Seiji Maehara

The Honourable Seiji Maehara
前原 誠司
Minister for Foreign Affairs
In office 17 September 2010 – 7 March 2011
Prime Minister	Naoto Kan
Preceded by	Katsuya Okada
Succeeded by	Yukio Edano (Acting)
Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism
In office 16 September 2009 – 17 September 2010
Prime Minister	Yukio Hatoyama Naoto Kan
Preceded by	Kazuyoshi Kaneko
Succeeded by	Sumio Mabuchi
Personal details
Born	(1962-04-30) 30 April 1962 Kyoto, Japan
Political party	Democratic Party (1998–present)
Other political affiliations	New Party (1992–1994) Sakigake Party (1994–1998)
Alma mater	Kyoto University
Website	Official website

Seiji Maehara (前原 誠司, Maehara Seiji, born 30 April 1962) is a Japanese politician who has been a member of the House of Representatives of Japan since 1993. He was the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from 2005 to 2006, and later served as Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and Minister of Foreign Affairs under the cabinets of Yukio Hatoyama and Naoto Kan, before resigning from the cabinet in March 2011 after he acknowledged receiving illegal donations from a South Korean national living in Japan. Affiliated to the openly revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi, Maehara is viewed as a "China hawk" and a proponent of close ties with the United States.

Personal background

Maehara was born in Kyoto to parents from Tottori Prefecture. He attended the law faculty of Kyoto University, where he majored in international politics. He attended the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management from 1987 to 1991.

Maehara married his wife Airi (愛里) in June 1995; they have no children. He likes to take photographs of trains as a hobby.

Early political career

Maehara won election to the Kyoto Prefectural Assembly in 1991 with the support of, among others, future Diet member Keiro Kitagami. At the time, he was the youngest prefectural assemblyman in Kyoto history.

He was elected to the House of Representatives as a member of the Japan New Party of Morihiro Hosokawa in 1993. In 1994, he left the party and formed the "Democratic Wave" with several other young parliamentarians, but later that year joined the Sakigake Party, which was briefly part of the majority government. In 1998, he joined the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) when it was formed that same year.

As a member of the DPJ he focused on security affairs and often negotiated with the government. In the shadow governments he has served as the Shadow Minister for Security Affairs and Shadow Minister for the Defense Agency.

Term as DPJ President

After the crushing defeat of the DPJ in the 2005 snap election and the resignation of DPJ leader Katsuya Okada, the elected representatives of the party met to choose a new leader. The two candidates were Naoto Kan and Maehara. Maehara defeated the 58-year-old Kan by a razor-thin count of 96–94 in open balloting by party members from both Houses of the Diet, with two members abstaining and two others having cast invalid votes. Maehara was appointed DPJ president on 17 September 2005.

However, Maehara's term as party leader was short lived. Although he initially led the party's criticism of the Koizumi administration, particularly in regards to connections between LDP lawmakers and scandal-ridden Livedoor, the revelation that a fake email was used to try to establish this link greatly damaged his credibility. The scandal led to the resignation of Representative Hisayasu Nagata and of Maehara as party leader on 31 March. New elections for party leader were held on 7 April, in which Ichirō Ozawa was elected President.

Cabinet

In the Japanese general election, 2009, the Democratic Party won a two-thirds majority of the House of Representatives, allowing the party to form a new government.

Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport

Maehara was appointed Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport on 16 September 2009. In this role, he was the spokesman for a number of government initiatives, including:

• Cessation of construction work on Yamba Dam
• Opening Haneda Airport in Tokyo to long-haul international flights
• Bankruptcy restructuring of Japan Airlines
• Experimentation with reducing or eliminating tolls on the Japanese expressway network

Minister of Foreign Affairs

Then Prime Minister Naoto Kan reshuffled the cabinet effective 17 September 2010, making Maehara the youngest Minister of Foreign Affairs in postwar Japanese history. The main international relations event during his tenure as foreign minister was the 2010 Senkaku boat collision incident, which led to increased tensions between Japan and the People's Republic of China concerning their overlapping claims to the Senkaku Islands.

Resignation from the Cabinet

In March 2011, Maehara resigned as Minister for Foreign Affairs after it emerged that he had accepted a political donation of ¥250,000 (approx. US$3,000) from a 72-year-old South Korean permanent resident of Japan who operated a restaurant in Kyoto. Maehara had known the woman since junior high school, but her foreign nationality made the donation illegal if it had been accepted intentionally. Maehara apologised to the nation for only holding the post for 6 months and for "provoking distrust" over his political funding. According to the Japan Times, the resignation would cause Japanese relations with the United States to weaken. The donation was revealed by an opposing party politician, Shoji Nishida; The Economist described the incident as a scandal based on a technicality that primarily illustrates the unsatisfactory treatment of Koreans in Japan.

Candidacy for Prime Minister

Following Kan's announced resignation in August 2011, Maehara initially planned to support Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, but broke off this support due to disagreement over whether to raise the consumption tax, and declared his own candidacy for the presidency of the DPJ on 22 August. He lost to Noda and Economy Minister Banri Kaieda in the first round of balloting on 29 August.

External links

• Official website

House of Representatives of Japan
Preceded by Mikio Okuda Eiichi Nagasue Yukio Takemura Bunmei Ibuki Katsuhiko Takeuchi	Representative for Kyoto 1st district (multi-member) 1993–1996 Served alongside: Keiji Kokuta, Bunmei Ibuki, Yuzuru Takeuchi, Mikio Okuda	District eliminated
New constituency	Representative for the Kinki PR block 1996–2000	Constituency abolished
Preceded by Mikio Okuda	Representative for Kyoto 2nd district 2000–present	Incumbent
Party political offices
Preceded by Katsuya Okada	Leader of the Democratic Party 2005–2006	Succeeded by Ichirō Ozawa
Political offices
Preceded by Kazuyoshi Kaneko	Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism 2009–2010	Succeeded by Sumio Mabuchi
Preceded by Katsuya Okada	Minister for Foreign Affairs 2010–2011	Succeeded by Takeaki Matsumoto