Yōko Komiyama

Yōko Komiyama

Yōko Komiyama ( Japanese 小 宮 山 洋子 , Komiyama Yōko ; born September 17, 1948 in Tokyo Prefecture , Japan ) is a Japanese politician of the Democratic Party ( Minshutō ). Within the party, she belongs to the Maehara group . She was a member of the national parliament from 1998 to 2012 , first in the Sangiin , the upper house, then in the Shūgiin , the lower house, and from 2011 to 2012 Minister of Health, Labor and Social Affairs .

Komiyama is the daughter of Ichirō Katō , lawyer and rector of the University of Tokyo , and the granddaughter of the MP and Minister for Greater East Asia, Kazuo Aoki . She graduated from the Faculty of Literature at Seijō University in 1972 and then worked for the public broadcaster NHK , for which she hosted the NHK News Wide , among other things . In 1998 she left the station and switched to politics.

In the 1998 election , Komiyama was elected to Sangiin , the upper house, through the Democratic Party's proportional representation. There she was among other things chairwoman of the environmental committee. In 2003 she gave up her seat in order to run for the Shūgiin seat of the stabbed Kōki Ishii in the 6th constituency of Tokyo in the by-election. She clearly won with 53% of the vote and was able to defend the seat in the regular elections in the same year. In 2005 she was just under Takao Ochi ( LDP ) and was only re-elected through the Tokyo proportional representation. In 2009 she won clearly against Ochi in the constituency.

Yoshihiko Noda appointed her to his cabinet as Minister for Health, Labor and Social Affairs on September 2, 2011 . She lost this post in the third cabinet reshuffle on October 1, 2012. In December she lost her constituency again to Takao Ochi in the 2012 Shūgiin election and also missed re-election in the proportional representation bloc.

Web links

• Official Website (Japanese)