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【中文标题】这个男人就是军阀
【原文标题】The Man Who Would Be Warlord
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】ISAAC STONE FISH
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/11/01/the_man_who_would_be_warlord_shintaro_ishihara
近期,石原慎太郎的名字时不时会引起日本人的一片笑声。作为东京从1999年到2012年间任职,颇有非议然而又极受欢迎的首脑人物,他试图购买尖阁列岛的计划激怒了中国人。这是中国东海中一片寸草不生的礁石,北京宣称对其拥有主权,并称其为钓鱼岛。他现在是一个小规模并且被边缘化的政党维新会的联合创始人之一,年届80高龄的他已经没有机会竞争首相的位置。有一次我向一位著名的日本记者提到石原,他笑着说,去年的事件“太糟糕了”。
不仅如此,他甚至把整个地区局势搞得一塌糊涂。去年9月,首相野田佳彦的日本政府推翻了石原试图购买尖阁列岛的计划,而是将其收归国有。中国立即爆发出大规模的抗议声,从那以后,双边关系持续紧张,双方都采取了一些被对方认为是挑衅的行动。中国战机飞越日本领土,日本也飞出战斗机回应。10月底,这种现象持续了三天。现首相安倍晋三在10月26日出版的《华尔街日报》中接受采访时说,如果中国“用武力改变目前的地区局势”,那么“它就不会走和平发展的道路”。
10月31日,中国国防部谴责日本军方扰乱中国的实弹军事演习。这种或许在石原政府时期就播下的不信任,意味着一个小小的错误就会酿成军事摩擦,甚至战争。
在9月初进行的一系列日本政府高层官员内部会议中,石原在众高官面前明显表现出尴尬——笨拙的自嘲、不自然的呼吸、手足无措、目光游离。石原让一向崇尚民主、和平的日本在1945年之后最大程度上靠近了战争。与日本现执政党自由民主党(石原以前隶属的党派)关系密切的一位政府官员不屑地说:“石原已经没有实权了。”接着是一声惆怅、不自然的轻笑。
然而,石原的笑其实并不尴尬,而是自然、令人愉快的微笑。23年前,身材魁梧、仪表堂堂、谈吐得体的石原被《花花公子》的记者称为“出众的帅气”,还说他钟爱萨维尔街西装和阿玛尼领带。现在,身为日本议会下议院成员的80岁老人,石原依然富有魅力——那种永远不承认自己错误的人的那种魅力。
人们很难把他富有魅力,甚至是贵族的风度与他残暴的观点结合在一起。他说:“他们绝不会在几座岛屿上收手。中国抢走尖阁列岛之后,我担心日本最终会变成第二个西藏。”他把那片在1959年落入中国的、人烟稀少、贫穷落后的地区,与世界第三大经济体相提并论。
9月4日,我和其他几位美国记者采访石原。这是一家非营利性机构笹川和平财团安排的谈话,这家财团邀请我们来到日本。其中一位记者问,他是否认为中国真的会入侵日本。他说:“是的,我认为有这种可能。登陆地就是冲绳。”我忍了忍,没有提醒他这片日本南部的岛屿聚集了美国在这个国家全部的38000名驻军。石原说:“我在想,中国为了入侵日本甘愿冒多大的风险。我非常害怕。”
如果想在美国寻找一个与石原类似的人,或许可以拿极端版本的Pat Buchanan作比较。他是尼克松的演讲写手、右翼专家,他说美国白人是“濒临灭绝的种族”。也可以拿福音教牧师Pat Robertson做比较,他说卡特里娜飓风是美国的堕胎政策引起的。石原在2011年3月同样说,造成数千人死亡的日本海啸是神对日本人自私的惩罚。实际上,石原非常擅于煽动公众情绪。在美国,如果一个政客对打算自杀的人说“快点死吧”,或者说“让失去生育能力的女性活在世上是一种浪费和罪恶”,那么他绝对无法在政坛的暴风骤雨中存活。34岁的商人、东京居民小林敦说,石原“可以做成一些事情,有时候效果也不错。但是他的话太成问题了,我对于石原的人品没有好印象。”
然而,石原拥有的是漫长、硕果累累的政治生涯。他管理日本最重要城市——其政治和经济首都——的时间甚至超过Michael Bloomberg(译者注:纽约市长)即将达成的12年任期。一位日本政策研究人士Tobias Harris认为,石原之所以能在政坛生存这么久,是因为他的能力——他是一个高效的筹款机,拥有优良的品格,还来源于他在公众目光下活动了将近六十年所获得的声望。京都同志社大学经济学教授Noriko Hama,在接受香港媒体《南华早报》的采访时说:“他的行为极其巧妙,对于那种不想为生活操心、一切任人摆布的人群有特殊的吸引力。”她还说,他之所以受欢迎,是因为他有“给民众催眠,让他们不思考”的能力。
这看起来有些匪夷所思,因为像他的前任猪濑直树一样,石原是一名广受欢迎、声望颇高的作家。他1932年出生于一个运输公司的家庭,24岁的时候,石原就凭借小说《太阳的季节》获得了日本最著名的文学奖——芥川龙之介奖。同年,他的三部作品被改编为电影。石原在1967年为一家日本报纸报道越南战争的新闻,一年后进入政坛,但依然没有放弃创作幻想和写实类小说。他最著名的作品或许是《日本可以说不》,这是他与当时的索尼公司总裁盛田昭夫合著的一本书,内容主要是认为日本应该在与美国的关系上更加有主见。石原的弟弟裕次郎是一名著名的演员,石原自己也执导过几部影片,后来没有继续。他在接受《花花公子》采访时说:“如果我坚持导演电影,我可以保证我会超越黑泽明。”然而他选择了仕途,在议会赢得了一系列选举,最终在1999年成为东京知事。
石原诋毁法语;号称“痛恨”米老鼠;说东京的二战战役拯救了亚洲沦为白人殖民地的命运;恶毒地侮辱中国人。他否认南京大屠杀,有时候用二战时期污蔑性的名词指代中国人(译者注:应该是指“支那”)。他说他在2008年奥运会期间来到中国,但未与任何中国人正式会面,因为“我不认为我能从他们身上学到任何东西”。他说他不想再去中国,因为他害怕“被关进监狱”。
一位拒绝透露姓名的西方外交人士说,石原了解他的日本民众,但就是拒绝,或者“无法探寻”外国人如何接受他的言论。小林的说法更加委婉一些:“大部分日本政客和知事都不会说一些引起骚乱的话,但是石原非常直截了当。”
这位外交人士说,外交界根本不会有人试图去了解石原购买尖阁列岛的原因,“这对所有人来说都是显而易见的”,他的做法是对国际行为准则的公然蔑视。
然而,石原位于议会的静谧的会议室里,一切都非常和谐。我向石原提出的最后两个问题引起了他的一些回忆。他是否后悔过那些引起争议的言论?在回想漫长的政坛生涯时,他是否愿意澄清某些事情?他露出了那种征服全世界的微笑,说:“不,我宁愿做美国人心目中最邪恶的日本政客。你看过我的书《日本可以说不》?我依然要继续说不。”
