Shōzō Azuma

Shōzō Azuma as Secretary of State in 2011.

Shōzō Azuma ( Japanese 東 祥 三 , Azuma Shōzō ; * May 1, 1951 in Shinjuku , Tokyo Prefecture ) is a Japanese politician. Until 2012 he was a member of the Shūgiin , the lower house of the national parliament , for the 15th constituency of Tokyo , most recently as a member of the Nippon Mirai no Tō .

Azuma graduated from the Faculty of Economics at Sōka University in 1975 , where he also earned his doctorate (hakushi) in 1983 . Until 1988 he worked for specialized agencies of the United Nations, including the ONUDI . In 1990 he ran as a Kōmeitō candidate, succeeding Shigetake Arishima, in the then four-mandate constituency Tokyo 6 for the Shūgiin and was elected with the fourth highest percentage of votes, re-elected in 1993 with the third highest percentage of votes. Under the anti-LDP coalition that took over the government in the form of the Hosokawa cabinet in 1993, Azuma became parliamentary state secretary in the Foreign Ministry under Tsutomu Hata .

After the dissolution of the Kōmeitō in 1994, Azuma belonged to the New Progressive Party like most party members , but then Ichirō Ozawa followed in the Liberal Party and finally the Democratic Party , in which he belonged to the Ozawa group . After the electoral reform, he ran initially only in the Tokyo proportional representation block, which he represented until 2003, and from 2000 also in the new constituency Tokyo 15, which he lost significantly, so that in 2003 he also missed re-election in the proportional representation block - in 2003 the Democratic Party sat all 24 constituency candidates in the Tokyo block on the list position 1 - and left parliament. It was not until the democratic landslide victory in the Shūgiin election in 2009 that Azuma was able to beat LDP incumbent Ben Kimura by around 15,000 votes, win the constituency for the first time and move back into parliament.

From 2009 to 2010, Azuma chaired the Shūgiin Committee on Economy and Industry. In September 2010, Naoto Kan appointed him " Vice Minister " in the cabinet office during a cabinet reshuffle . He held the position until 2011. From 2011 to 2012 he was chairman of the Shūgiin Security Committee (anzen-hoshō-iinkai) .

In the summer of 2012, Azuma Ichirō Ozawa followed together with other opponents of the VAT increase planned by party chairman Yoshihiko Noda from the Democratic Party to the Kokumin no Seikatsu ga Daiichi . In the new party he was general secretary. Before the Shūgiin election in 2012 , he joined the Nippon Mirai no Tō along with most of Ozawa's supporters. In the election he was only fourth in his constituency with around 28,500 votes and also missed re-election via the Tokyo block, where the party only won one mandate.

In the 2013 election , he ran for the Sangiin , the upper house of the national parliament. In the national proportional representation he ran for Ozawa's Seikatsu no Tō , but received only fifth place with 33,146 votes, and the party won zero seats in the proportional representation anyway.

Web links

• Official Website (Japanese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Yomiuri Shimbun : Election results Sangiin 2013, proportional representation, Seikatsu ( memento of the original from June 21, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.