
Seiji Maehara (born 30 April 1962) was a Japanese DPJ politician who served in the House of Representatives from 18 July 1993 (succeeding Mikio Okuda), as leader of the DPJ from 17 September 2005 to 7 April 2006 (succeeding Katsuya Okada and preceding Ichiro Ozawa), and as Foreign Minister from 17 September 2010 to 7 March 2011 (succeeding Okada and preceding Yukio Edano).
Biography[]
Seiji Maehara was born in Kyoto, Japan on 30 April 1962, and he was elected to the Prefectural Assembly in 1991 and to the House of Representatives in 1993. He was affiliated with the Japan New Party from 1992 to 1994, New Party Sakigake from 1994 to 1998, the DPJ from 1998 to 2017, Kibo no To from 2017 to 2018, and the DPFP from 2018. Maehara served as the DPJ's leader from 2005 to 2006 and then as Transportation and Tourism Minister from 2009 to 2010 and Foreign Minister from 2010 to 2011, when he was forced to resign after it was revealed that he had accepted an illegal donation from a South Korean national living in Japan. Maehara was also known as a conservative who supported close ties with the United States and antagonized China. He joined the conservative Kibo no To on the DPJ's dissolution in 2017 and then the DPFP after Kibo's merger in 2018, and he refused to join the liberal CDP. He briefly led the Free Education for All party from November 2023 to October 2024, joining Nippon Ishin no Kai shortly after and becoming its co-leader in December 2024.