Ozawa, Ichiro
Ozawa, Ichiro,
1942–, Japanese political leader. The son of a prominent politician, Ozawa was elected (1969) to his late father's parliamentary seat. Then a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic partyLiberal Democratic party(LDP), Japanese political party. It began as the conservative Liberal party, which, under Shigeru Yoshida, became the dominant political force in Japan following World War II. In 1955 the Liberals merged with the newly created Democratic party.
..... Click the link for more information. (LDP), he served in Prime Minister Yasuhiro's cabinet in the mid-1980s. In 1993 he quit the LDP and helped found the opposition party that briefly formed a government. During the next years Ozawa formed a series of opposition parties; he also became a behind-the-scenes power broker, earning the nickname "Shadow Shogun." In 2003 he merged his Liberal party into the Democratic party (DPJ), and was (2006–9) leader of the DPJ until a political-funding scandal forced him to step down. Nonetheless, Ozawa was widely credited with engineering the DPJ's 2009 victory, which ended some five decades of LDP rule. He served (2009–10) as DPJ secretary-general, but a fundraising scandal again led him to resign. (He was acquitted of charges related to the scandal in 2012.) Ozawa later challenged (2010) Prime Minister Naoto KanKan, Naoto,
1946–, Japanese political leader, grad. Tokyo Institute of Technology (1970). A civic activist and long-time opponent of the Liberal Democratic party, he first was elected to the Diet in 1980 as a Social Democrat.
..... Click the link for more information. for the party leadership and lost. In 2012 he and his faction left the DPJ after the party sought to enact an increase in the sales tax, and formed the People's Livelihoods First party.
Bibliography
See his Blueprint for a New Japan (1993).