Kenta Wakabayashi

Kenta Wakabayashi ( Japanese 若 林 健 太 , Wakabayashi Kenta ; born January 11, 1964 in Nagano , Nagano Prefecture ) is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), eldest son and from 2010 to 2016 successor to Masatoshi Wakabayashi ( Machimura- faction ) as a deputy for the Nagano Prefecture in Sangiin , the upper house of the national parliament .

Wakabayashi, a graduate of Keiō University's Economics Faculty , opened an accounting office in Nagano City in 1991. In 2005 he completed a graduate degree at Waseda University as a kōkyō keiei shūshi (English Master of Public Management ). In 2007 he became his father's secretary as Minister of Agriculture.

In the 2010 Sangiin election , Wakabayashi applied in Nagano (two seats per election) as an LDP candidate to succeed his father, who resigned in April. He received 26.4% of the vote and thus the highest percentage of votes with around 3,000 votes ahead of Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa ( DPJ ). In his first term of office he was a member of the economic and administrative supervision committees. From 2012 to 2013 ( Shinzō Abe II cabinet ) he was parliamentary secretary ( daijin seimukan ) in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs . In January 2016 he became Chairman of the Agriculture Committee.

When the Sangiin seats were reallocated to the prefectures , Nagano lost one seat per election in the 2016 election and thus became a single-mandate constituency. His previous co-office owner Kitazawa no longer took up the position. Wakabayashi lost 45.7% of the vote to newcomer Hideya Sugio with 52.5% as a united front candidate of the opposition (nominated by the Minshintō , supported by communists and social democrats ).

Web links

• Wakabayashi's Kōenkai website (Japanese)
• Sangiin: Member Profile (Japanese, English )