Urmas Paet and Yoshitada Konoike 20140131

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 and member of the

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, ...

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), formerly Minister of State for Disaster Mnagement. A native of

Amagasaki, Hyōgo file:Amagasaki Castle Tenshu 20181125.jpg, 270px, Amagasaki Castle file:Amagasaki city center area Aerial photograph.1985.jpg, 270px, Aerial view of Amagasaki city center file:Amagasaki st03s3000.jpg, 270px, Amagasaki Station is an industrial Citi ...

and graduate of

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1986 after an unsuccessful run in 1983. After losing his seat in 1993, he was elected to the House of Councillors for the first time in 1995 and is currently serving his fourth 6-year term.

Biography

In July 2003 Konoike caused controversy when he commented on an ongoing murder case, saying that the parents of the accused "should be paraded through the city and decapitated". He apologized for the comments but one week later he commented on a different case, in which four child sex slaves escaped from the house of a dead captor, saying "we don't know if the girls are victims or assailants", and added, "if you're arguing the girls were bought as slaves, you assume they have no responsibility". Konoike's comments were seen as problematic as he was serving as deputy head of a government department set up to address the issue of youth crime and unemployment at the time, which led Prime Minister

Junichiro Koizumi Junichiro Koizumi (; , ''Koizumi Jun'ichirō'' ; born 8 January 1942) is a former Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2009. He is ...

to make a public statement that any further such comments would not be tolerated. In 2007, when asked to comment on an unrelated murder case, he said, that "they should be paraded through the ci... no, I'm not allowed to say that, am I?" Konoike was removed from his post as deputy

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 ...

on May 13, 2009, and was admitted to a mental hospital after the weekly magazine Shukan Shincho revealed that he had used his government

shinkansen The , colloquially known in English as the bullet train, is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. Initially, it was built to connect distant Japanese regions with Tokyo, the capital, to aid economic growth and development. Beyond l ...

free pass to travel to

Atami is a city located in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 36,865 in 21,593 households and a population density of 600 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Atami is located in the far ea ...

to spend several days with a mistress. He was also expelled from the Hyogo branch of the party, but was subsequently readmitted to the party on 30 August 2010. Konoike was elected to the House of Councillors for his fourth consecutive term in the July 2013 election and unsuccessfully contested the ballot to replace

Hirofumi Nakasone is a Japanese politician from Takasaki, Gunma, who served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from September 2008 to September 2009. He was Minister of Education under Prime Minister Yoshirō Mori. He is former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone's s ...

as the LDP's leader in the house. He lost the ballot to

Kensei Mizote is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party, a member of the House of Councillors in the Diet (national legislature). Overview A native of Hiroshima, Hiroshima and graduate of the University of Tokyo, he became mayor of Mihara, H ...

82–31. He died on 25 December 2018 at the age of 78.LDP heavyweight Konoike dies at 78
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Notes

References

External links

* in Japanese. Members of the House of Councillors (Japan) 1940 births 2018 deaths People from Amagasaki Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) politicians {{Japan-politician-1940s-stub