Mitsuhide Iwaki

Mitsuhide Iwaki, 2015

Mitsuhide Iwaki ( Japanese 岩 城 光 英 , Iwaki Mitsuhide ; born December 4, 1949 in Iwaki , Fukushima Prefecture ) is a Japanese politician. From 1998 to 2016 he was Senator for Fukushima, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; Hosoda faction ) and from 2015 to 2016 Minister of Justice in Abe's third cabinet .

Iwaki, a graduate of the Law Faculty of Sophia University , joined the beverage company Suntory after graduating . After the death of his father in 1974 he returned home, among other things worked as a security guard and opened a juku . In 1979 he ran for the first time in a by-election for the city parliament of Iwaki, but was only elected at the second attempt in the regular election in 1980. In his second term he resigned in 1986 for a (successful) candidacy for the prefecture parliament of Fukushima. Shortly after he was re-elected in 1990, Iwaki's mayor Takeo Nakata died and Iwaki resigned as a MP to run for his successor. He prevailed against the former socialist member of the House of Commons Noboru Kōsaka and was elected mayor of Iwaki for the first of two terms.

Iwaki switched to national politics for the 1998 Senate election , in which he ran in Fukushima (then two senators per partial election) as one of two LDP candidates, the second highest share of the vote (24.9%) behind the non-party ( DPJ , SDP , Kōmeitō ) Yūhei Satō (32.6%) scored and LDP incumbent Shizuo Satō (23.6%) pushed to third place. He was re-elected in 2004 and 2010 - the LDP only nominated one candidate in Fukushima in both elections - with the second highest share of the vote behind a Democratic candidate but with a secure lead in third place. From 2005 to 2006 he chaired the Senate's Agriculture Committee and from 2012–2014 the Rules Committee (giin un'ei iinkai) .

From 2002 to 2003 Iwaki was Parliamentary State Secretary in the MLIT for the Koizumi Cabinet , and from 2007 to 2008 he was Deputy Head of the Cabinet Secretariat for the Abe and Fukuda Cabinets . In October 2015, Shinzō Abe appointed him to a cabinet for the first time as Minister of Justice.

In the Senate election in July 2016 , Fukushima Prefecture lost one seat. Iwaki was defeated by his previous co-senator Teruhiko Mashiko by around three percentage points. He remained a minister until the cabinet reshuffle in August 2016 .

Web links

• Official Website (Japanese)
• Senate, Senators: Iwaki Mitsuhide ( Memento from July 27, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (Japanese, English ( Memento from May 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ))
• Office of the Prime Minister / Cabinet, Minister in the 97th Cabinet: Iwaki Mitsuhide ( Memento from June 14, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (Japanese, Chinese , English )