Yōko Kamikawa

Yōko Kamikawa (Jap.上 川 阳 子, Kamikawa Yōko; born March 1, 1953 in Shizuoka, Shizuoka Prefecture) is a Japanese politician, Member of the Shūgiin, the lower house for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP ) and former Minister.

Kamikawa studied until 1977, International Relations at the University of Tokyo. Subsequently, she worked for the Mitsubishi Research Institute. In 1988, she earned a Fulbright student a master's at Harvard Kennedy School. During this time she was also assistant to U.S. Senator Max Baucus. After that, she was President of the Globalink Research Institute.

From 2000, Kamikawa was for the first constituency Shizuoka at the Shūgiin (2003 to 2005 on proportional representation ). Within the LDP, she belonged to the Koga faction. As of November 2005, Parliamentary Secretary Kamikawa ( seimukan ) in the Ministry of Interior. Prime Minister Abe Shinzō it convened in August 2007 in his cabinet reshuffle, Minister of State for Gender Equality and the fight against the falling birth rate. How many ministers in Abe Cabinet she had to admit on political funds mistakes in their annual reports. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda took Kamikawa in his cabinet, but no longer considered them in the cabinet reshuffle in August 2008.

In the 2009 election Shūgiin Kamikawa lost her constituency to Seishu Makino (Democratic Party) and also missed the re-election on the proportional representation block Tōkai. In the 2012 election, their results deteriorated in the constituency Shizuoka 1 only slightly (2009: 96 096 votes 37.6 %, 2012: 81 278, 36.2 %), they could prevail against a now fragmented field of candidates and moved for the fourth time in Shūgiin one.