YÅichi Masuzoe
Yōichi Masuzoe (Japanese舛 添 要 一, Masuzoe Yōichi; born November 29, 1947 in Yahata (now Kitakyushu ) ) is a Japanese politician and governor of Tokyo Prefecture. From 2001 to 2013 he was Member of Parliament House of Lords and from September 2007 to 2009 Minister of Health and Labor in the Cabinet.
Masuzoe is a graduate of the University of Tōkyō. After research stays in Paris and Geneva, he taught from 1979 to 1994 Political Science at the University of Tōkyō. In the 90 years he undertook the first steps in politics; among other things, he was a candidate in 1999 for the governorship of the capital prefecture Tōkyō, but reached only the third highest share of the vote behind Shintaro Ishihara (independent) and Kunio Hatoyama (then DPJ ).
In 2001 Masuzoe on the proportional list of the Liberal Democratic Party ( LDP) was elected to the House of Lords. He belonged to the LDP deputies who are not faktionsgebunden. While the scandal to recover lost and undocumented pension rights in the Upper House election in 2007 he criticized the Shinzō Abe government for the slow workup and was re-elected despite the massive losses of the LDP. With the change of government in August Abe appointed him surprisingly Minister for Health and Work, and thus gave him the responsibility for dealing with the pension scandal. Masuzoe announced plans to establish his political survival on this project. Abe's successor Fukuda and Asō beließen Masuzoe on his post he retained until the change of government in 2009.
In April 2010 Masuzoe left the LDP and founded, together with three members of the Kaikaku club and also leaked from the LDP deputies Tetsuro Yano and Masakatsu Koike a new party, the Shinto Kaikaku, the first of which he became president. In the upper house election in July 2013, he did not run for re-election and subsequently resigned from the party chairmanship.
In the gubernatorial election in Tokyo in 2014 ran Masuzoe with support from center-right parties and trade unions. He sat with around 43 % of the vote clearly against Kenji Utsunomiya, Morihiro Hosokawa and 13 other candidates.