Hajime Yoshikawa

Hajime Yoshikawa ( Japanese 吉川 元 , Yoshikawa Hajime ; born September 28, 1966 in Marugame , Kanagawa Prefecture ) is a Japanese politician of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), member of  the Shūgiin , the lower house of the national parliament , for the Kyūshū proportional representation and vice chairman his party. From 2018 to 2020 he was Secretary General.

Life

Yoshikawa was born on September 28, 1966 in Marugame in Kanagawa Prefecture and studied until 1990 at the Faculty of Economics at Kobe University . He then joined the Socialist Party of Japan (SPJ) and worked for the party's youth association ( 日本 社会主義 青年 同盟 , Nihon Shakaishugi Seinen Dōmei ; about "Socialist Youth Association of Japan"). He did not participate in the founding of the Democratic Party in 1996 and joined the Social Democratic Party, which emerged from the renaming of the SPJ. From 2007 Yoshikawa worked as a journalist for the party newspaper Shakai Shinpō ( 社会 新 報 ) and in 2008 became secretary of the SDP lower house representative Yasumasa Shigeno .

He switched to active politics in the Shūgiin election in 2012 , when he took over from Shigeno in December of that year in the 2nd constituency of Ōita prefecture . Yoshikawa initially withdrew his candidacy due to pneumonia and an ischemic stroke in November 2012, but agreed to do so shortly afterwards. While he was clearly defeated in the constituency by the LDP candidate Seishirō Etō (Etō 51.4%; Yoshikawa 25.4%), he drew with a sekihairitsu ("loss rate") of 49.4% as the only SDP candidate nationwide via a proportional representation into the lower house. In the 2014 and 2017 elections , he was re-elected by proportional representation. In February 2018, he was promoted to general secretary of the party after the previous general secretary Seiji Mataichi had been  appointed party chairman. When Mataichi retired in February 2020 and Mizuho Fukushima was elected chairman, Yoshikawa was replaced by Tadatomo Yoshida and is now at the same time vice chairman, PARC chairman and chairman of the parliamentary affairs committee.

Web links

• Profile on the website of the Social Democratic Party (Japanese)