Miyazawa Kiichi

Miyazawa Kiichi (1991)

Miyazawa Kiichi ( Japanese 宮 澤 喜 一 ; born October 8, 1919 in Fukuyama , Hiroshima Prefecture ; † June 28, 2007 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese politician ( LDP ). He was the 78th Prime Minister of Japan from 1991 to 1993 and Minister of Finance from 1998 to 2001 .

Life

Miyazawa Kiichi studied law at the University of Tokyo . In 1942 he entered the Japanese government service and worked for the Ministry of Finance. In 1953 he was elected in Hiroshima as a candidate of the Liberal Party in the upper house of the Japanese Parliament ; In 1967 he became a member of the politically more influential lower house by winning a seat in the 3rd constituency of Hiroshima, the former constituency of his father.

Miyazawa served in several important public offices, such as Minister for International Trade and Industry (1970-1971), Foreign Minister (1974-1976), Director of the Economic Planning Office (1977-1978) and Chief Cabinet Secretary (1984-1986). He became finance minister in the Noboru Takeshita government in 1987 , but had to resign in the wake of the recruit scandal .

On November 5, 1991, he became the 78th Prime Minister of Japan. During his tenure as head of government a law was passed that allowed soldiers from the Self-Defense Forces to be sent to UN peacekeeping operations abroad. He campaigned for better relations with Japan's neighbors and was the first Japanese Prime Minister to recognize that the Japanese military was forcing Asian women to serve as " comfort women " as forced prostitutes for Japanese soldiers. He also implemented a bank rescheduling program. After Masami Tanabu left the party , he also took over his post as Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries on August 4, 1993. From July 7 to 9, 1993, Miyazawa chaired the 19th G8 summit in Tokyo. After a series of scandals in his LDP party, he had to resign on August 9, 1993 after a vote of no confidence . At the same time, with the formation of the anti-LDP coalition under Morihiro Hosokawa, this marked the temporary end of an era of 38 years in a row in the LDP. Miyazawa was thus the last prime minister of the so-called "55 system", in which since 1955 the LDP has always been the government and the Socialist Party  the opposition.

From 1998 to 2001 he was Minister of Finance in the governments of Keizō Obuchi and Yoshirō Mori . He did not run for the 2003 Shūgiin election and ended his political career. He died on June 28, 2007 at the age of 87.

family

• Ogawa Heikichi , maternal grandfather, Seiyūkai member of the Nagano House of Representatives, Minister of Railways and Justice
• Ogawa Heiji , uncle, LP → LDP member of the House of Representatives from Nagano, minister of labor, local government and culture
• Miyazawa Yutaka , father, Seiyūkai → Yokusan → FPJ member of the House of Representatives from Hiroshima, State Secretary of Railways
• Miyazawa Hiroshi , brother, LDP member of the Hiroshima Council House, Minister of Justice, Governor of Hiroshima
• Miyazawa Yōichi , nephew and secretary, LDP member of both chambers from Hiroshima, Minister of Economic Affairs

Trivia

• Miyazawa was a member of the Trilateral Commission , an initiative by David Rockefeller .
• Miyazawa was one of the few Japanese Prime Ministers to speak fluent English .

Web links

Commons : Miyazawa Kiichi  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• "Japanese ex-prime minister Miyazawa is dead" , AP / net tribune, June 28, 2007
• "Ki'ichi Miyazawa, Japan Premier in the '90s, Dies at 87" , New York Times , June 29, 2007

See also

• Miyazawa's cabinet
• Miyazawa Cabinet (reshuffle)

Individual evidence

1. ^ New York Times, December 9, 1988: Japan's Finance Minister Resigns in Stock Scandal
2. ↑ bloomsbury.com - Politics and Power in 20th-Century Japan: The Reminiscences of Miyazawa Kiichi - Reviews , accessed April 13, 2019

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Miyazawa is the family name, Kiichi the first name.