Tarō Asō

Tarō Asō

Tarō Asō ( Japanese 麻 生 太郎 , Asō Tarō ; born September 20, 1940 in Iizuka , Fukuoka Prefecture ) is a Japanese politician and member of the Shūgiin , the lower house, for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Within the LDP, he leads the Asō faction . From September 2008 to September 2009 he was the 59th Prime Minister of Japan and LDP Chairman and has been Minister of Finance since December 2012 . He is also a special advisor to the ultra -nationalist Nippon Kaigi .

Life

Asō is a graduate of Gakushūin University . After several years in the management of the family company Asō , for which he also worked for two years in Sierra Leone , in 1978 he became chairman of the Japan Junior Chamber , an interest group for young entrepreneurs.

At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montréal , he took part as a marksman in the skeet competition and finished 41st place.

In 1979 he was elected to the House of Commons in the five-mandate constituency 2 of Fukuoka Prefecture and since then - since 1996 in the single constituency of Fukuoka 8 - he has been re-elected ten times as a member of parliament. Only from 1983 to 1986 he was not a member of the Shūgiin, after he had received only the sixth highest share of the vote among six candidates in the 1983 election .

Since the beginning of the 1990s, Asō increasingly assumed leadership positions in committees, as parliamentary state secretary ( seimujikan ) and in party bodies of the LDP, in 1996 Asō was appointed to the cabinet for the first time as head of the economic planning authority . Under Prime Minister Jun'ichirō Koizumi he was first chairman of the Policy Affairs Research Council (abbreviated: PARC, Japanese 政務 調査 会 , seimu chōsa kai ), a key body of the LDP, from 2003 then Minister of the Interior . From October 2005 to August 2007 he was his country's foreign minister. In 2006 Aso founded the Ikōkai, the Asō faction, from the Kōno group ( Taiyūkai ) of Yōhei Kōno . In 2007 Asō was LDP general secretary for a short time.

For the first time in 2001 Asō ran for the LDP party chairmanship, to which the office of prime minister is usually linked. He was clearly defeated by Jun'ichirō Koizumi and Hashimoto Ryūtarō . His candidacies against Shinzo Abe in 2006 and against Yasuo Fukuda in 2007 were also unsuccessful.

With the replacement of the party and government offices on August 1, 2008, the prime minister and party chairman Yasuo Fukuda Asō appointed for the second time as LDP general secretary. After Fukuda's resignation, Asō won the election of the LDP chairman on September 22, 2008 with 351 of 527 votes. On September 24, he was elected by the House of Commons against the vote of the House of Lords, which voted for DPJ Chairman Ichirō Ozawa , with 337 of 478 votes as the new Prime Minister of Japan.

After the LDP regained government responsibility in December 2012, Shinzō Abe took him over to his cabinet as Minister of Finance, Minister for the Financial Sector and Deputy Prime Minister .

Reign

Asō as Prime Minister at the 2009 World Economic Forum

His term as Prime Minister began with the presentation of his cabinet in the Kantei . The cabinet consisted of five non-party ministers. Takeo Kawamura was given the key post as chief cabinet secretary , Hirofumi Nakasone became foreign minister and Shōichi Nakagawa took over the finance ministry . The first minister, Infrastructure Minister Nariaki Nakayama , resigned after four days because of statements in an interview on his assumption of office. Finance Minister Shōichi Nakagawa resigned on February 17, 2009 after appearing drunk and apparently drunk before the press at a G7 Finance Ministers meeting. Overall, the cabinet lost three ministers and a total of four "vice ministers" and parliamentary state secretaries during Asō's tenure .

Foreign policy

After taking office, Asō traveled to New York on September 25 for his foreign policy debut to address the General Assembly of the United Nations. An important task in the field of foreign policy was the extension of the anti-terrorism law, on the basis of which Japan is participating in Operation Enduring Freedom with refueling ships in the Indian Ocean . It was passed on December 12, 2008 by a vote in the lower house with a two-thirds majority against the upper house . For this purpose, Asō had extended the session of the parliament until December 25th. Meanwhile, the controversial air self-defense force in Iraq expired in December 2008. On December 25, Asō's government announced plans to change the law to allow Japanese anti-pirate ships to be sent off the Somali coast . The law required for this was finally passed in June 2009: According to the government's interpretation, no parliamentary approval is required for individual anti-piracy missions by the marine self- defense forces and the use of military force to combat pirates as a "police act" ( 「警察 行動」 ) does not violate the Constitution . As early as March 2009, the government sent a task force based on the Law on Self-Defense Forces, which allows this only to protect Japanese ships and citizens.

Relations with the Asian neighbors were in the meantime strained in October 2008 by the publication of a revisionist article by the Chief of Staff of the Air Self-Defense Forces, Toshio Tamogami . Tamogami was quickly removed from office and discharged from the armed forces.

