was a

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

ese politician of the

Liberal Democratic Party Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Liberal Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties have usually followed liberalism as ideology, although they can vary widely from very progr ...

(LDP), who served as a member of the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...

in the

Diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

(national legislature). A native of Sōka, Saitama and graduate of

Waseda University Waseda University (Japanese: ), abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the Tōkyō Professional School by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the fifth Prime Minister of Japan, prime ministe ...

, he was elected to the city assembly of Sōka in 1970 (serving for one term) and then to the first of his four terms as the mayor of Sōka in 1977. He was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1993 as a member of the

Japan New Party The was a Japanese political party that existed briefly from 1992 to 1994. The party, considered liberal, was founded by Morihiro Hosokawa, a former Diet member and Kumamoto Prefecture governor, who left the Liberal Democratic Party to protest ...

. After becoming a member of the New Frontier Party, he joined the LDP. Imai died on 3 March 2023, at the age of 81.

References

External links

Official website
in Japanese. 1941 births 2023 deaths Mayors of places in Saitama Prefecture Waseda University alumni People from Sōka Japanese municipal councilors Politicians from Saitama Prefecture Japan New Party politicians New Frontier Party (Japan) politicians Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) politicians Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) 2003–2005 Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) 2005–2009 {{Japan-mayor-stub