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