ShÅgo Arai
Shogo Arai (Japanese荒 井 正 吾, Shogo Arai, born January 18, 1945 in Yao, Osaka Prefecture ) is a Japanese non-party politician, former deputy in Sangiin, the upper house of the national parliament, and in 2007 Governor of Nara Prefecture.
Arai in 1968 completed his studies at the Law Faculty of the University of Tokyo and became a civil servant in the Ministry of Transport. In 1972 he completed his graduate studies at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, in the 1990s, he rose to the Ministry to department head positions. He became head of Kaijo Hoan -chō, who was then the Department of Transportation assumed authority of the Japanese Coast Guard in 1999. In 2001, he stepped back, ended his official career and turned to politics.
In the 2001 election, Sangiin - Arai (LDP ) applied as a candidate of the Liberal Democratic Party for the sole mandate in Nara prefecture and the Democrats could Takeshi Maeda beat by about 30,000 votes. In 2003, he was under the second cabinet Koizumi Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In Sangiin he was from 2006 Chairman of the Committee on Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In March 2007, he resigned his seat in order to apply to the unified regional elections in April for the succession of Nara Governor Yoshiya Kakimoto, who retired after four terms. With formal support of LDP and Kōmeitō, but only against a communist counter- candidate, he received two-thirds of the votes.
A theme of his tenure is driven forward by Osaka Governor Hashimoto Tōru creating a " special purpose association Kansai ", at its inception, Nara different from the other prefectures of the region did not take part under Governor Arai. He justifies this with the lower economic and financial power of his prefecture, but also has doubts about the benefits of the new administrative structure. The purpose of association Kansai, which after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, a common reaction of the prefectures of Kansai, eg allowed in the reception of evacuees from the disaster area, was also an issue of Arai's re- election campaign in the gubernatorial election, 2011 election, he was -. , this time against two candidates, including one supported by Hashimoto Independent - with around 50 % of the vote for four more years re-elected.