- Yōhei Kōno
Nihongo|Yōhei Kōno |河野洋平|Kōno Yōhei|extra=born
January 15 ,1937 inHiratsuka, Kanagawa is aJapan ese politician.History
Kono is the eldest son of
Ichiro Kono , a former minister dealing with theTokyo Olympic Games .Kenzo Kono , the chairman of theHouse of Councillors is his younger uncle.After graduating from
Waseda University , Kono worked with theMarubeni company. In 1967, Kono's political career began due to the death of his father.Political Careers
He was Deputy Prime Minister from 1994-95. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister
Yoshiro Mori . He is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). He was once President of the LDP from 1993 to 1995. 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.Kono 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 historianYoshiaki Yoshimi announced he had discovered in the Defense Agency library in Tokyo documentary evidence that theImperial 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.To date, he has been the only president of the LDP not to serve as
Prime Minister of Japan .
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