Katsuyuki Kawai

Katsuyuki Kawai's career reads like a textbook ascent followed by a textbook collapse. A native of Hiroshima and a Keio University graduate, he moved from the prefectural assembly to the national Diet and eventually to the post of Minister of Justice. He held that office only briefly before resigning. What followed was worse: a conviction for vote buying connected to the 2019 upper house election, with cash handed to local politicians and supporters, costing him his seat and landing him a prison sentence. The irony is heavy enough to be almost literary, the man who ran the ministry responsible for the law undone by election law. But I do not read this as a story about a flawed system catching someone out. Rules against buying votes are not obscure technicalities; they are the floor. What stays with me is the voters in Hiroshima, casting ballots in a race someone had already tried to purchase.

Name (English)

Katsuyuki Kawai

Name (Japanese)

河井克行

Born

March 11, 1963 (age 63)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Rabbit

Origin

Asaminami-ku, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

politician

University

Keio University

Motto

Private

• Official sitehttp://kawaikatsuyuki.com/
• Xhttps://x.com/katsukawai
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%B3%E4%BA%95%E5%85%8B%E8%A1%8C

Tags

• Hiroshima Prefecture
• politician

Last updated

2026-07-27

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.