原文:
Meet Japan's most controversial, most notorious politician.
TOKYO — These days, the name Shintaro Ishihara tends to provoke laughter in Japan. As Tokyo's controversial but popular governor from 1999 to 2012, he enraged the Chinese by attempting to purchase the Senkaku Islands, a small group of windswept rocks in the East China Sea, that Beijing claims and calls the Diaoyu. He is now the co-head of the small and marginalized Restoration Party, an 80-year-old who will never again have a shot at becoming Prime Minister. An influential Japanese journalist smiled when I mentioned Ishihara, and said that last year's affair "was sad."
And yet, the mess he made continues to roil the region. Last September, the Japanese government, under Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, overruled Ishihara's attempt to purchase the Senkakus and instead nationalized them. China erupted in massive protests, and since then, tensions, have remained worryingly high, as both sides engage in behavior the other finds provocative. China flies military aircraft over Japanese territory, and Japan responds by scrambling fighter jets: in late October, this pattern repeated itself for three consecutive days. Current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Oct. 26 that if China "changes the status quo by force," then "it won't be able to emerge peacefully."
And on Oct. 31, China's Defense ministry accused the Japanese army of disrupting a Chinese live ammunition military drill. The high level of mistrust, sowed in part by Ishihara, means that a mistake could lead to a skirmish, or even a war.
In a half-dozen off-the-record meetings with senior Japanese government officials and policymakers in early September, the general view towards Ishihara was embarrassment expressed by an awkward laugh, followed by a small intake of breath, a shifting of the hands, an averting of the eyes. Ishihara has brought democratic, committedly pacifist Japan closer to war than at any point since 1945. "Ishihara has no power anymore," snorted one government official affiliated with Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, to which Ishihara formerly belonged, following up his comment with a wistful and self-conscious chuckle.
There is never anything awkward however, about the way Ishihara laughs -- a natural and comforting extension of his soft smile. Tall, imposing, and well-spoken, 23 years ago, an interviewer from Playboy called him "strikingly handsome," and noted that he was partial to Savile Row suits and Armani ties. Now 80 and a member of the lower house of Japan's Diet, or parliament, Ishihara is still attractive, in a way unique to certain men who have never admitted they're wrong.
