Yukihiko Ikeda

Yukihiko Ikeda, 1996

Yukihiko Ikeda ( Japanese 池田 行 彦 , Ikeda Yukihiko , nee Awane , 粟 根 ; born May 13, 1937 in Kobe ; † January 28, 2004 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese politician. As a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), he was a member of the Shūgiin for over 25 years and was, among other things, foreign and defense minister of his country.

Ikeda grew up in Kobe, Hiroshima and Tokyo . In 1945 he experienced the atomic bombing and the end of the war in a remote mountain village outside Hiroshima, where he fled with his mother in July 1945. He graduated from the Tokyo University Faculty of Law in 1961 and then became a civil servant in the Treasury . In 1964 he was posted to the State Department , for which he served a year later as Vice Consul in New York City . In 1969 he married Noriko Ikeda, the daughter of former Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato , and took his name. Back at the Ministry of Finance, Ikeda worked, among other things, on setting up the Japan Foundation and finally became Secretary to Finance Minister Ōhira Masayoshi in 1974 .

Ikeda left the ministry in 1975 to run for the 1976 Shūgiin election . In the 2nd constituency of Hiroshima he was elected to the LDP and later re-elected ten times. Within the party, he joined the Ōhira faction . In 1981 he was deputy cabinet secretary for a year , from 1986 he sat on the finance committee of the Shūgiin. In 1989, as head of the agency for management and coordination , he became minister for the first time in the short-lived UN cabinet , a year later he became deputy general secretary of the LDP and in December 1990 head of the defense authority in the 2nd Kaifu cabinet . In 1996 Prime Minister Ryūtarō Hashimoto appointed him Foreign Minister. In this capacity, he made headlines when, shortly after taking office in February 1996 , he reaffirmed the Japanese claims to the controversial Liancourt Rock . The hostage drama in the Japanese embassy in Lima also fell during his tenure .

In the cabinet reshuffle in September 1997 Ikeda was replaced by Keizo Obuchi , who became Prime Minister a year later. Under his party chairmanship he received one of the three most important party offices of the LDP, first chairing the Political Research Council ( PARC ), then chairing the Executive Council.

When the chairman of his faction, Katō Kōichi , tried to overthrow the party leadership in 2000, Ikeda was one of his most influential opponents in the faction and helped Yoshirō Mori , who had replaced the late Obuchi, to put down the so-called "Katō rebellion".

In 2004, Ikeda died of colon cancer at the age of 66 . His son-in-law Minoru Terada (LDP, Koga faction ) won his parliamentary seat in a by-election.

Honors

• 1998: Grand Cross of the Order of the Infante Dom Henrique

Web links

• Biography at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (English)