is a previous

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 ...

ese

defence minister A defence minister or minister of defence is a cabinet official position in charge of a ministry of defense, which regulates the armed forces in sovereign states. The role of a defence minister varies considerably from country to country; in som ...

. He is a politician of 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 ...

, a 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). A native of

Nagano, Nagano is the capital and largest city of Nagano Prefecture, located in the Nagano Basin (Zenkoji Daira) in the central Chūbu region of Japan. Nagano is categorized as a core city of Japan. Nagano City is the highest prefectural capital in Japan, with ...

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 Councillors for the first time in 1992 after serving in the assembly of

Nagano Prefecture is a landlocked prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region of Honshū. Nagano Prefecture has a population of 2,052,493 () and has a geographic area of . Nagano Prefecture borders Niigata Prefecture to the north, Gunma Prefecture to the ...

for five terms. He had joined the

in 1998. On 16 September 2009; Kitazawa was appointed as the Minister of Defence by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. He was re-appointed by Prime Minister Naoto Kan in the cabinet shift, and was the Minister of Defence until 2 September 2011. He retired in 2016, and was succeeded by

Hideya Sugio Hideya Sugio is a Japanese politician who is a member of the House of Councillors of Japan. Biography He graduated from Tokyo University in 1981, and worked for Tokyo Broadcasting System and Japan News Network before entering politics. he had ...

References

External links

* in Japanese. , - 1938 births Democratic Party of Japan politicians Japanese defense ministers People from Nagano (city) Living people Members of the House of Councillors (Japan) {{Japan-politician-1930s-stub