is a Japanese lawyer, politician and former 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 ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Political career

Wakasa started his career as a

prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the ...

for the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, and wrote a book on lie detection based on his experiences in this role. He was listed as a proportional representation candidate for the Liberal Democratic Party in the 2014 general election, and won a seat despite being near the bottom of the list. In 2017, he left the Liberal Democratic Party to form a new political group called "Nippon First", which is affiliated with the

Tomin First no Kai is a regional political party in Tokyo, Japan. The party was founded by Tokyo Governor of Tokyo, Governor Yuriko Koike in 2017. Koike later stepped down as the party's leader and is no longer officially affiliated with the party, however her p ...

. Being an ally of the Tokyo Governor

Yuriko Koike is a Japanese politician who currently serves as the Governor of Tokyo since 2016. She graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1976 and was a member of the House of Representatives of Japan from 1993 until 2016, when she resigned to ...

, Wakasa along with

Goshi Hosono is a Japanese politician and a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet (national legislature). A native of Ōmihachiman, Shiga and graduate of Kyoto University, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 2000 ...

, who recently departed from

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 ...

(DP), worked together to form a new opposition party called

Kibō no Tō was a conservative political party in Japan founded by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike. The party was founded just before the call of the 2017 general election. The party's ideology was mainly Japanese conservatism and nationalism. Kibō no Tō ...

(Party of Hope) in September 2017. The new party, co-led by Wakasa, effectively became the new main opposition party after Koike did not endorse "roughly half" of the candidates fielded by DP for the upcoming general election of 2017, leading to the decision to disband DP and have former members of DP to join the new party. Following the new party's defeat in the 2017 election, Wakasa returned to private law practice at the law firm of Wakasa and Takahashi in Tokyo, where he handles corporate, employment and family law issues. He also frequently appears on television as a commentator on legal issues.

References

Chuo University alumni Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) Politicians from Tokyo 21st-century Japanese politicians 1956 births Living people {{Japan-politician-1950s-stub