Masahiro Imamura

Masahiro Imamura (今村 雅弘) is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party, a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet (national legislature).

A native of Kashima, Saga and a graduate of the University of Tokyo, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1996 after working for the JR.

He was forced to step down over a remark that he had made the previous day suggesting that it had been better that the 2011 earthquake and tsunami had hit the Tohoku region than the Tokyo region.

He has been replaced by Masayoshi Yoshino who had been chairman of the special House of Representatives committee on Tohoku reconstruction.

Ahead of the 2012 elections, Imamura positioned himself in favor of:

On August 11, 2016, one week after joining Prime Minister Shinzō Abe's cabinet as reconstruction minister for disaster-hit regions, Masahiro Imamura visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine.

In late 2016, hours after Abe and Defense Minister Tomomi Inada met President Barack Obama in Hawaii and Abe expressed 'everlasting condolences' for the casualties of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, Imamura again visited the shrine.

The visit garnered "a sharp rebuke from Beijing".

Imamura said his visit had “nothing to do with” Abe’s trip and the timing was “a coincidence”, saying he "wished to express gratitude and prayed for Japan’s peace and prosperity".

Imamura is a member of key right-wing Diet groups:

Masahiro Imamura, who holds rather radical positions about nuclear issues, was until April 26, 2017 the minister in charge of coping with the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster.