Ritsuo Hosokawa

Ritsuo Hosokawa (Japanese细 川 律 夫, Hosokawa Ritsuo; born August 8, 1943 in Gohoku (now Ino ), Kōchi Prefecture) is a Japanese politician of the Democratic Party, former deputy in Shūgiin, the lower house, for the third constituency Saitama and was from September 2010 to September 2011 Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare.

Hosokawa joined in 1966 his law studies at Meiji University from, later followed by the bar exam. In 1974 he was registered with the Bar Association Saitama. In 1981 he opened a law office in Koshigaya in Saitama East, for which he was active even after his entry into politics. In 1983 Shūgiin - election, he competed in dreimandatigen constituency Saitama 4, which also Koshigaya belonged to the Socialist Party of Japan ( SPJ ) for the first time for a mandate, but landed behind a Kōmeitō and three LDP candidates only in fifth place. In the second run in the elections in 1986, in which the constituency received a mandate more, he missed the fourth place by around 2,000 votes. Only in the third attempt in 1990 he became a deputy, where he Tōsen with over 200,000 votes Top, thus reaching the choice with the most votes at the constituency candidates. He was subsequently re-elected six times in a row, after the electoral reform of 1994 new single constituency Saitama 3 or in the proportional representation block North Kantō.

In 1996, Hosokawa involved in the founding of the Democratic Party, in December of the same year he took over the chairmanship of the Association of Saitama Prefecture. Later, he was among other things as the person responsible for North Kantō Member of the Board and belonged to several shadow cabinets of Yukio Hatoyama and Ozawa Ichirō, most recently in 2009 as "the next Minister of Justice ". In Shūgiin he led from 1999 to 2000 the chair of the Environment Committee, 2005, he was minority leader in the Budget Committee. He intensively dealt with the situation of foreign workers in Japan and worked during the " twisted parliament " in 2009 with government officials Yasuhisa Shiozaki (LDP ) on a bill for the stricter combating illegal immigration. He is also a supporter of the commune and prefecture suffrage for foreigners.

After the Democratic victory in the Shūgiin - election in 2009, when Hosokawa even his constituency won back a significant result of Hiroshi Imai (LDP ), he was in the government of Yukio Hatoyama as Secretary of State ( fuku - daijin, " Deputy Minister " ) to the Ministry of Social Affairs appointed. In September he took over in reshuffled cabinet of Naoto Kan the ministerial posts by Akira Nagatsuma, he paused to 2 September 2011.

In 2012 Shūgiin choice Hosokawa was voted out after 22 years as an MP: the third constituency Saitama he lost to Hitoshi Kikawada (LDP ) and scored with his - as measured by the disastrous performance of candidates of the Democratic Party as a whole - relatively narrow constituency defeat the fifth on the list of Democrats in North Kantō. As the party with 15.1% of proportional representation votes won only three of the 20 proportional representation seats there ( in 2009 there were 42.1% and ten seats), enough not to re-election on the block.