Nariaki Nakayama (7 June 1943-) was a Japanese ultranationalist politician and the leader of Kibo no To from 28 May 2019, succeeding Shigefumi Matsuzawa.
Biography[]
Nariaki Nakayama was born in Kobayashi, Miyazaki Prefecture, Japan on 7 June 1943, and he came to work for the Ministry of Finance during the 1960s before entering politics with the LDP. He served in the House of Representatives from 1986 to 1993, 1996 to 2009, 2012 to 2014, and from 2017. Nakayama - a member of the nationalist Nippon Kaigi organization - oversaw the censorship of school history textbooks to remove references to "comfort women", as well as denying the occurrence of the Rape of Nanking. In 2009, the LDP booted him from the party, and he lost his re-election bid as an independent. He survived by joining the Sunrise Party, the Japan Restoration Party, the Party for Japanese Kokoro, and then Kibo no To, emerging as Kibo's leader in 2019 and overseeing the party's transition from a moderate center-right party to a far-right, right-wing populist party.