Published in Japan Forward 20/5/2022
In September 1973, Ishihara and his wife travelled to Scotland where he led an all-Japanese team in search of the Loch Ness monster. Candidates had been recruited through an advertisement in a sports newspaper. Altogether, three thousand people applied, with the numbers being whittled down to eleven, two women and nine men.
It was a considerable operation, using the latest technology of the time. The Nessie hunters spent two months exploring the mysterious Loch, clocking a total of 70 hours underwater at temperatures close to freezing point. According to one team-member, the precipitate-rich water was as murky as coffee.
Nessie, Yoshio Kou and Ishihara: Tokyo press conference
The future Governor of Tokyo was strongly encouraged in his efforts by a future prime minister, Takeo Fukuda, who was likely instrumental in raising the necessary funds from friendly companies. Reportedly, the total cost of the expedition was Yen 150 million in 1973 money, which is equivalent to Yen 390 million or $3 million today.
THE KAKU-FUKU WAR
As a young bureaucrat, Fukuda had been seconded to the Japanese embassy in London in the 1930s. He had fond memories of the worldwide excitement when some blurry photos of the monster were published in the British press.
More to the point, he had strong current-day political motivation for backing the project. An establishment man to his fingertips, he was locked in a battle for control of the governing Liberal Democratic Party with Kakuei Tanaka, a brilliant, but more than usually corrupt populist.
If Fukuda wanted to win the “Kaku-Fuku war”, he would need to match Tanaka’s undoubted charisma with some star power on his side. Ishihara had that in spades.
Manga depiction of the “Kakufuku war”; Tanaka on the left, Fukuda on the right
Ishihara had been an elected parliamentarian since 1968, but in the much less powerful Upper House, home to several celebrities who contributed little to political debate. His ambitions were much bigger than that. He was already committed to resigning and standing for election in the Lower House, where all the political heavyweights sat.
He had somewhat modified his political views, or at least the way he expressed them. In his late twenties, he had opposed the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. Indeed, he was a founding member of the “Young Japan Society”, an anti-Treaty organisation which included such radical luminaries as composer Toru Takemitsu, novelist Kenzaburo Oe and Shuji Terayama, the Pied Piper of the Japanese underground. Now that he was a serious politician, Ishihara accepted the presence of the American military as a necessary evil.
From Fukuda’s point of view, the key point was that Ishihara detested Kakuei Tanaka and the crude “money politics” that he represented. And indeed when the prosecutors finally nailed Tanaka in 1977, Fukuda became Prime Minister and Ishihara was given the cabinet post of Minister of the Environment.
Ishihara’s best-seller about Tanaka
In 2016, he was to change his assessment of Tanaka, Although suffering from the aftereffects of a stroke that prevented him from writing by hand, Ishihara published a novelized version of Tanaka’s life called “Genius”. The book, which sold over 900,000 copies, lauded Tanaka’s achievements and ascribed his downfall to American scheming.
THE AMAZING MR. KOU
Why did Ishihara take on the Loch Ness project? The short answer is because of the persuasive skills of impresario and Ishihara friend, Yoshio Kou.
A half-Chinese, half-Japanese graduate of the University of Tokyo’s philosophy department, Kou has a bottomless barrel of chutzpah and is still very much active today. In the nineteen seventies, he was in his prime, coming up with a series of ever more outrageous stunts.
The best known is the 1977 match-up between boxing legend Muhammed Ali and Antonio Inoki, Japan’s number one professional wrestler at the time. Honours were shared as Inoki spent most of the time crawling on the ground while Ali kicked him in the shins.
More controversial was the saga of “Oliver-kun” (“young Oliver”), supposedly a “humanzee” with chromosomes that made him a missing link between chimps and humans. Kou flew Oliver to Japan on a chartered plane in 1976 and lodged him in a V.I.P. suite at an expensive hotel. Sensationally, Kou had advertised for young ladies to further the cause of science by attempting to reproduce with Oliver. The promised success fee was Yen 10 million (Yen 26 million, or $200,000 in today’s money).
Dozens of applications were received but the authorities swiftly moved to halt the experiment, as Kou very well knew they would. As far as he was concerned, it was already mission accomplished. He had set off a media firestorm and cashed in hugely.
