Seiji Maehara
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Seiji Maehara (前原 誠司 Maehara Seiji; born 30 April 1962) is a member of the House of Representatives of Japan, and a former leader of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). He is known for expertise in national security and defense and a notable advocate for revising Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan. (According to a speech he gave announcing his candidacy to head the DPJ on 14 September 2005, he is in favor of preserving section 1 but deleting section 2 of the Article.)
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[edit] Early life
He was born in Kyoto and attended the Law Faculty of Kyoto University, where he majored in international politics, and quickly entered the world of politics, winning election to the Kyoto Prefectural Assembly in 1991. 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.
[edit] 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. The election could have gone the other way -- two members abstained from voting and two others cast invalid votes. The ballots were cast by party members from both Houses of the Diet. He was appointed on September 17, 2005.
Maehara's term as party leader lasted barely half a year. Although he initially showed promise as he led the party's criticism of the Koizumi administration, particularly on the Livedoor scandal, the revelation that a fake email was used to try and show that certain LDP party members had accepted funds from the company sent shock waves through the political world. After several weeks of scandal, which ultimately led to the resignation of Representative Hisayasu Nagata and the resignation of Maehara as party leader on March 31st. New elections for party leader were held on April 7th, in which Ichiro Ozawa was elected President of the DPJ.
[edit] Additionally...
His two hobbies are baseball, which he played in high school, and photographing steam engines, for which he is somewhat infamous. For his honeymoon, he took his wife to Hokkaido, telling her "there's an active-service steam locomotive engine there." Finding that photography of steam locomotives was the real purpose of the trip, their relationship cooled for a while.
He married his wife Airi (愛里) in June 1995. They have no children.
