Matt Treyvaud Wrote:Ishii is not the first Japanese author to fake a foreign nationality. Inukai Yūichi 犬飼裕一 has argued that pretending to be a foreigner in order to criticize Japanese society is “a tradition” in Japan. One of the best-known examples of this trend is Yamamoto Shichihei 山本七平, who used the pen name “Isaiah Ben-Dasan” in the 1970s to publish the Nihonjin to Yudayajin 『日本人とユダヤ人』 (”The Japanese and the Jews”) and attack Honda Katsuichi 本多勝一’s Asahi Shimbun series on the Asia-Pacific War. A few years later, Fujishima Taisuke 藤島泰輔 began his twenty-volume-plus Fushiji no kuni nippon 『不思議の国ニッポン』 (”Wonderland Japan”) series under the name “Paul Bonet.”