Tetsuo Saitō

Tetsuo Saitō, 2008

Tetsuo Saitō ( Japanese 斉 藤 鉄 夫 , Saitō Tetsuo ; born February 5, 1952 in Hasemi (today: Ōnan ), Ōchi district , Shimane prefecture ) is a Japanese politician of the Kōmeitō , a member of the Shūgiin , the lower house, and former environment minister .

Life

After finishing school in Shimane and Hiroshima , Saitō studied applied physics at the Tōkyō Kōgyō Daigaku . After graduating in 1976, he first worked for the construction company Shimizu Corp. In 1985 he received his doctorate from Tōkyō Kōgyō Daigaku. From 1986 onwards he was visiting professor at Princeton University for three years .

In the 1993 Shūgiin election he was elected to parliament for the first time in the 1st constituency of Hiroshima (4 seats) for the Kōmeitō. After the abolition of the multi-person constituencies and the introduction of proportional representation, Saitō only entered the Chūgoku proportional representation block from 1996 and was re-elected six times. Like most members of his party, he belonged to the New Progressive Party from 1994 until the "New Kōmeitō" was formed after its dissolution in 1997.

In 1999, Saitō was Parliamentary State Secretary ( seimujikan ) for Science and Technology under Prime Ministers Mori and Koizumi . In 2004 he became chairman of the Shūgiin Committee on Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Two years later he took over the chairmanship of the political research committee ( seimu chōsakai ) of the Kōmeitō.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda appointed him in August 2008 as Environment Minister and the only Kōmeitō member in his cabinet. Until then, the party had occupied the department for land, infrastructure and transport with Tetsuzo Fuyushiba . He remained under Fukuda's successor, Prime Minister Tarō Asō , in office until September 2009.

Web links

• Official Website (Japanese)
• Brief CV on the website of the Japanese Cabinet (Japanese)