BIOGRAPHIC DATA ON JAPAN'S DIET FRESHMEN

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 TOKYO 001139

SIPDIS

NOFORN
SIPDIS

PLEASE PASS TO INR/B

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/17/2016
TAGS: PINR PREL PGOV ECON JA
SUBJECT: BIOGRAPHIC DATA ON JAPAN'S DIET FRESHMEN


Classified By: Ambassador J.T. Schieffer. Reasons 1.4 (b/d).


1. (SBU) SUMMARY. Since the September 2005 election of 83
freshmen Diet members, Post has had several opportunities to
gather biographic data on some of them. What follows is a
summation of that data. END SUMMARY.


2. (C//NF) Yoshitami Kameoka of the Liberal Democratic Party
(LDP) revealed during a lunch with Emboff that he has a great
love of baseball and shared that he had been catcher on his
high school team as well as a player and coach while at
university. He played twice in the prestigious summer
national high school tournament at Koshien Stadium while a
teammate of former Giants pitcher Suguru Egawa. He is proud
of the camaraderie among the LDP first termers and sees them
as a force for the future, not unlike the US Republicans of

1994. In conversations with fellow freshmen Diet members he
was very casual and used informal Japanese He told Emboff
that maintaining the US-Japan alliance was his top priority
as a legislator, taking precedence over other domestic
issues. (Note: Since this meeting Kameoka has arranged with
Emboff an Embassy vs. Diet baseball game to be held at Tokyo
Dome. As a sign of his loyalty to his fellow freshman class,
he has limited the Diet team roster to only the new "Koizumi
Children".)


3. (C//NF) LDP Diet member Chubei Kagita speaks no English
and apparently has no US experience. He told Emboff during a
lunch that he was the former mayor of Nara City and that he
took pride in his Kansai roots. (Comment: The Kansai dialect
may in fact be his first language.) Before becoming mayor
Kagita held a local office and appears to be something of a
career politician. The way in which he described his recent
political ascent indicates that he is probably a true LDP
loyalist and he is taking his new status as a Diet member in
stride. Kagita flagged pensions and Japan's demographic
shift as two major issues facing Japan at the moment. He is
keen to exchange ideas on pension systems and expressed
interest in how the American system of pensions and social
security worked. He was intrigued with Emboff's explanation
of the concept behind the US 401(k) plan, with which he was
unfamiliar.


4. (C//NF) Jun Hayashi, also an LDP Diet member from
Kamakura, speaks little English. He told Emboff that his
constituents have a negative view of US military base issues
but that he himself is very positive about the US-Japan
alliance. He is very interested in traveling to the US to
take part in an exchange with US members of Congress. He
also indicated interest in health care.


5. (C//NF) Hiroshi Ogushi of the Democratic Party of Japan
speaks English well but is more comfortable in Japanese. He
professes to know many people at US Treasury from his time
working in the office of the International Monetary Fund's
(IMF,s) Japanese Executive Director in Washington. He
compared notes with Emboff about the bad traffic in Los
Angeles and Washington, DC.


6. (C//NF) LDP Diet member Masahito Moriyama of Osaka/Kobe
speaks English very well, apparently because he worked at the
OECD in Paris for a few years. He also has spent time in the
US on business while working for the GOJ, including meetings
with the Department of Transportation and other agencies. He
told Emboff that he has four children: three girls and a boy,
all of whom are grown. He indicated interest in economic and
social reform issues such as Japan's birthrate which he
discussed at length. He asked why the US was not
participating in the Kyoto Protocol, which may indicate an
interest in environmental issues. He is thoughtful, has a
youthful appearance and was a snappy dresser. He left a very
good impression on Emboff.


7. (C//NF) Hideki Makihara, a lawyer by training and member
of the LDP, expressed interest in international trade issues
and noted his previous career at the Ministry of Economy,
Trade and Industry (METI) in a meeting with Emboff. He is
interested in US concerns over the GOJ's shift toward East
Asia and South Asia as demonstrated by the government,s
promotion of free trade agreements (FTAs) with Korea and
ASEAN.


8. (C//NF) LDP Diet member Toshiko Abe, who received a PhD.
in nursing science from the State of Illinois University,
adopted a somewhat confrontational approach while strongly
voicing her disapproval of US policies in meetings with
Emboff. She noted that the LDP manifesto had a clearly

TOKYO 00001139 002 OF 002


stated policy of maintaining Japan's food self-sufficiency
and even advocated increasing it from 40 percent to 45
percent, a very important part of maintaining a country's
strength and food security. She also criticized the success
of Toyota in the US, adding that US jobs had been created at
the expense of Japanese ones.


9. (C//NF)) Hirotaka Ishihara, son of controversial Tokyo
Governor Shintaro Ishihara and a member of the LDP, told
Emboff that Japan could learn from US examples of promoting
foreign direct investment (FDI). He highlighted his
background in the financial sector and commented on his
interest in the US fiscal condition because Japan held 80
trillion yen ($684 billion) worth of US bonds while at the
same time the GOJ was facing 774 trillion yen ($6.6 trillion)
budget deficit. Ishihara also was curious about how
Americans learned military theory. Because the US was such a
major military power, he wanted to know how Americans learned
about military affairs. He wondered whether there existed a
kind of American "military arts" similar to Japanese "budou".


10. (C//NF) Takao Ochi of the LDP commented that the East
Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC) advocated by Mahathir in 1989
had tried to exclude Europe and the US but the current East
Asia Summit (EAS) did not. The idea of an Asian Monetary
Fund (AMF) had been unacceptable in 1997 but the current
framework of ASEAN 13 was designed to cope with crisis. He
believed the US should participate in the EAS because it had
a stake in the region. At the same time he noted the
importance of Japan promoting the US-Japan alliance.


11. (C//NF) LDP Diet member Keisuke Suzuki revealed that he
had worked at the Ministry of Finance (MOF) during Asia's
financial crisis and that the idea of an AMF had often been
broached. He was interested in the EAS and wondered about
the US reaction to Russia being brought into the framework, a
request from China. He also asked whether the US might
change its policy toward joining the framework.
SCHIEFFER