Shintaro Ishihara--A Writer and Politician Who Challenged Postwar Values and Pioneered a New Image of Youth, 1950s-1980s

Shintaro Ishihara--A Writer and Politician Who Challenged Postwar Values and Pioneered a New Image of Youth, 1950s-1980s
Shintaro Ishihara (1932-2022) was a writer and later an influential politician who shook up the values of postwar Japan. The Season of the Sun in 1955 portrayed the physicality and violence of youth, shocked the literary world and society, and symbolized the sensibility of the second postwar generation.

In Japan, which was on the threshold of rapid economic growth, there was a growing ethical vacuum in which the war experience had not been adequately summed up. Ishihara's images of youth embodied this vacuum and stimulated readers to see them as subjects free from the system. The "Execution Room" and "The Tree of Youth" created the "Taiyo-zoku" boom and marked a turning point in postwar cultural history.

After the 1960s, Ishihara shifted his activities to politics and became actively involved in debates over security and diplomacy. His transformation from an anti-authority writer to a conservative political commentator amid the upsurge of the student movement and the ideologization of society is symbolic of the shifting values of postwar Japan. His strong administrative stance as Governor of Tokyo is in continuity with his emphasis on independence from his days as a writer, and he formed a unique position that encompasses both literature and politics. Shintaro Ishihara is a unique figure who reflects the mental structure of postwar Japan from many perspectives.