Yasuhisa Shiozaki (塩崎 恭久) is a Japanese politician who served as Chief Cabinet Secretary to Prime Minister Shinzō Abe until August 2007.

Early career

Born in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, he was an AFS exchange student in high school, graduated with a liberal arts degree from the University of Tokyo and attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He spent three years working at the Economic Planning Agency (of which his father, Jun Shiozaki, was then director) and at the Bank of Japan. He then worked as a secretary to his father.

National Diet

Following his father's resignation, he ran for the Diet in 1993 and was elected to represent the first district of Ehime. He served as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs in the 2005 cabinet of Junichiro Koizumi and was appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary on September 26, 2006, and held the position until a cabinet shuffle at the end of August 2007. His appointment as Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare in the second Abe administration was announced on September 3, 2014. Shiozaki's profile on the LDP website:

Political positions

Like most member of Shinzo Abe's Cabinet, Shiozaki is affiliated to the openly revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi. He also is a member of the following right-wing group at the Diet: Shiozaki gave the following answers to the questionnaire submitted by Mainichi to parliamentarians in 2012: On October 17, 2014, Shiozaki sent an offering ('masakaki) to the controversial Yasukuni shrine.

Honours

In July 2022, he was awarded as Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), for services to UK/Japan relations.