Former Foreign Minister Kakizawa dies at 75

TOKYO, Jan. 27 Kyodo - Koji Kakizawa, a former House of Representatives member and foreign minister, died Tuesday of esophagus cancer at a Tokyo hospital, his family said. He was
75.
After defecting from the Liberal Democratic Party and forming the now-defunct
Liberal Party in 1994, Kakizawa assumed the post of foreign minister for about
two months that year in Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata's coalition government that
excluded the LDP.
Kakizawa rejoined the LDP in 1995.
A former Finance Ministry bureaucrat, Kakizawa was first elected as a House of
Councillors member of the now-defunct New Liberal Club in 1977 and entered the
lower house in 1980. Kakizawa then left the NLC and joined the LDP.
He ran unsuccessfully in the Tokyo gubernatorial election in 1999 after being
expelled from the LDP.
Kakizawa served in the lower house for seven terms until 2003.
==Kyodo