Staff writer
He says no to the central government, no to what he calls a one-sided security alliance between Japan and the United States, and he promises to say no to "inept municipal bureaucrats and the politicians who follow them."
The book "The Japan That Can Say No," which he cowrote in 1989 with then Sony Corp. Chairman Akio Morita, did not become a best seller for being polite. "Yes or no, I say what I need to," Shintaro Ishihara said before a large crowd gathered before the metropolitan government building on the opening day of his campaign for the April 11 Tokyo gubernatorial election.