Kōichirō Gemba

Kōichirō Gemba on September 19, 2011

Kōichirō Gemba ( Japanese 玄 葉 光 一郎 , Gemba Kōichirō ; born May 20, 1964 in Funehiki , Tamura district (today: Tamura ), Fukushima prefecture ) is a Japanese politician ( LDP → non-party → NPS → DPJ → DFP → non-party) and a member of the Shūgiin , the lower house, for the 3rd constituency of Fukushima . In the DPJ he had his own faction , the Gemba group . From 2010 to 2011 he was minister, initially for lower fertility and gender equality in the Kan cabinet , then from 2011 to 2012 Foreign Minister in the Noda cabinet .

Life

Gemba studied at the law faculty of the (Jōchi) Sophia University , then he graduated from the Matsushita Seikei Juku ( 松下 政 経 塾 , English Matsushita Institute of Government and Management ). In 1991, at the age of 26, he successfully ran for a seat in the Fukushima prefectural parliament as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Just two years later he succeeded in the 1993 Shūgiin election as an independent candidate in the five-mandate constituency of Fukushima 2, making the leap into the national parliament. In the same year he joined the New Sakigake Party , for which he belonged, among other things, to the Shūgiin's committee of rules of procedure.

1996 Gemba participated in the founding of the Democratic Party (English DPJ). Since the 1996 election, he has been running in the newly created Fukushima 3 constituency, which also includes his home county of Tamura. In 1996 he was defeated by Hiroyuki Arai (LDP) and was only re-elected through the Tōhoku proportional representation block, and was then able to win the constituency six times in a row from 2000.

Gemba was a member of the foreign affairs and budget committees in the Shūgiin. In the Democratic Party, he was chairman of the campaign committee and deputy general secretary ( kanjichō-dairi ). He was also a member of the shadow cabinets of then party chairmen Yukio Hatoyama and Naoto Kan in 2000, 2001 and 2002 . In May 2010, together with other members of his parliamentary group, he set up a committee to examine ways of improving public finances. He is considered an internal party opponent of Ichirō Ozawa and called for the re-establishment of the Political Research Council , which Ozawa had abolished.

In 2010, the party chairman and Prime Minister Naoto Kan appointed Gemba to the party leadership as chairman of the re-established Political Research Council and, at the same time, to his cabinet as minister of state for reform of the civil service, combating the decline in the birth rate and gender equality . At the first reshuffle on September 17, 2010, he became Minister of State for the “new community”, which was expanded to include science and technology policy during the second reshuffle .

After Kan was replaced by Yoshihiko Noda as party chairman and prime minister, Gemba took over the post of foreign minister in the Noda cabinet . In the Shūgiin election in 2012 , a national election defeat of the DPJ, Gemba defended his constituency clearly with more than twice as many votes as his main rival candidate Sachiko Kanno (LDP). Fumio Kishida (LDP) was succeeded as Foreign Minister in December 2012 .

After the merger of the DPJ with the Ishin no Tō to form the Democratic Progressive Party  (DFP) in March 2016, Gemba joined this. When the party withdrew from the election campaign shortly before the 2017 Shūgiin election and recommended its members to run for the Party of Hope , Gemba ran as an independent and was a member of the Mushozoku no Kai (“Assembly of Independents”) faction after his election victory . Shortly before the DFP merged with the Party of Hope to form the Democratic People's Party (DVP) in May 2018 , Gemba and other parliamentary group members left the DFP and became non-party. In January 2019, the group leader of the Mushozoku no Kai Katsuya Okada announced that he would join the faction of the Constitutional Democratic Party (KDP). Gemba and three other members, however, remained under the leadership of Yoshihiko Noda in the faction renamed Shakaihoshō o tatenaosu kokumin kaigi ("People's Congress for the Renewal of Social Security") in order to promote rapprochement between the two largest opposition parties KPD and DVP.

family

Gemba's father-in-law was the governor of Fukushima, Eisaku Satō . His grandfathers were mayors of Funehiki (paternal side) and Kagamiishi (maternal side).

Web links

• Official Website (Japanese)
• Democratic Party: "Who's Who" (Japanese) / "Members File" (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Profiles of top DPJ executives. (No longer available online.) In: Yomiuri Shimbun . June 9, 2010, formerly in the original ; accessed on June 9, 2010 (English).  ( 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.    
2. ^ Profiles of top three new DPJ executives. In: The Japan Times . June 9, 2010, accessed June 9, 2010 . 
3. ↑ 新 会 派 結成 、 玄 葉 光 一郎 氏 に 聞 く 「衆院 選 ま で に に 改革 勢力 結集」 . In: minyu-net.com. January 17, 2019, accessed February 11, 2019 . 
4. ↑ 「政策 の 玄 葉」 新 し い 一 歩 政 調 会長 ・ 初入 閣 「国 の 道 筋 つ く る」 . In: Fukushima Minpō. June 8, 2010, Retrieved June 9, 2010 (Japanese).