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Ex-Japan political bigwig Takemura dies at 88

Former Japanese political heavyweight Masayoshi Takemura, who served as chief cabinet secretary and finance minister, died on Wednesday. He was 88. (AFP/file)
Former Japanese political heavyweight Masayoshi Takemura, who served as chief cabinet secretary and finance minister, died on Wednesday. He was 88. (AFP/file)
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02 Oct 2022 03:10:09 GMT9
02 Oct 2022 03:10:09 GMT9

TOKYO: Former Japanese political heavyweight Masayoshi Takemura, who served as chief cabinet secretary and finance minister, died on Wednesday. He was 88.

Takemura played a major role in the Japanese political world in the first half of the 1990s, after the collapse of the so-called 1955 system featuring one-party rule by the Liberal Democratic Party.

A native of Shiga Prefecture, western Japan, Takemura entered the Home Affairs Ministry, now integrated into the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, after graduating from the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Economics.

After serving as Shiga governor, Takemura won a seat on the Diet, Japan’s parliament, for the first time in 1986 as he ran in the year’s election for the House of Representatives on the LDP ticket. He was elected to the Lower House three more times.

In June 1993, Takemura and other LDP members, including Yukio Hatoyama, who later became prime minister, left the party as they aimed for political reforms, and established the now-defunct New Party Sakigake.

Takemura became chief cabinet secretary in August 1993 under the non-LDP coalition government led by Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa.

But he clashed heavily with Ichiro Ozawa, known as a political power broker and then secretary-general of the Japan Renewal Party, one of the parties forming the non-LDP coalition, over how to manage the administration.

Following the resignation of the Hosokawa cabinet in April 1994, the New Party Sakigake quit the coalition.

In June the same year, the LDP, the New Party Sakigake and the Japan Socialist Party launched a coalition government of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, leader of the JSP. Takemura took up the post of finance minister.

Hatoyama launched the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan in September 1996, and most of the New Party Sakigake’s lawmakers acted with Hatoyama. But Takemura was not allowed to join the move.

Takemura lost the 2000 Lower House election and retired from politics in 2001 due to a health issue.

In 2004, he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun from the government.

JIJI Press

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