Shuntarō Torigoe

Shuntaro Torigoe, born in 1940 in Ukiha, Fukuoka, and educated at Kyoto University, spent decades as a journalist and news anchor before moving into political activism. The safest career move for a television newsreader is to stay a transparent pane of glass: report, nod, never let the audience guess what you actually believe. Torigoe did the opposite. He kept his opinions in view and eventually stepped out of the studio and into politics, which guarantees you will be admired and resented by roughly equal numbers of people. I do not think you can evaluate a figure like that on likeability. What strikes me is the willingness to accept the cost. Commentary from a safe distance is cheap; putting your name on a position where it can be defeated in public is not. Whether or not you agree with where he landed, he did not spend his later years hedging, and that is rarer in broadcast journalism than it should be.

Name (English)

Shuntarō Torigoe

Name (Japanese)

鳥越俊太郎

Reading

とりごえ しゅんたろう

Born

March 13, 1940 (age 86)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Dragon

Origin

Ukiha, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

journalist

University

Kyoto University

• Official sitehttps://shuntorigoe.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/shun.torigoe/
• Xhttps://x.com/shuntorigoe
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuntaro%20Torigoe
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%B3%A5%E8%B6%8A%E4%BF%8A%E5%A4%AA%E9%83%8E
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11675136

Tags

• Fukuoka Prefecture
• journalist

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.