Tsutomu Hata

Tsutomu Hata (1994)

Tsutomu Hata ( Japanese 羽 田 孜 Hata Tsutomu ; born August 24, 1935 in Ōta , Tokyo Prefecture ; † August 28, 2017 ibid) was a Japanese politician of the Minshintō (Democratic Progressive Party, DP) and from 1969 to 2012 a member of the Shūgiin , the House of Commons, most recently for the Minshutō ( Democratic Party , DPJ). In the party there was a faction of its own behind him , the Hata group . He was the 51st Prime Minister of Japan from April 28, 1994 to June 30, 1994 . In the 1980s he had risen to become a leading politician of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and when he left the party in 1993, he helped trigger its first loss of power.

Life

Hata was born in 1935 in Tokyo Ōta district as the son of the politician Bushirō Hata , who had already belonged to the Reichstag for the Rikken Seiyūkai before the Second World War and was a member of the LDP ( Ishii faction ) in the post-war period . After studying economics at Seijō University , he worked for the bus company Odakyū Bus for ten years before turning to politics in 1969 when his father retired.

Hata was able to win his father's constituency, the three-mandate constituency Nagano 2, for the LDP at the first attempt with the highest percentage of votes in the Shūgiin election in 1969 . He has since been re-elected thirteen times, in the Nagano 3 constituency since 1996 . Within the party, he joined the Tanaka faction , formed in 1972 , which dominated the party in the 1970s. Hata received his first cabinet post as Parliamentary State Secretary ( seimujikan ) in the Ministry of Post in 1975/76 and in the Ministry of Agriculture in 1976/77. In 1985 he became minister for the first time as Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in the second Nakasone cabinet - a position which he took up again in the Takeshita cabinet in 1988 .

Attempts at reform in the LDP

When Kakuei Tanaka had finally lost control of his faction in the aftermath of the Lockheed scandal, the Takeshita faction emerged, in which Hata was among the leading politicians alongside Ichirō Ozawa , Ryūtarō Hashimoto and Keizō Obuchi , the so-called " Seven Bugyō of the Takeshita faction ”( 竹 下 派 七 奉行 , Takeshita-ha nana bugyō ). At the end of the 1980s, new scandals and the introduction of value added tax led to the LDP 's polls dropping and the first clear defeat in the Sangiin election in 1989 . In the party, too, the first voices called for seiji kaikaku , “political reform”, particularly of the electoral law and party funding. Under the party chairman Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu , Hata headed a subcommittee of the Political Research Council (PARC) from 1990 to 1991, which was supposed to investigate a reorganization of the electoral law. The bill failed in 1991 due to internal party resistance.

Pioneer of the change of government

In 1991 Hata became finance minister in the Miyazawa cabinet after the reformer Kaifu resigned. A year later, the Sagawa Kyūbin scandal rocked the LDP, as a result of which faction leaders Takeshita and Kanemaru resigned. The decision about the successor in the faction chair made the experienced Keizo Obuchi for himself. Hata, Ozawa and their reform-minded supporters left the faction and founded the Kaikaku Forum 21 ( 改革 フ ォ ー ラ ム 21 , "Reform Forum 21"; Hata faction) under Hata's chairmanship. In a cabinet reshuffle in December 1992 , the five established factions shared the important ministerial posts among themselves, the Hata faction only provided two heads of authorities.

Finally, in June 1993, the Miyazawa cabinet rejected plans for political reform. Hata and his supporters then voted in a no-confidence vote with the opposition, the LDP had lost its government majority. After the successful vote, Miyazawa called new elections for which Hata and Ozawa and their supporters left the LDP and founded the renewal party , which Hata led as chairman. In the 1993 Shūgiin election , the LDP was unable to regain its absolute majority and was replaced by a broad coalition of all previous opposition parties except the communists. The Renewal Party was now the second largest ruling party with 55 seats.

In the Hosokawa cabinet under Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa ( New Japan Party ), Hata was Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister from 1993 to 1994. When Hosokawa resigned in April 1994, Hata was elected his successor in parliament on April 25. The Renewal Party joined forces with the New Japan Party and the Democratic Socialist Party to form a joint parliamentary group called Kaishin ( 改 新 , “reform”). A day later, before Hata's formal appointment as prime minister, the Socialist Party of Japan (SPJ) announced its withdrawal from the ruling coalition.

Reign

Hata's cabinet was unable to rely on a lower house majority because of the withdrawal of the SPJ. The main task of his minority government was the budget for the fiscal year 1994, which began on April 1st and which had not yet been passed in parliament. After the budget was approved in June 1994, the cabinet resigned. With 64 days in office, it was the cabinet with the second-shortest term of office of the post-war period - only the Higashikuni cabinet, which ruled Japan immediately after the surrender in 1945, was shorter. The LDP returned to government through a coalition agreement with the SPJ.

Re-formation of the opposition parties

After the LDP returned to power, Hata remained alongside Ozawa a leader in the conservative reform forces that had turned away from the LDP. In 1994 the Renewal Party was absorbed into the New Progressive Party ( NFP) of Toshiki Kaifu. Until 1996, Hata was one of three deputy party leaders. The NFP replaced the SPJ as the largest opposition party, which fell back to the size of a splinter party after participating in the government in elections. However, Ozawa's leadership style led to the disintegration of the NFP. Hata resigned after the less successful Shūgiin election in 1996 and founded the Taiyōtō ("Sun Party") with his supporters . In 1998 he became chairman of the Minseitō , which was created through the merger with two other groups from the 1997 finally dissolved NFP. Shortly thereafter, the Minseitō participated with the DPJ of Yukio Hatoyama and Naoto Kan and other groups in the founding of the "new" Democratic Party. Hata was general secretary until 2000, then until 2002 "special chairman" (tokubetsu-daihyō) of the now largest opposition party. Since 2002 he was the "highest advisor" (saikō komon) of the DPJ.

Followers and companions of Hata are assembled in the DPJ in the rather conservative "Research Council for Political Strategy" ( 政 権 戦 略 研究 会 , Seiken Senryaku Kenkyūkai ), which is usually referred to as the Hata group.

For the 2012 Shūgiin election , Hata withdrew from politics. His constituency should initially take over for the DPJ his son Yūichirō; but the party's ban on constituency “inherit” prevented his candidacy. Former Prefectural President Yoshiyuki Terashima was able to hold Nagano 3 constituency for the Democratic Party by a narrow margin.

Hata died of senility on August 28, 2017 at 7:06 a.m. in his residence at the age of 82 .

family

Hata's son Yūichirō (DP, Hata Group) is a member of the Sangiin , the upper house, for Nagano Prefecture.

Honors

• 1993: Grand Cross of the Order of the Infante Dom Henrique
• 2002: Grand Officer of the Star of Romania

Web links

• Official Website (Japanese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Yomiuri Shimbun : Obituary ( Memento of the original from August 28, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Japanese). Retrieved August 28, 2017 
2. ↑ Minshinto Prefectural Association Nagano : Board of Directors
3. ↑ JANJAN, The Senkyo: 32nd Shūgiin election, constituency result Nagano 2  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ↑ 世襲 禁止 ど う 判断？ 羽 田 元 首相 後 継 に 雄 一郎 氏 . In: Yomiuri Shimbun . November 16, 2012, Retrieved January 1, 2013 (Japanese).