It is hard to square his charismatic, nearly regal bearing with his outrageous views. "They will not stop at a few islands. After China hijacks the Senkakus, I am afraid of the eventuality where Japan becomes the second Tibet," he says, comparing the sparsely populated, impoverished region that fell to China in 1959 with the world's third-largest economy.
It is Sept. 4, and I am interviewing Ishihara with three other American journalists, in a conversation arranged by the non-profit Sasakawa Peace Foundation, which brought us to Japan. One of the journalists asks if he thinks that China will invade. "Yes, I think there is that possibility. First it would be Okinawa," he says. I refrain from mentioning that this island group in Southern Japan is where the United States maintains the bulk of the 38,000 military personnel it has stationed in the country. "I wonder how much risk China is willing to take to invade Japan," says Ishihara. "I am quite fearful of this."
If you're looking for an American parallel to Ishihara, think of him as an extreme version of Pat Buchanan, the Nixon speechwriter and right-wing pundit who has labeled white Americans "an endangered species." And like evangelical preacher Pat Robertson, who blamed Hurricane Katrina on U.S. abortion policy, Ishihara said the March 2011 Japanese tsunami that washed away thousands of people was "divine punishment" for Japanese selfishness. Indeed, Ishihara has a knack for incendiary statements: No U.S. politician could have weathered the political storm that would have rained down after making such comments as people who are going to commit suicide should just "get it over with" and "it is a waste and a sin that women who have lost their reproductive capabilities are alive." Atsushi Kobayashi, a 34-year-old business owner and Tokyo resident, says Ishihara "gets things done, and sometime he has good results, but he says a lot of problematic statements. I don't have a good image of Ishihara as a person."
And yet Ishihara had a long and fruitful political career. He ruled Japan's most important city -- its political and economic capital -- for longer than Michael Bloomberg's soon to be ending 12-year tenure. Tobias Harris, a Japanese political researcher, thinks Ishihara survived for so long because of his competence -- he is an effective fundraiser and good judge of character, but also because of the prominence he attained for being in the public eye for nearly six decades. "There's a certain artfulness in how he acts," he said. Noriko Hama, a professor of economics at Kyoto's Doshisha University, told the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Post that Ishihara "appeals to the kind of people who don't want to worry about their lives, who like to be told what they should be thinking and why." He's popular, she said, because he has the ability to "hypnotize people into intellectual laziness."
This is bizarre because Ishihara, like his successor Naoki Inose, is a popular and well-regarded author. Born in 1932 to the manager of a shipping company, at the age of 24, Ishihara won the Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan's most prestigious literary awards, for his novel Season of the Sun. That same year, three of his books were turned into films. Ishihara, who covered the Vietnam War for a Japanese newspaper in 1967, a year before entering politics, kept writing fiction and non-fiction throughout his career. His best-known book is probably The Japan That Can Say No, co-written with the then chairman of Sony Corporation Akio Morita, which argues that Japan should be more assertive in its relationship with the United States. Ishihara's brother Yujiro became a famous actor, while Ishihara himself made a few films, then stopped. "If I had remained a movie director, I can assure you that I would have at least become a better one than Akira Kurosawa," he told Playboy. Instead, he became a politician, winning a series of parliamentary elections, before being elected governor of Tokyo in 1999.
Ishihara, who denigrated the French language, claimed to "hate" Mickey Mouse, and stated that Tokyo's World War II campaigns saved Asia from colonization by white people, reserves a special brand of opprobrium for the Chinese. He has denied the Rape of Nanking, and sometimes refers to the Chinese with a derogatory name used during World War II. He said he visited Beijing for the 2008 Olympics, but didn't meet with any Chinese there, because "I didn't think there was anything I could learn." He said he doesn't want to go back to China because he feared "he'd get poisoned."
Ishihara understands his Japanese audience, but simply refuses to, or "cannot fathom," how non-Japanese will receive his statements, says a Western diplomat familiar with the matter, who asked to speak anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue. Atsushi put it more politely. "Most Japanese politicians and governors say things without causing a commotion, but Ishihara is very direct," he said.
No one in the diplomatic community even bothered "to try to justify" Ishihara's behavior in trying to purchase the Senkakus, said the Western diplomat. "It was so obvious to everyone" that what he did showed a blatant disregard for international norms.
Everything felt very normal, however, in Ishihara's quiet meeting room in his office in the Diet. Two of my last questions to Ishihara were, in retrospect, softballs. Does he regret any of his controversial statements? Would he like to set the record straight, looking back on the end of a long career? "No," he said, baring his world-eating smile. "So I am the most notorious Japanese politician in the United States. You know that book I published -- Japan Can Say No? I want to continue saying no."
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