languages managed to be fairly international in their day, far more so than Japanese has ever managed, so obviously Ishihara is either talking out his ass or is making a joke about the sort of numbering I mentioned in the first paragraph.

The whole thing about “resurgent nationalism” in Japan reminds me somewhat of the coverage of the Kobe earthquake. Apparently, it was the foreign press at the time that liked to focus on exaggerating the extent of the damages by showing a lot of overhead shots of the city on fire. The local press, as one might expect, were less concerned with sensationalizing the event.

As an aside, I hope the lawsuit filed by French linguists is thrown out for being frivolous. It is insane, in my opinion, that this ever became a legal matter to be contested in a court of law.