is a Japanese

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

of the

Democratic Party of Japan The was a centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist: * * * * * * * to centre-left liberal or social-liberal political party in Japan from 1998 to 2016. The party's origins lie in the previous Democratic Part ...

(DPJ), a member of the

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

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). He became deputy secretary-general of the DPJ on 24 September 2012.

Early life and education

Born on 17 January 1962 in

Miyagi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Miyagi Prefecture has a population of 2,305,596 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Miyagi Prefecture borders Iwate Prefecture to the north, Akita Prefecture to the nort ...

, Azumi is a native of Oshika District in

and graduate of

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...

department.

Career

Azumi worked at the public broadcaster

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestri ...

from 1985 to 1993. He ran for the House of Representatives for the first time in

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...

as an independent (

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 ...

and

New Party Harbinger The , also known as the New Harbinger Party, was a list of political parties in Japan, political party in Japan that broke away from the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on 22 June 1993. The party was created by ...

endorsement) in the three-member Miyagi 2nd district, but lost as two Liberal Democrats and one Socialist carried the district for the established parties. He later joined New Party Harbinger and participated in the foundation of the DPJ in 1996. He was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time as a Democratic candidate in the 1996 election in the new single-member

Miyagi 5th district , the House of Representatives of Japan is elected from a combination of multi-member districts and single-member districts, a method called Parallel voting. Currently, 176 members are elected from 11 multi-member districts (called proportional r ...

In government

In September 2011 he was appointed as

Finance Minister A finance minister is an executive or cabinet position in charge of one or more of government finances, economic policy and financial regulation. A finance minister's portfolio has a large variety of names around the world, such as "treasury", " ...

in the cabinet of newly appointed prime minister

Yoshihiko Noda is a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 2011 to 2012. He was a member of the Democratic Party, and a member of the House of Representatives (lower house) in the Diet (national legislature). He was named to succeed Naoto K ...

. On 24 September 2012, Azumi declared that he will leave his post as minister to take a key role in the DPJ as top deputy secretary-general after the elections that will be at the end of 2012 or in 2013. In the 1 October 2012 cabinet reshuffle, he was succeeded as Minister of Finance by

Koriki Jojima , is a Japanese politician who served four terms in the House of Representatives and was Minister of Finance from 1 October to 26 December 2012. Early life and education Jojima was born in Yanagawa, Fukuoka, on 1 January 1947. He is a graduate o ...

.BBC New
Japan PM Yoshihiko Noda names new ministers
1 October 2012

Personal life

Azumi is married and has two children.

References

, - , - , - , - 1962 births Living people Democratic Party of Japan politicians Government ministers of Japan Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) Ministers of Finance of Japan NHK Noda cabinet Waseda University alumni 21st-century Japanese politicians {{Japan-politician-1960s-stub