A focus of Aso's foreign policy activity was relations with the Republic of Korea. He met President Lee Myung-bak more than five times, with a focus on closer economic ties and coordinated policies to combat the economic crisis. No concrete agreements could be reached on a common policy towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea because of the nuclear program and the issue of kidnapped Japanese citizens. President Lee explicitly refrained from demanding an apology for colonial rule or compensation for the use of Korean forced laborers - including in Aso's family businesses - from Japan.

Domestic politics

The approval (blue) and rejection rate (red) of Asō's cabinet

Asō's domestic political priority was overcoming the economic crisis in the wake of the international financial and real estate crisis. New elections demanded by the opposition to confirm his inauguration by the people would have to be postponed in favor of achieving this goal, in particular through the adoption of the regular and additional budgets for 2008 and 2009 with extensive economic stimulus programs. On the occasion of a failed application by the Democratic Party in the lower house for dissolution and new elections on December 24, 2008, Asō ruled out new elections soon. The 2009 general election had to be held in autumn 2009 at the latest. After the devastating LDP defeat in the parliamentary elections in Tokyo prefecture on July 12, 2009, Asō dissolved the lower house. The elections on August 30th ended in the clear defeat of his ruling coalition. On September 16, 2009, Asō and his cabinet resigned after a final cabinet meeting prior to the election of Yukio Hatoyama as his successor. As his successor as party chairman, Sadakazu Tanigaki was elected on September 28, 2009 (Tanigaki 300 votes, Tarō Kōno 144 and Yasutoshi Nishimura 54).

After Asō's inauguration, the approval rate of his cabinet had fallen by the beginning of December 2008, according to surveys by the Yomiuri Shimbun from 50% to 20.9% - the values ​​of Yasuo Fukuda were comparably low four months earlier. In January 2009, the rejection rate exceeded 70%. Asō was thus the most unpopular Prime Minister since Yoshirō Mori 2001. Asō's one-time payments to consumers, which were supposed to stimulate the economy by paying out 2 trillion yen (around 16 billion euros) to households, met with widespread rejection. Against the opposition and individual politicians from the governing coalition, the second supplementary budget 2008 with the payout program ( teigaku kyōfukin , "fixed payout") was passed by a two-thirds majority in the lower house in March 2009. At the same time, the regular budget for fiscal year 2009, which began in April, was the largest in Japanese history at 88 trillion yen . The first additional budget approved in May 2009 also set a new record with a further 14 trillion yen for employment, health policy and financial market measures. Despite the spending programs, the OECD forecast a contraction of the Japanese economy by more than six percent for 2009 in June 2009, but revised its growth forecast for 2010 upwards to 0.7%. According to later statistics from the Cabinet Office , the recession in Japan ended in March 2009. A rise in value added tax planned for 2011 also met resistance in the LDP.

Other domestic political tasks were consumer protection and food safety as well as dealing with a pension scandal that had been smoldering since 2007, in which records of pension claims of over 1.4 million citizens were incorrectly registered with the authorities. The responsible Minister of Social Affairs Yōichi Masuzoe was the longest continuously incumbent minister in the cabinet. A reform project Asōs was the fight against the Amakudari , the change of high officials in the private sector or to semi-public institutions ( watari ).

family

The family coat of arms ( Kamon ) of the Asō clan

Tarō Asō's wife Chikako is the daughter of former Prime Minister Zenkō Suzuki . Her brother Shun'ichi Suzuki is a member of the LDP ( Koga faction ) House of Lords . Aso's father, Takakichi, was the post-war MP and head of the family business that now runs Taro's younger brother Yutaka . Tarō Asō's maternal grandfather is former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida , his great-grandfather the Lord Seal Keeper and Foreign Minister Count Makino Nobuaki , his great-great-grandfather Ōkubo Toshimichi a key figure in the Meiji Restoration and later Minister of the Interior. Another great-grandfather of Asō was Vice Count Kanō Hisayoshi , whose great-grandson Gaku Hashimoto was a member of the Shūgiin for the LDP (Tsushima faction) until 2009.

Tarō Asō is the brother of Princess Tomohito of Mikasa , b. Nobuko Asō, wife of the late Prince Tomohito of Mikasa , a son of Prince Takahito of Mikasas and as such closely associated with the Japanese imperial family.

Tarō Asō is Catholic . He recently left open whether he was a practicing Christian. His family has been a member of the Church for four generations.

