was a Japanese intellectual and professor emeritus of literature at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo, Japan.
Nishio was awarded a degree in German literature and a PhD in literature from the University of Tokyo. He translated the works of Friedrich Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer into Japanese and wrote over seventy published works and over thirty translations.[1]
Nishio, who was regarded as a rightist intellectual,[2] [3] was the head of the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (新しい歴史教科書を作る会, Atarashii Rekishi Kyokasho wo Tsukuru Kai). This was founded in January 1997 by right-wing scholars and cartoonists to devise a new Japanese history textbook because they considered existing ones to be "self-torturing".[4] Nishio had a wide following in Japan.[5] He was quoted as saying "Why should Japan be the only country that should teach kids -- 12- to 15-year-old kids -- bad things about itself? I think it is ridiculous, and very sad and tragic that Japan cannot write its own patriotic history. We lost the war, and a fantasy was born that by talking bad about yourself, you can strengthen your position. I call that masochistic".
He opposed immigration into Japan because he believed it would cause social disorganisation and threaten social cohesion; the subtitle of one of his works is "foreign workers will destroy Japan". Nishio claimed "This is not necessarily an economic problem. Frankly speaking, it is a problem of ‘cultural defense’".[6]
Nishio died on November 1, 2024, at the age of 89.[7]