Dietman Taizo Sugimura an Idiot After All? (At least he is an admitted plagiarizer)May 23rd, 2006 by Adamu |
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Speaking of book news:
Young LDP Diet member Taizo Sugimura (PR, South Kanto) has admitted that a post on his personal blog was plagiarized from the autobiography You Aren’t an Idiot After All. ZAKZAK has the story:
This Time Taizo is Suspected of Plagiarism…Just before his marriage
Blog Post Closely Resembles Popular Yoyogi Seminar Teacher’s Autobiography
A post on Lower House member Taizo Sugimura (age 26)’s blog was found to closely resemble the autobiography of popular teacher at the famous exam preparation school Yoyogi Seminar (Keisuke Yoshino, age 39). (Sugimura has since admitted to the plagiarism).
The blog post, uploaded at 11:32pm on May 10, starts out “It was my last night as a single man.” Sugimura describes that when he was 19, he “seriously hated myself,” went to a snowy mountain to kill himself, and “lay down on the snow, quietly waiting for death.” However, he returned to his car after being unable to withstand the cold. He tried going outside again, but ended up going home after thinking “At this rate I’ll catch a cold!”
Yoshino’s memoirs, You Aren’t an Idiot After All, were published in 1991 and were reprinted in paperback. A passage in the book, in which the 19-year-old author attempts suicide by going to the Shigakogen plateau, and after going in and out of his car a few times returns home after realizing he’d catch a cold – the resemblance is consistent even in the story’s punchline.
Yoshino, a former biker gang member, participated in a discussion group for NEETs (people Not in Employment, Education, or Training) held by Sugimura. During the discussion, Yoshino reportedly told that story.
The eery resemblance became a topic of discussion on the Internet, and by May 23 the offending passages were deleted.
(liberally abstracted from ZAKZAK 2006/05/23)
Thank god for the Internet. If you watch the video in which he admits to the plagiarism, you’ll notice just how little he seems to care that he’s a freaking dumbass for ripping off a popular book.
It sounds like he thinks it’s all over since he just deleted the passages in question. Doesn’t he realize it’s too late?
November 4th, 2006 at 2:38 am
[...] As far as I know, only two members’ websites have earned much recognition – those of members Taizo Sugimura and Hiroshige Seko (site included in LDP Upper House feeds). These two men have had strikingly divergent fates since being elected. Sugimura, who at 26 became one of the youngest Diet members ever when he earned a surprise proportional representation win due to the LDP’s landslide performance in last year’s lower house election. Thing is, he didn’t really have any special qualifications – he was an unemployed college dropout when he applied at the LDP to run for office on their ticket. Apparently then-LDP Secretary General Tsutomu Takebe simply liked the cut of his jib, and Sugimura was sold as a youthful representative of the millions of lollygagging young people in Japan known as “NEETs.” Since taking office “Taizo-kun” has managed to bungle one thing after another, making inappropriate comments like “when can we start eating at gourmet restaurants?” plagiarizing blog posts, and even making a mess of his own marriage proposal (covered here). Thankfully, these all took place during a time when a young DPJ member was screwing up on an even grander scale – formally accusing the LDP of Livedoor-related corruption with forged proof. Currently Sugimura’s site is down (probably on orders from above) and it’s unclear whether he’ll be running with the LDP’s blessing next time around. [...]