Family table

Ōkubo Toshimichi

Mishima Michitsune

Makino Nobuaki

Mineko

Asō Takichi

Kanō Hisayoshi

Yukiko

Yoshida Shigeru

Asō Tarō

Natsuko

Kanō Hisaakira

Yoshida Ken'ichi

Kazuko

Asō Takakichi

Suzuki Zenko

Nakamura Hisatsugu

Tomohito from Mikasa

Nobuko Asō

Tarō Asō

Chikako

Shun'ichi Suzuki

Kumiko

Ryūtaro Hashimoto

Princess Akiko

Princess Yōko

Gaku Hashimoto

Web links

Commons : Tarō Asō  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official Website (Japanese)
• Brief résumé on the website of the Japanese Cabinet (English)
• Short résumé on the website of the Ministry of the Interior (English)
• Short biography on the website of the Foreign Ministry (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Most influential right-wing pressure group in Japan. In: The Straits Times . May 2, 2017, accessed January 23, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Tarō Asō in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
3. ↑ Masami Itō, Kazuaki Nagata: Aso gets quick start, names new Cabinet. In: The Japan Times. September 24, 2008, accessed September 24, 2008 . 
4. ^ Masami Itō: Ruling parties force antiterrorism, bank funding bills through Diet. In: The Japan Times. December 13, 2008, accessed December 29, 2008 . 
5. ^ Japan ends five-year Iraq mission. In: BBC News. December 18, 2008, accessed December 29, 2008 . 
6. ↑ AFP, December 29, 2008: Japan PM orders preparations for Somalia mission
7. ↑ MSDF may get antipiracy duty off Somalia. In: The Japan Times / Kyodo News. December 26, 2008, accessed December 29, 2008 . 
8. ↑ Masami Itō: Antipiracy bill set to be enacted. In: The Japan Times . June 19, 2009, accessed June 26, 2009 . 
9. ↑ Kantei : 麻 生 内閣 総 理 大臣 の 談話 （海賊 行為 の 処罰 及 び 海賊 行為 へ の 対 処 に 関 す る 法律 の 成立） , provisional English translation Statement by Prime Minister Taro Aso on the Enactment of the Law on the Penalization of Acts against Acts of Piracy
10. ^ Antipiracy task force heads for Somalia. In: The Japan Times . March 15, 2009, accessed June 26, 2009 . 
11. ↑ calls on Seoul to help address crisis. In: The Japan Times . January 12, 2009, accessed January 16, 2009 . 
12. ^ Mariko Yasumoto: North not priority of summiteers, Obama. In: The Japan Times . January 12, 2009, accessed January 16, 2009 . 
13. ^ Japan and Korea Vow Unity on Economic Slump. In: The New York Times . January 12, 2009, accessed January 16, 2009 . 
14. ↑ Masami Itō: Ruling Extra budget first, general election later: Aso. In: The Japan Times. October 7, 2008, accessed December 29, 2008 . 
15. ↑ Japan PM rules out snap election. In: BBC News. December 25, 2008, accessed December 29, 2008 . 
16. ↑ Nikkei, September 16: 麻 生 内閣 が 総 辞職 、 最後 の 首相 談話 「新 新 内閣 は 的確 な 国 政 を」
17. ↑ Defeated Japan LDP picks ex-finance minister as leader. In: Thomson Reuters . September 28, 2009, accessed January 23, 2018 . 
18. ↑ 支持 率 急 落 、 首相 「非常 に 厳 し い 数字」 . In: Yomiuri Shimbun . December 8, 2008, archived from the original on December 11, 2008 ; Retrieved December 29, 2008 (Japanese). 
19. ^ Philippa Fogarty: Gaffes put Japan's Aso under fire. In: BBC News. December 9, 2008, accessed December 29, 2008 . 
20. ↑ Aso Cabinet disapproval jumps to 72% / Rate worst for a cabinet in 8 years. (No longer available online.) In: Yomiuri Shimbun . January 12, 2009, formerly in the original ; accessed on January 12, 2009 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
21. ↑ Cabinet approval below 20%. In: The Japan Times . January 12, 2009, accessed January 12, 2009 . 
22. ↑ Kazuaki Nagata: Handouts passed; Aso wins breather. In: The Japan Times . March 5, 2009, accessed June 24, 2009 . 
23. ↑ Kazuaki Nagata: Ruling bloc rams '09 budget through Diet. In: The Japan Times . March 28, 2009, accessed June 24, 2009 . 
24. ↑ Masami Itō, Alex Martin: Ruling coalition rams through record ¥ 14 trillion extra budget. In: The Japan Times . May 30, 2009, accessed June 24, 2009 . 
25. ↑ OECD: Japan GDP May Shrink 6.8% In '09; Rise 0.7% In '10. (No longer available online.) In: nikkei.com . June 24, 2009, archived from the original on July 22, 2009 ; accessed on June 24, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
26. ↑ Last recession ended in March '09. In: The Japan Times . June 7, 2010, accessed June 7, 2010 . 
27. ↑ 1.44 million pension records corrupted. In: The Japan Times / Kyodo News. October 4, 2008, accessed December 29, 2008 . 
28. ↑ Aso seeks 'amakudari' ban in '09. New Cabinet secretariat bureau to handle civil servant management under four-year plan. In: The Japan Times . February 4, 2009, accessed February 4, 2009 . 
29. ^ Asos family tree
30. ↑ Japan: Taro Aso elected premier . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . September 24, 2008. Retrieved February 3, 2011.