is a Japanese

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

. He is a member of the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

in the

Diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

(national legislature). He was appointed

Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission The is a member of the Cabinet of Japan and is the presiding officer of the National Public Safety Commission, which is the parent agency of the National Police Agency. The chairperson holds the rank of minister of state, and is a statutory memb ...

Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety The , is the member of the Cabinet of Japan in charge of the Consumer Affairs Agency. The position was created along with the agency on September 1, 2009. As of September 11, 2019, the current minister is Seiichi Eto is a Japanese politician of ...

and Minister for the Abduction Issue. Matsubara was formerly affiliated with Party of Hope and the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

(the

Democratic Party of Japan The was a centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist: * * * * * * * to centre-left liberal or social-liberal political party in Japan from 1998 to 2016. The party's origins lie in the previous Democratic Part ...

Political career

Jin Matsubara and Hirohiko Fukushima 20120531 1

In the first cabinet reshuffle of

Prime Minister

Yoshihiko Noda is a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 2011 to 2012. He was a member of the Democratic Party, and a member of the House of Representatives (lower house) in the Diet (national legislature). He was named to succeed Naoto K ...

on 13 January 2012 he was appointed

and Minister for the Abduction Issue. He left the cabinet on the 1 October 2012 cabinet reshuffle.

Tadamasa Kodaira is a Japanese politician of the Democratic Party of Japan, a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet (national legislature). A native of Iwamizawa, Hokkaidō and graduate of Keio University, he was elected for the first time in 1990. P ...

replaced him as Chairman of the National Public Safety Commission and Minister of State for Consumer Affairs and Food Safety, and Keishu Tanaka took over as Minister for the Abduction Issue.

Personal life

Matsubara is married with three children. His oldest son Hajime Matsubara is a member of the Ota city assembly.

Views on Second World War

He was a supporter of

right-wing Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...

filmmaker

Satoru Mizushima is a Japanese filmmaker and nationalist. He graduated from Waseda University majoring in German literature. He can often be seen and heard during nationalist rallies in Tokyo, especially during anti-Chinese protests. He denies Japan's destructive ...

's 2007 denialist film ''

The Truth about Nanjing is a 2007 film by Japanese nationalist filmmaker Satoru Mizushima about the 1937 Nanjing Massacre (Nanking Massacre). Background and funding Mizushima said he received more than 200 million yen (US$1.8 million) in donations from 5,000 of his ...

'', which denied that the

Nanking Massacre The Nanjing Massacre (, ja, 南京大虐殺, Nankin Daigyakusatsu) or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly romanized as ''Nanking'') was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Ba ...

ever occurred. In 2014 he refused to retract his comments denying the massacre. During Diet discussions of Japanese government efforts to clean up chemical weapons abandoned in China at the end of the Second World War, Matsubara questioned the existence of such weapons. On Monday 27 August 2012 Matsubara told a

House of Councillors The is the upper house of the National Diet of Japan. The House of Representatives is the lower house. The House of Councillors is the successor to the pre-war House of Peers. If the two houses disagree on matters of the budget, treaties, ...

budget committee meeting that he may propose to other ministers a review of the 1993 statement by then

Chief Cabinet Secretary The is a member of the cabinet and is the leader and chief executive of the Cabinet Secretariat of Japan. The Chief Cabinet Secretary coordinates the policies of ministries and agencies in the executive branch, and also serves as the government ...

Yōhei Kōno is a Japanese politician and a former President of the Liberal Democratic Party. He served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from November 2003 until August 2009, when the LDP lost its majority in the 2009 election. Kōno served as sp ...

admitting the Imperial Japanese Army's role in establishing and running "comfort stations" for troops with forcibly recruited

comfort women Comfort women or comfort girls were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese '' ia ...

, because "no direct descriptions of forcible recruitment have been found in military and other Japanese official records obtained by the government."

Visits to Yasukuni shrine

On 15 August 2012 Matsubara, along with

Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism The is a member of the Cabinet of Japan and is the leader and chief executive of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. The minister is also a statutory member of the National Security Council, and is nominated by the Prime M ...

Yuichiro Hata was a Japanese politician of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet of Japan. A native of Setagaya, Tokyo, and graduate of Tamagawa University, he was elected to the House of Councillor ...

became the first cabinet ministers of the DPJ to openly visit the controversial

Yasukuni Shrine is a Shinto shrine located in Chiyoda, Tokyo. It was founded by Emperor Meiji in June 1869 and commemorates those who died in service of Empire of Japan, Japan, from the Boshin War of 1868–1869, to the two Sino-Japanese Wars, First Sino-Japane ...

on 15 August since the party came to power in 2009. Matsubara made his visit to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

despite requests from South Korea to refrain from doing so, and despite Prime Minister

requesting his cabinet not to do so.Stuf
Japanese cabinet member makes controversial homage 15 August 2012
Retrieved on 15 August 2012

References

External links

* in Japanese. {{DEFAULTSORT:Matsubara, Jin Members of the House of Representatives from Tokyo Members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens Nanjing Massacre deniers Japanese anti-communists Waseda University alumni People from Itabashi Living people 1956 births Democratic Party of Japan politicians Noda cabinet 21st-century Japanese politicians Historical negationism