Japan’s Former Health Minister Sakaguchi Dies at 92

Tokyo, Aug. 12 (Jiji Press)–Chikara Sakaguchi, who served as the country’s first health, labor and welfare minister, died of natural causes on Friday. He was 92. Sakaguchi, a former Komeito lawmaker, died at a hospital in the western Japan city of Takamatsu, the party said Wednesday. The former doctor from Mie Prefecture in central Japan was first elected to the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, in the 1972 general election from the former Mie No. 1 constituency. He served as labor minister under Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. In Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori’s administration, a coalition government between the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, Sakaguchi became the first minister to head the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, which was created through the 2001 reorganization of central government ministries and agencies. He stayed in the post under Mori’s successor, Junichiro Koizumi. In May 2001, he supported Koizumi’s decision not to appeal against a ruling in a damages lawsuit filed against the state by leprosy patients. He also apologized to the plaintiffs. Sakaguchi was elected to the Lower House 11 times and served as deputy leader of Komeito. He retired from politics in 2012 after deciding not to run in that year’s general election. Based on his own experience with cancer, he established an association of cancer patients aimed at promoting cancer immunotherapy in 2016. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]