is a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1993 to 1994, leading a coalition government which was the first non-Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government of Japan since 1955. After successfully implementing various election and trade reforms, he stepped down from the role of Prime Minister in early 1994. He later ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for Governor of Tokyo in the February 2014 gubernatorial election as an independent supported by the Democratic Party of Japan. He has been, since 2005, the head of the Kumamoto-Hosokawa clan, one of the former noble families of Japan.
Early life
Morihiro Hosokawa was born in Tokyo as the eldest grandson of Moritatsu, 3rd Marquess Hosokawa, and head of the Hosokawa clan. His maternal grandfather is the pre-war prime minister Prince Fumimaro Konoe. As a great-great-grandson of Prince Kuni Asahiko, he is a third cousin of the present emperor, Naruhito. He is also a descendant of Christian heroine Gracia Hosokawa.
Hosokawa received his LL.B. degree from Sophia University in 1961. After working for the newspaper Asahi Shimbun as journalist for five years, he made an unsuccessful run in the 1969 general election. He was elected to the House of Councillors of Japan as an LDP representative of Kumamoto Prefecture in 1971, with his campaign funded by party boss Kakuei Tanaka.
After serving two terms in the National Diet, he left in 1983 to become the governor of Kumamoto, where he served until 1991. During his term as governor, he complained about the powerful bureaucracy of the central government. Hosokawa pursued an aggressive economic policy and strengthened environmental laws. In May 1992, an ongoing campaign contribution scandal inspired him to form the reformist Japan New Party (JNP), which won four seats (one of which Hosokawa assumed) in the 1992 House of Councillors election.
Prime minister
In the July 1993 general election, in a change very few had foreseen even a year earlier, the LDP lost its majority in the Diet for the first time in thirty-eight years, winning only 223 out of 511 seats in the House of Representatives. The previous LDP government of Kiichi Miyazawa was replaced by an eight-party coalition government which promised a series of social, political, and economic reforms. Excluding the JCP, the coalition was backed by all of the former opposition parties, which included the newly formed JNP, the Japan Socialist Party, the Japan Renewal Party (Shinseito), Komeito, the Democratic Socialist Party, the Socialist Democratic Federation, the RENGO and the New Party Sakigake, who together controlled 243 seats in the House of Representatives. Hosokawa, one of the major voices in forming the coalition, was chosen as the new Prime Minister.
Walter Mondale, then the US ambassador to Japan, characterized Hosokawa as having a "Kennedy-esque" ability to focus on ideals; nonetheless, Hosokawa's coalition had no common ideas other than their opposition to the LDP, which undermined Hosokawa throughout his term as prime minister. He was also at odds with Japan's bureaucracy, which he sought to reform after decades of bureaucratic entrenchment under the LDP.
Foreign policy
Hosokawa made several unprecedented moves toward atonement with Japan's Asian neighbors during his term as prime minister. In his first news conference in office, he made an unprecedented statement acknowledging that Japan waged a war of aggression in World War II.
He later said: "You can obviously define 'aggression' in any number of ways, depending on context. But if you have any common sense, you just cannot say in good conscience that Japan was not the aggressor when Japan did in fact cause tremendous anguish and loss of life in China, Korea and Southeast Asian nations in order to protect its own interests. I knew my opinion was going to invite heated controversy."
On 6 November 1993, he visited South Korea, where he had a summit with President Kim Young-sam in Gyeongju and again offered a clear apology to the Korean people for Japan's actions in the war, statements which were widely applauded in Korea. Hosokawa viewed the Japanese annexation of Korea as wrong and rejected the common view in Japan that it was with Korea's consent and was beneficial to Korea. On 19 March 1994, he visited China, and the two governments signed an agreement of cooperation in environmental protection.
In May 1994, right-wing extremist Masakatsu Nozoe fired a gunshot into the ceiling of a Tokyo hotel where Hosokawa was giving a speech, in apparent protest at Hosokawa's statements.