Yamashita Tokuo

Yamashita Tokuo ( Japanese 山下 徳 夫 ; born October 7, 1919 in Imari , Saga prefecture ; † January 1, 2014 ibid) was a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), who was a member of the Lower House ( Shūgiin ) for 31 years and a minister several times was.

Life

Member of the House of Commons and Parliamentary State Secretary

Yamashita Tokuo graduated from Fukuoka Middle School to study law at Meiji University , which he graduated from Senshū University in 1944 . He then worked as a lawyer .

In the Shūgiin election of December 27, 1969 , he was elected as a candidate for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in a constituency of the Saga Prefecture for the first time as a member of the lower house (Shūgiin) . He was one so next Ozawa Ichiro , Hata Tsutomu , Kajiyama Seiroku , Okuda Keiwa , Hayashi Yoshirō , Watanabe Kozo , Watanuki Tamisuke , Shiozaki June , Mori Yoshirō , Murata Keijiro , Matsunaga Hikaru , ETO Takami , Nakayama Masaaki and Hamada Koichi to a number of politicians who were first elected to the House of Commons in 1969 and later became Prime Minister and Minister respectively. He was continuously confirmed as a member of parliament in ten elections and was thus a member of the lower house until the Shūgiin election on June 25, 2000 . Within his party he joined the Banchō Seisaku Kenkyūjo led by Miki Takeo , a faction within the LDP faction .

On December 9, 1974, he was appointed Parliamentary State Secretary for Welfare to the Minister of Health and Social Affairs, Tanaka Masami, in the Miki cabinet . During the reshuffle of Miki's cabinet on September 15, 1976, he became Parliamentary State Secretary to the Minister for International Trade and Industry , Kōmoto Toshio , and held this post until the end of Miki's term on December 24, 1976.

Transport Minister and University President

During the first reshuffle of Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro's second cabinet , Yamashita Tokuo was appointed Minister of Transport (Un'yu daijin) for the first time on November 1, 1984 , and held this office until December 28, 1985. During his tenure, Japan Airlines flight 123 crashed into Mount Takamanohara on August 12, 1985. With 520 deaths, it was the worst aircraft accident to date with only a single aircraft involved. At the time he was also dealing with a bill to rescue the ailing shipping company Sanko Line (Sankō Kisen Kabushiki-gaisha) . In order to fly to the scene of the accident as quickly as possible, he boarded another Japan Airlines plane (flight JA 8119), which he had to make an emergency landing on himself.

After the death of Tamaki Kazuo and a one-day provisional position in office of Gotōda Masaharu , he became head of the authority for management and coordination with ministerial rank in the third cabinet of Nakasone on January 26, 1987 and held this office until November 6, 1987.

In November 1988 he succeeded the late Moriguchi Chūzō as President of Senshū University and held this office for fifteen years until he was replaced by Deushi Masayoshi in November 2003.

Chief Cabinet Secretary and Minister of Health

On August 10, 1989, Yamashita Tokuo was appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary in his first cabinet by Prime Minister Kaifu Toshiki . However, he had to resign from this office after two weeks due to a family scandal about his wife and was then replaced on August 15, 1989 by Moriyama Mayumi .

Yamashita, who became chairman of the influential Steering Committee of the House of Commons in February 1990, was appointed by Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi as Minister of Health and Social Affairs (Kōsei daijin) in his cabinet on November 5, 1991 . He was next to Labor Minister Kondō Tetsuo and the head of the authority for management and coordination, Iwasaki Junzō , one of the three ministers from the Kōmoto, the smallest faction of the LDP. He held the ministerial office until the reshuffle of the Miyazawa cabinet on December 12, 1992.

After leaving the House of Commons in June 2000, he was an advisor to the LDP in Saga Prefecture.

Web links

• 山下 徳 夫 氏 死去 ９４ 歳 、 元 厚 相 衆院 １０ 期 . In: Saga Shimbun from January 2014

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . So Yamashita is the family name, Tokuo the first name.