Yōhei Kōno

Yōhei Kōno at the official residence of the chairman of the House of Representatives in Nagatachō, Tokyo, Japan, in April 2008

Yōhei Kōno (河野 洋平, Kōno Yōhei, born 15 January 1937 in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa) is a Japanese politician and a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. He served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from November 2003 until August 2009, when the LDP lost its majority in the 2009 election. Kōno served as speaker for the longest length since the set up of House of Representatives in 1890. He was the president of the Japan Association of Athletics Federations from 1999 to 2013.

History

Kōno is the eldest son of Ichirō Kōno, a former minister dealing with the Tokyo Olympic Games. Kenzō Kōno, the chairman of the House of Councillors is his younger uncle.

After graduating from Waseda University, Kōno worked with the Marubeni company. In 1967, Kono's political career began due to the death of his father.

Political career

He was Deputy Prime Minister from 1994–95. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Yoshirō Mori. He is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). He was once President of the LDP from 1993 to 1995, and to date is the only LDP leader except for Sadakazu Tanigaki to have never served as Prime Minister of Japan. As he is one of the pro-Chinese members of the LDP, he came under pressure domestically in the spring of 2005 when anti-Japanese movements in China became intense.

Kōno is well known as a controversial figure within the so-called comfort women debate, for the official statement he made in 1993, when he was Chief Cabinet Secretary. In his statement, made after historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi announced he had discovered in the Defense Agency library in Tokyo documentary evidence that the Imperial Japanese Army established and ran "comfort stations", he essentially admitted that the Japanese Imperial Army had been involved, directly and indirectly, in the establishment of comfort facilities, and that coercion had been used in the recruitment and retention of the women. His subsequent call for historical research and education aimed at remembering the issue became the basis for addressing the subject of forced prostitution in school history textbooks. But later, in 1997, Mister Kōno and former Chief Cabinet Secretary Ishihara Nobuo (whi was involved in this statement), officially admitted those were products of secret diplomacy with South Korea, conducted without any evidence whatsoever.