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Tsurunen Marutei (Finland, 1940 - )
It took four tries and the resignation of a sitting Diet member
to get there, but Finnish-born Tsurunen Marutei finally won his
place in Japanese political history. When Upper House member and
former TV host Ohashi Kyosen dramatically announced that he had
had enough of murky political shenanigans, his fellow Minshuto
(Democratic Party) member Tsurunen became his automatic successor.
Having finished runner-up in four national elections, the naturalized
Japanese was on the verge of giving up his political dreams when
the surprise announcement was made. He became the first Western-born
Diet member and called himself the "blue-eyed Dietman", a title
he later removed from his meishi (name card).
Born Martti Turunen in Finland in 1940, he was one of the few
survivors of a Soviet attack on his village at the age of four.
This event led to his pacifist thinking which, together with his
ideas on ecology and the supply of fresh vegetables from his garden
overlooking the Pacific keep this politician's lifestyle as clean
as can be. He came to Japan in 1967 as a lay Lutheran missionary.
He later divorced his Finnish wife and married a Japanese woman
in 1974. He worked in education and translation for several years
before taking up Japanese citizenship in 1979.
It would be quite a few more years before he entered politics
in 1992, at the age of 52 becoming Japan's first Western city
assembly member in the seaside resort town of Yugawaramachi, Kanagawa
Prefecture. Over the next decade, he ran for the Upper House three
times and the Lower House once. In his first attempt, he sought
the backing of an opposition reform party but failed to win their
support. Exasperated, he decided to take the populist approach
rather than relying on a party or the block support of organisations.
With the help of hundreds of volunteers, he distributed leaflets
and made numerous speeches on street corners in an attempt to
appeal to the many unaffiliated voters fed up with party politics
and the status quo. He garnered more support in each election
but finished as runner-up each time. After again narrowly failing
in the proportional representation section in the Uper House election
of 2001, he and his supporters were on their last legs. The effort
had left him financially in trouble and he and his wife Sachiko
were considering their future when the fateful announcement came.
He stated his first priority as "environmental conservation in
harmony with economic activities. And the second is to help promote
mutual understanding among different cultures." Noble ideas, but
he will have his work cut out for him trying to achieve anything
as an outsider in the cliquey world of Japanese politics. The
last Diet member who was not ethnically Japanese was a citizen
of Korean origin who presented himself to the public as Japanese.
Facing arrest in 1998 on an insider trading charge, he committed
suicide.
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