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 nursing home 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.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]