Manga depiction of Oliver with Yoshio Kou
His next project was a fight between a karate champion and a tiger, to be held in Haiti, the only place willing to stage the event. The way Kou tells the story, he was in Port-au-Prince with the karate-ka and the tiger when a last minute intervention by animal-lover Brigitte Bardot caused the contest to be cancelled.
Likewise, his other brainwave, a fight between Antonio Inoki and Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, was derailed by a coup d’état.
Oliver, believed to have been born in the Congo in 1960, passed away in 2012. It comes as no surprise to learn that he was just a regular chimpanzee.
TALES OF MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE
Kou would have had little difficulty in persuading Ishihara to hunt the Loch Ness monster because at the time adventure was in the air. Popular heroes were people like Naomi Uemura, the first man to reach the North Pole solo, the first to raft the Amazon solo and the first to climb Mount McKinley (now called Denari) solo.
Then there was Kenichi Horie who became the first man to make a solo non-stop Pacific crossing by sail. He did it at the age of 21, docking in San Francisco with no passport and no money.
Ishihara himself had been head of operations for daredevil skier Yuichiro Miura’s astonishing descent of Mount Everest’s Southern Col, memorialized in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Man who Skied Down Everest.”
Back in 1960, Ishihara had created his own adventure, leading a 10,000 kilometre coast-to-coast rally across the South American continent, using Subaru “Rabbit” scooters.
Ishihara loved unlikely adventures, but there was more to it than that. In keeping with the spirit of the age, like many of his contemporaries, he was fascinated by supernatural and inexplicable phenomena as well. He was a member of the JFSA (Japan Flying Saucer Research Association), as was his senpai (senior) Yukio Mishima, whose novel Beautiful Star is about a family of aliens living in Saitama.
Publicity-savvy Kou marketed the Loch Ness project as “the democratization of adventuring,” given that most of the team were ordinary citizens – including a student and a night-club singer. Not everyone was convinced. “What an idiotic way to spend money,” sniffed the Voice of the People, Voice of Heaven column in the Asahi Shimbun, as self-righteous as ever.
The reaction of the British media was worse. Channelling the jovial racism of the day, one publication introduced the story with “Nips Nab Nessie.” Likewise, there was a frosty reception from British monster-hunters, a set of eccentrics who guarded the object of their obsession with jealousy.
#OnThisDay 1973: Nationwide visited a team who wanted to capture some of the 15 Loch Ness Monsters as a wedding present for Princess Anne. pic.twitter.com/i5bcD1snny
— BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) October 5, 2019
In the end, no monster was found, just a large eel. Ishihara described the experience in a long and entertaining article for Bungei Shunju which touched on many themes dear to his heart.
Europeans disrespected all non-whites, he declared. There would have been no brouhaha about the expedition if the monster-hunters had been German. Referencing the controversy over Emperor Hirohito’s UK visit of 1971, he doubted that Queen Elizabeth would apologize for the Opium Wars if she visited China.
Yes, the supersonic Concorde was impressive, but what about Morgan sportscars, much loved by snobby Japanese Anglophiles? Ishihara had bought one and it kept breaking down.
On the monster itself, Ishihara starts as a sceptic: almost certainly the creature does not exist, but as long as there remains a tiny possibility, it is worth searching. After all, it was only a few decades ago that the coelacanth, previously assumed long extinct, was found alive in the depths of the Indian Ocean.
On Loch Ness: Ishihara and his wife at centre
As time passes, he moves to a more philosophical position. The monster has become part of the culture of the area and the local people take it seriously – just as the Japanese find nothing odd or amusing about the twenty-year cycle of rebuilding Ise Shrine to rehouse the deity.
The unvarnished authenticity of the local lads who help the Japanese team with their equipment impressed him deeply. Hence the last line of his essay – “Yes, there is a monster alive in the waters of Loch Ness.”
That was the last Japan would see of Ishihara the Hemingway-esque adventurer. His life was about to change dramatically as he plunged into the world of high politics.
Regarding Japan’s amazing solo adventurers, Kenichi Hori, is just completing another Pacific crossing at the age of 83.
Yuichiro Miura climbed Everest at the age of 80 in 2013, setting a record that will be tough to beat. In April 2022, he retired from his position as headmaster of the Clark Memorial High School in Hokkaido.
Naomi Uemura died in 1984 on McKinley, attempting a second conquest of the mountain in mid-winter. After reaching the summit, he disappeared on the descent. His body has never been found.
Uemura on the way to the North Pole
To be continued