Nishanta (18 July 1969-), born Jayasinghe Arachilage Thusitha Devapriya Nishantha, was a Sri Lankan-Japanese liberal politician who was affiliated with the Democratic Party for the People. In 2019, he mounted a failed bid for the House of Councillors.
Biography[]
Jayasinghe Arachilage Thusitha Devapriya Nishantha was born in Kandy, Sri Lanka on 18 July 1969, and he came to Japan in 1987 as a student and ultimately decided to become a permanent resident along with his family. At the age of 39, he married a Japanese woman, although his wife's parents objected to him because of their concerns about their future mixed-race grandchildren being bullied, because Nishanta's willingness to abandon his home country made them worry that he might one day abandon his wife and children, and because they believed that he had abandoned his parents' graves, which was against Buddhist teaching. He went on to become a university professor and a Japanese citizen in 2005, and, in 2019, he ran for the House of Councillors as a DPFP candidate in Osaka. He was ultimately unsuccessful, placing in 7th.