精神年齢１２歳の苛めっ子 Ishihara no different to those 12-year-old bullies

Financial Times

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

April 13, 2000

From Ko Unoki

Sir, The recent xenophobic outburst against immigrants by Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, brings back memories of my schooldays in Japan, where I was severely bullied by fellow Japanese students just for the fact that I was brought up in the United States and did not know the language or the "Japanese way" of doing things.

It simply saddens and embarrasses me as a Japanese to think that, after so many years on from my days as a bullied student, we now have as governor of one of the largest cities in the world a bully who spews forth racial slurs under a veneer of intellectual sophistication that I find in substance no different from the ones that I received from 12-year-old kids.

Ko Unoki

Senior Fellow,

21st Century Public Policy Institute,

Otemachi Building 3F,

1-6-1 Otemachi,

Chiyoda-ku,

Tokyo 100-0004, Japan

石原慎太郎東京都知事による移民に対する排外主義的な発言によって、アメリカ育ちの私は、言葉も日本人の「やり方」も知らないということで、日本人の生徒たちからひどいいじめを受けた学生時代が思い出されます。

そのいじめられっ子時代から長い年月を経て、今、世界有数の大都市の知事として、知的洗練の皮をかぶった人種差別の言葉を吐くいじめっ子がいることを思うと、日本人としてただただ悲しく、恥ずかしく思う。