was 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 ...

of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 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). A native of

Kagoshima Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture has a population of 1,599,779 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 9,187 km2 (3,547 sq mi). Kagoshima Prefecture borders Kumamoto P ...

and graduate of

Chuo University , commonly referred to as or , is a private flagship research university in Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1885 as Igirisu Hōritsu Gakkō (the English Law School), Chuo is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the country. The univer ...

, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1972 as an independent. He later joined the LDP and served as the

Minister of Justice A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a v ...

from 2000 to 2001. He was later returned to the post of Minister of Justice under Prime Minister

Yasuo Fukuda is a former Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2007 to 2008. He was previously the longest-serving Chief Cabinet Secretary in Japanese history, serving in that role from 2000 to 2004 under Prime Ministers Yoshirō M ...

on 1 August 2008. Yasuoka was a licensed attorney. He left the LDP in 1994 to join the now-defunct

Shinshinto The was a political party in Japan founded in December 1994. As a merger of several small parties, the party was ideologically diverse, with its membership ranging from moderate social democrats to liberals and conservatives. The party disso ...

party, but returned to the LDP in 1995. Yasuoka is known to have worked himself and his staff very long hours. He was one of the key participants in the launch of Fukuda's administration in 2007. Yasuoka also chaired the LDP's Constitution Research Commission. An avid jogger and swimmer, Yasuoka repeatedly swam the 2.1 km-wide

Kinko Bay also known as Kinkō Bay, is a deep inlet of the East China Sea on the coast of Japan.''Merriam Webster's Geographical Dictionary, Third Edition'', p. 562. Kagoshima Bay is on the south coast of the island of Kyūshū. The port city of Kag ...

. In October 2017, Yasuoka retired after doctors discovered his cancer. Yasuoka's son ran, but lost to

Hiroshi Kawauchi is a Japanese politician of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, and a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet (national legislature). He studied at Waseda University , mottoeng = Independence of scholarship , establishe ...

of the

Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan The (CDP or CDPJ) is a social-liberal political party in Japan. It was founded in October 2017 as a split from the Democratic Party ahead of the 2017 general election. In late 2020, the party was re-founded following a merger with majoritie ...

. Yasuoka died of cancer on 19 April 2019 at a

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

hospital, at the age of 79.

References

External links

Official website
in Japanese. , - 2019 deaths 1939 births Deaths from cancer in Japan Ministers of Justice of Japan Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) politicians New Frontier Party (Japan) politicians 20th-century Japanese politicians Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) Chuo University alumni 21st-century Japanese politicians {{Japan-politician-1930s-stub