Ex-Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Muraoka dies at 88

December 26, 2019

Tokyo--Former Japanese House of Representatives lawmaker Kanezo Muraoka, who served in such key posts as chief cabinet secretary, died of cancer at his home in Tokyo on Wednesday. He was 88.

A native of Akita Prefecture, Muraoka won a seat on the lower chamber of the Diet, Japan's parliament, for the first time in 1972 by running in the Lower House election in the year from a constituency in the northeastern Japan prefecture. Before that, he was a member of the Akita prefectural assembly.

He was elected to the Lower House nine times. After serving as posts and telecommunications minister and transport minister, Muraoka, who was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, became chief cabinet secretary in 1997 under the cabinet of then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.

At the LDP, Muraoka took up posts including Diet affairs chief and chairman of the General Council. He had a major influence on road policies.

In the September 2003 LDP leadership election, the intraparty faction then led by Hashimoto, to which Muraoka belonged, allowed its members to vote for their own favorite candidates. Muraoka was bashed by Hiromu Nonaka, a senior member of the faction, as he expressed support for then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, a member of a different LDP faction, who ran for reelection as LDP pres ident.

Muraoka retired from politics after failing to obtain a Lower House seat in the November 2003 election.

In 2004, Muraoka was indicted without arrest for allegedly violating the political funds control law over a scandal involving the Hashimoto faction in which illegal donations of 100 million yen were made by the Japan Dental Federation.

Consistently claiming that he was wrongly charged, Muraoka won a not-guilty ruling in his trial at a district court. But a high court overruled the lower court decision, sentencing him to 10 months in jail, suspended for three years. The guilty verdict was finalized in 2008 as his appeal to the Supreme Court was turned down.was indicted without arrest for allegedly violating the political funds control law over a scandal involving the Hashimoto faction in which illegal donations of 100 million yen were made by the Japan Dental Federation.

Consistently claiming that he was wrongly charged, Muraoka won a not-guilty ruling in his trial at a district court. But a high court overruled the lower court decision, sentencing him to 10 months in jail, suspended for three years. The guilty verdict was finalized in 2008 as his appeal to the Supreme Court was turned down. Jiji Press