Kosuke Uehara, a former National Land Agency chief and ex-Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker, has announced his retirement from politics.
"I decided . . . to call it quits as the end of the 20th century draws near. I would like to (concentrate on) training my successors," Uehara told a news conference in Okinawa on Tuesday.
Uehara, 68, said he plans to establish a political research center in Okinawa that will work on policymaking as it relates to local issues.
He was re-elected to the Lower House from Okinawa 10 consecutive times after his initial election victory in 1970; that was the first year since the end of World War II in which Okinawan candidates ran for the Diet. He lost his Lower House seat in the June 25 general election.
In the 1950s, Uehara organized a labor union of local workers at U.S. military bases in Okinawa who were deprived of workers' rights, serving as its first chairman.
From 1969 to 1970, he engineered massive strikes to protest the dismissal of tens of thousands of employees by the United States. He played an active role in the union, winning collective-bargaining rights with U.S. authorities.
In 1993 and 1994, Uehara, then a Social Democratic Party member, served as National Land Agency chief and head of the Hokkaido and Okinawa development agencies under the coalition Cabinet of Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa.
He left the SDP and joined the DPJ in 1998.