Hosokawa, Morihiro

Hosokawa was born in 1938 in Tokyo into a noble samurai family belonging to the highest aristocracy of Japan - kazoku. His maternal great-grandfather, Fumimaro Konoe , was a major pre-war politician and served as Prime Minister of Japan ^[1] . After the adoption of the 1947 constitution, estate division in Japan was abolished. If this did not happen, then Morihiro Hosokawa would be a prince (Japanese jamb). Also, he can sometimes be called an unofficial prince.

After graduating from the University of Sofia (Jöti) in 1961 , Hosokawa began working as a journalist in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. In 1971, he was elected to the lower house of parliament on a nationwide list of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Having left his job in Parliament in 1983 , Hosokawa took over as governor of Kumamoto Prefecture , where he remained until 1991 . In May 1992 , declaring that he could no longer remain in a party with such a high level of corruption , Hosokawa left the LDP and founded the New Party of Japan ^[1] .

In the July 1993 elections , the LDP for the first time lost a majority in Parliament. Two options arose in this situation: either a coalition of the LDP with other parties, or a broad coalition of all parties, including the smallest ones, but without the LDP. Attempts by the Liberal Democrats to agree on the formation of a coalition did not bring results, and at a meeting of the lower house of parliament on August 6, 1993, the opposition coalition, consisting of seven parties and one political association , won. Morihiro Hosokawa, the head of the New Party, was elected the new Prime Minister. ^[1]

Hosokawa as a whole maintained the continuity of Japanese foreign policy, but new emphasis was nevertheless placed on some issues. So, in his speech on August 15, 1993 at the annual ceremony dedicated to the end of World War II , he first recognized the military operations of Japan as aggression.

In October 1993, Hosokawa met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin , as a result of which the parties signed the Tokyo Declaration, implying the possibility of negotiating the transfer of the four Kuril Islands to Japan ^[2] . Hosokawa visited China on March 19, 1994 : the two governments signed an agreement on environmental protection.

A serious weakness of the Hosokawa cabinet was the lack of a solid political base, as well as the wide composition of the coalition. On many critical issues, we had to constantly look for compromises ^[1] . The most important of these were the liberalization of the rice market in Japan, reform of the electoral system, and an increase in the consumer tax . It was the attempt to raise the tax that prompted the resignation of the Hosokawa government. The situation was aggravated by a surfaced story about his receipt of illegal loans in the 1980s. In April 1994, he was forced to resign. As Prime Minister, he was replaced by Tsutomu Hut .

In 1996, Hosokawa joined the New Frontiers Party , and in 1998 joined the Democratic Party . In May of that year, he left politics.

Upon retiring, he began to manufacture ceramic products and began to hold exhibitions with his works ^[3] . Also today, he is an adviser to The Japan Times .