
Shokei Arai (12 January 1948-19 February 1998), born Bak Kyung-jae, was a Japanese LDP member of the House of Representatives from 7 July 1986 to 19 February 1998. He was the first naturalized Japanese citizen to be elected as a legislator, and he was a popular reformist politician until his apparent suicide in 1998 following his implication in a securities scandal.
Biography[]
Bak Kyung-jae was born in Osaka, Japan on 12 January 1948 to a family of Korean expatriates, and he became a naturalized Japanese citizen at the age of 16, adopting the Japanese name Shokei Arai. He was a Marxist and a student activist before working for Nippon Steel and, from 1973, the Ministry of Finance. Arai became a career bureaucrat, becoming chief of the Sakata Tax Office at the age of 29 and later becoming assistant chief of the banking bureau. In 1983, he ran for the House of Representatives as an LDP candidate, but he was defeated by Shintaro Ishihara after Ishihara smeared Arai as a "North Korean". However, he was elected in 1986 and was re-elected four times, affiliating himself with Michio Watanabe's faction before becoming a leading reformist in 1992 and criticizing powerful LDP politician Shin Kanemaru's ties to yakuza boss Susumu Ishii. He led a reformist faction within the LDP before joining the New Frontier Party in 1994; however, his opposition to Ichiro Ozawa led to him leaving the party in 1996. Arai returned to the LDP, and he was implicated in a series of securities scandals related to his alleged use of a borrowed account for stock trading; it was alleged that, in 1996, he had accepted $230,000 in illegal trading profits and possibly several million more over the last several years from Nikko Securities. On 19 February 1998, Arai declared his innocence before the Steering Committee of the House of Representatives, but, hours before the police could arrest him that same day, he was found hanged by his bathrobe in his room at the Hotel Pacific Tokyo. His death was ruled a suicide, although many suspected foul play. His wife briefly considered running for his seat in a by-election, but ultimately backed down. He was the second former Finance Ministry bureaucrat to face arrest that month, after Takehiko Isaka.