Yasushi Furukawa (governor)

Yasushi Furukawa (Japanese古 川 康, Yasushi Furukawa, born July 15, 1958 in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture) is a Japanese politician and since 2003, the governor of Saga.

Furukawa, a graduate of the Law Faculty of the University of Tokyo, was after his graduation in 1977 in the Ministry for self-government, for which he later worked as secretary to the Minister including in the prefecture administrations of Nagano, Okayama and Nagasaki and 1997 Mitsuhiro Uesugi. In January 2003, he ended his official career, in order to apply for the Simplified regional elections in April to succeed Governor Sagas Isamu Imoto, who retired after three terms.

In a field of six candidates, Furukawa, whose candidacy was supported by the Liberal Democratic Party continued, with 13,000 -vote lead by the former prefecture Parliament President Iwamasa Miyahara. 2007 and 2011, he was sustained against only one opponent, communists Masakatsu Hirabayashi in office. Among the controversial issues of his term his approval in 2008 for the introduction of MOX fuel in nuclear power plants Genkai, the dispute over the Isahaya Dam in the neighboring prefecture of Nagasaki, against its closure by the central government were the local fishing cooperatives with the support Furukawa for years oppose (preliminary opening by the Cabinet Kan 2010) had, and a scandal over defective meat export controls by the prefectural authorities in 2009.