Shigeru Ishiba

Shigeru Ishiba (2013)

Shigeru Ishiba ( Japanese 石 破 茂 Ishiba Shigeru ; born February 4, 1957 in Kōge , Yazu County , Tottori Prefecture ) is a Japanese politician, former Minister of Defense and former Secretary General of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Since 1986 he has been a member of the House of Commons for the 1st constituency of Tottori Prefecture. Within the LDP, he used to belong to the Nukaga faction and has been leading the Ishiba faction since 2015 .

Life

Ishiba studied law at Keiō University and after graduating, worked for Mitsui Bank (now Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group ). In 1986 he was elected to the lower house in the four-mandate constituency of Tottori, which included the entire prefecture. Since 1996 he has represented the new single-mandate constituency 1, which includes the east of Tottori. He was part of the Tanaka faction in the LDP .

In 1994 Ishiba left the LDP and joined the Shinseitō of Ichirō Ozawa and Tsutomu Hata , which later became part of the Shinshintō . After the LDP regained firm control of the government, he returned to the party in 1997 and became a member of the Obuchi faction (today's Nukaga faction).

Shigeru Ishiba as Secretary of Defense in November 2007

From December 2000 to April 2001, Ishiba was State Secretary in the Defense Agency (the forerunner of the Department of Defense ), from September 2002 to April 2004 its head. In this role, he played a key role in the preparation and implementation of the Iraqi deployment of the Self-Defense Forces , which he clearly supported. On February 22, 2008, Ishiba announced that he would step down as Secretary of Defense should it emerge that his ministry was involved in a possible cover-up of the Atago , an Atago-class Aegis destroyer , with a fishing boat. When the cabinet reshuffle in August 2008, Ishiba was replaced by Yoshimasa Hayashi (LDP, Koga faction ).

In 2008, Ishiba ran for election to LDP chairman , but received only the fifth highest percentage of votes. From September 2008 to September 2009 he was Minister for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in the Asō cabinet . From 2009 to 2011 he received one of the "three party offices" ( tō-san'yaku ) as PARC chairman .

In 2012 he ran again for the party chairmanship in the election of a successor to Sadakazu Tanigaki . Although he led in the first ballot, in which the delegates from the prefectural associations are entitled to vote, he was defeated in the runoff election, in which only members from both chambers of the national parliament vote, Shinzō Abe . Abe then appointed him general secretary. During the cabinet reshuffle in September 2014 , Abe offered him the ministerial post for the new security legislation on collective defense, which Ishiba refused. He then became Minister for "National Strategic Special Zones " ( 国家 戦 略 特別 k , kokka senryaku tokubetsu kuiki ), which the Abe government set up as part of its economic development policy and kept this post up to and including the first reshuffle of the Shinzo Abe III cabinet . Ishiba's successor as LDP general secretary was Sadakazu Tanigaki in September 2014. Ishiba, like Prime Minister Abe and other cabinet and LDP party members, is close to Nippon Kaigi , who is considered revisionist .

On September 28, 2015, Ishiba founded the Suigetsu faction (also known as the Ishiba faction) ( 水月 会 Suigetsu-kai or 石 破 派 Ishiba-ha ) in order to get the 20 supporters needed to run for the election of the LDP chairman to have. So far (2017) the Ishiba faction has only 19 members, among them are e.g. B. Yūji Yamamoto , Ichirō Kamoshita or Norihisa Tamura . She is involved in the third Abe cabinet, which is currently ruling for the third time, with Ken Saitō as Minister of Agriculture .

Ishiba is regarded as one of the greatest opponents of Prime Minister Abe within the LDP and distances himself from several of his positions. For example, unlike Abe, Ishiba does not think it necessary to amend the Japanese constitution by 2020 and criticizes Abe's hasty action. In addition, calls for a more radical approach in which paragraph 2 of Article 9 is deleted and the self-defense forces are explicitly recognized as a military force . Abenomics also sees Ishiba as problematic and is calling for the central bank to curb quantitative easing and for economic policy to be concentrated on increasing salaries and investments. In terms of social policy, he is close to Abe and, for example, shares his view that extensive social measures must be taken to increase the birth rate.

In September 2018, Ishiba ran again for chairmanship and was clearly defeated by incumbent Abe. Among the national MPs in particular, he performed poorly (73 out of 402 votes), while he was comparatively close behind Abe among the “ordinary” party members (286,003 out of 641,490 votes).

family

Father Jirō Ishiba 1956, at that time still a civil servant state secretary in the building ministry

Shigeru Ishiba is the eldest son of Jirō Ishiba , a former governor of Tottori and interior minister. Ishiba's maternal grandfather, Tarō Kanamori , was governor of Tottori and Yamagata . His father was a Protestant pastor; Shigeru Ishiba is also a devout Protestant.

Web links

Commons : Shigeru Ishiba  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official Website (Japanese)
• Brief profile on the website of the Japanese Cabinet (English)
• Official website of the Ishiba faction

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jonathan Head: Japan defends Iraq troops move. In: BBC News. December 16, 2003, accessed November 20, 2007 . 
2. ^ Norimitsu Onishi: Mission to Iraq Eases Japan Toward a True Military. In: New York Times. January 16, 2004, accessed November 20, 2007 . 
3. ^ Ishiba to quit if cover-up proved. (No longer available online.) In: Daily Yomiurii Online. February 23, 2008, archived from the original on March 2, 2008 ; Retrieved February 29, 2008 . 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.  
4. ↑ LDP No. 2 Ishiba to turn down Cabinet post in Abe reshuffle: senior party official. In: The Japan Times . August 23, 2014, accessed September 4, 2014 . 
5. ↑ Korea JoongAng Daily : Abe's reshuffle promotes right-wingers , accessed September 2, 2017
6. ↑ The Japan Times : With eye on succeeding Abe, Ishiba launches own LDP faction , accessed September 2, 2017
7. ↑ Bloomberg : Abe Overtaken by Rival as Top Choice for Japan Premier in Poll , accessed September 2, 2017
8. ↑ Abe's rival to declare bid to become Japan's next leader. Retrieved July 13, 2018 (UK English). 
9. ↑ jimin.jp - 総 裁 選 安 倍 晋三氏 が 3 選 果 た す (Japanese), accessed September 30, 2018
10. ↑ jimin.jp - 党員 投票 開票 結果 (Japanese), accessed September 30, 2018
11. ↑ The man standing between Abe and his ambitions: Who is Shigeru Ishiba? In: The Japan Times . August 27, 2018, accessed September 30, 2018 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Gen Nakatani Masahiko Kōmura	Minister of Defense 2002–2004 (Head of Defense Agency) 2007–2008	Yoshinori Ōno Yoshimasa Hayashi