Yōichi Masuzoe

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Yōichi Masuzoe

Yōichi Masuzoe ( Japanese 舛 添 要 一 , Masuzoe Yōichi ; born November 29, 1947 in Yahata (today: Kitakyūshū )) is a Japanese politician and former governor of Tokyo Prefecture . From 2001 to 2013 he was a member of the House of Lords and from September 2007 to 2009 Minister for Health and Labor in the Cabinet .

Masuzoe is a graduate of Tōkyō University . After research stays in Paris and Geneva, he taught political science at the University of Tōkyō from 1979 to 1994. In the 1990s he took his first steps in politics; Among other things, he ran for governor in the capital city of Tōkyō in 1999, but only achieved the third highest percentage of votes behind Shintarō Ishihara (independent) and Kunio Hatoyama (then DPJ ).

In 2001 Masuzoe was elected to the House of Lords via the proportional representation list of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) . He was one of the LDP MPs who are not party-bound . During the scandal over lost and undocumented pension entitlements in the upper house election campaign in 2007, he criticized the Shinzō Abe government for slow processing and was re-elected despite the LDP's massive losses. During the government reshuffle in August, Abe surprisingly appointed him Minister of Health and Labor, putting him in charge of managing the pension scandal. Masuzoe announced that his political survival would be linked to this project. Abe's successors Fukuda and Asō left Masuzoe in his post, which he held until the change of government in 2009.

In April 2010 Masuzoe left the LDP and founded a new party, the Shinto Kaikaku , together with three members of the Kaikaku Club and the MPs Tetsurō Yano and Masakatsu Koike , who had also left the LDP, and he became the first chairman. In the upper house election in July 2013 , he no longer ran for re-election and subsequently resigned from party leadership.

Masuzoe ran for the gubernatorial election in Tokyo in 2014 with support from center-right parties and trade unions. With around 43% of the vote, he clearly prevailed against Kenji Utsunomiya , Morihiro Hosokawa and 13 other candidates.

On June 15, 2016, Masuzoe announced that he would be stepping down due to a financial scandal with effect from June 21, after it became known that he was using taxpayers' money to finance luxury trips abroad and excursions. The new elections are to take place on July 31, along with several by-elections to the prefectural parliament.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Japan Times, August 31, 2007: Masuzoe stakes political life on fixing pension mess - English
  2. ^ The Japan Times - Masuzoe resigns over expenses scandal; Sakurai vows not to enter forthcoming gubernatorial race , accessed June 22, 2016
  3. ↑ Tokyo Prefecture Administration , Election Oversight Commission: National, Prefectural and Local Elections in Tokyo Prefecture 2016 (Japanese)
personal data
SURNAME Masuzoe, Yōichi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 舛 添 要 一 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese Minister of Health and Labor
DATE OF BIRTH November 29, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Yahata (today: Kitakyūshū )