Shōgo Arai

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Shōgo Arai

Shōgo Arai ( Japanese 荒 井 正 吾 , Arai Shōgo ; born January 18, 1945 in Yao , Osaka Prefecture ) is a non-party Japanese politician , former member of the Sangiin , the upper house of the national parliament , and since 2007 governor of Nara prefecture .

Arai graduated from the Tokyo University Faculty of Law in 1968 and became a civil servant in the Department of Transportation . In 1972 he graduated from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University , and in the 1990s he rose to department head positions in the ministry. In 1999 he became head of Kaijō Hoan-chō , the authority of the Japanese Coast Guard then subordinate to the Ministry of Transport. In 2001, he resigned, ended his civil service career and turned to politics.

In the 2001 Sangiin election , Arai ran as a candidate for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for the only mandate in Nara Prefecture and beat the Democrat Takeshi Maeda by around 30,000 votes. In 2003 he was Parliamentary State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry under the second Koizumi cabinet . In the Sangiin he was chairman of the committee for education, culture, sport, science and technology from 2006. In March 2007, he resigned his parliamentary seat to run for the unified regional elections in April to succeed Naras Governor Yoshiya Kakimoto , who retired after four terms. With formal support from the LDP and Kōmeitō , but only against a communist candidate, he received two thirds of the vote.

One topic of his term of office is the creation of a "special purpose association Kansai" , promoted by Osaka's governor Tōru Hashimoto , in which Nara did not participate under Governor Arai, unlike the other prefectures in the region. He justifies this with the lower economic and financial strength of his prefecture, but also has doubts about the usefulness of the new administrative structure. The special purpose association Kansai, which after the Tōhoku earthquake in 2011 a joint reaction of the prefectures of Kansai, z. B. Allowed for the admission of the evacuees from the disaster area was also a topic of Arai's re-election campaign in the 2011 gubernatorial election . In the election - this time against two candidates, including an independent supported by Hashimoto - he was re-elected for another four years with around 50% of the vote.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kansai Regional League: Is prefectural alliance a step toward superstates? In: The Japan Times . December 14, 2010, accessed April 22, 2011 .
  2. ↑ Eric Johnston: Integration, radiation top Kansai poll agenda. In: The Japan Times . March 24, 2011, accessed April 22, 2011 .
personal data
SURNAME Arai, Shōgo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 荒 井 正 吾 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Yao (Osaka) , Osaka Prefecture