TOKYO: Former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has died, it was learned Tuesday. He was 89.

Ishihara, a native of the western Japan city of Kobe and a graduate of Hitotsubashi University, was also known as a novelist and served as a member of the Diet, Japan’s parliament.

He won the prestigious Akutagawa novel award for “Taiyo no Kisetsu” (Season of the Sun) in 1956 while he was a student of the Faculty of Law at the university. Later, he became known as a conservative critic.

Ishihara was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun in 2015.

His eldest son, Nobuteru, is former secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, his second son, Yoshizumi, is a famous television personality and his third son, Hirotaka, is an LDP lawmaker of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Diet. Ishihara’s late younger brother, Yujiro, was a movie star and singer.

JIJI Press