Hirofumi Yoshimura

Hirofumi Yoshimura (2018)

Hirofumi Yoshimura ( Japanese 吉 村 洋文 , Yoshimura Hirofumi ; born June 17, 1975 in Kawachi-Nagano , Osaka Prefecture ) is a Japanese politician and has been the governor of Osaka since 2019. Before that, he was mayor of Osaka City since 2015 . He is a member of the akasaka Ishin no Kai prefectural party of governor's predecessor Ichirō Matsui and mayor's predecessor Tōru Hashimoto , of which he was also chairman of the political research council in 2015 and has been vice chairman since 2019. He also holds the latter position in the national Nippon Ishin no Kai .

Before starting his active political career, Yoshimura had been a lawyer since 2000 and graduated from Kyūshū University in 1998. For the Osaka Ishin no Kai he was a member of the three-mandate constituency North District ( Kita-ku ) in the city parliament of Osaka from 2011 to 2014 , then from 2014 to 2015 for the associated national party ( Ishin no Tō → Ōsaka Ishin no Kai) a member of the Shūgiin , of the lower house of the national parliament, via the proportional electoral block Kinki - in the majority election he had lost the 4th constituency of the Osaka prefecture, which includes northern parts of the city of Osaka, relatively close to the Liberal Democrat Yasuhide Nakayama .

In May 2015, the first referendum on the so-called Ōsaka-to -Plan (Osaka-to-kōsō) pursued by the Ishin no Kai , the conversion of Osaka from a -fu ([historical: city] prefecture) to a - to ([~ metropolitan / capital] prefecture) like Tokyo , in which the Ōsaka-shi (city of Osaka) is abolished and replaced by "special districts" . After losing the vote, Tōru Hashimoto announced his retirement from the mayor's office for the regular election in November 2015, and Yoshimura would become the Ishin candidate for successor. He clearly won the 2015 mayoral election with a lead of around 190,000 votes against former city parliament member Akira Yanagimoto, who was supported by Liberal Democrats, Democrats and Communists.

In March 2019, Yoshimura resigned as mayor of the city and Matsui as governor of the prefecture at the same time in order to obtain a new mandate for a new referendum on the abolition of the city of Osaka in new elections at the same time as the prefectural and city parliament elections (part of the unified regional elections in April 2019 ) to win. In order to avoid so-called denaoshi perpendicular elections (~ "new beginning elections ") and to be elected for a full four years, Matsui ran for mayor and Yoshimura as prefectural governor. Yoshimura clearly won with around 64% of the vote against former lieutenant governor Tadakazu Konishi, who was supported by the established parties and the largest trade union federation Rengo.

Web links

• Yoshimura's website (Japanese)
• Osaka Prefectural Government website : Governor (Japanese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Yomiuri Shimbun : Shūgiin election results 2014, majority election / Osaka / constituency 4 ( memento of the original from October 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) 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. and proportional representation / Kinki / Ishin ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) 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.  
2. ↑ Eric Johnston: Matsui, Yoshimura claim win in Osaka double election. In: The Japan Times . November 22, 2015, accessed March 2, 2017 . 
3. ↑ City of Osaka: Results of past mayoral elections , voter turnout and 2015 results (Japanese)