Michita Sakata, speaker of the House of Representatives from 1985 to 1986, died of heart failure Tuesday at a hospital in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture, his family said. He was 87.
Sakata, a former municipal government official in Yatsushiro, was first elected to the Lower House in 1946 as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party and won the next 16 elections before deciding not to run in 1990.
He held the post of speaker between January 1985 and June 1986, helping to set up the governmental council on political ethics, a significant feat following a bribery scandal involving U.S. aircraft builder Lockheed Corp. in the 1970s in which former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was arrested.
Sakata held a number of Cabinet posts. He first joined the Cabinet in 1959 as health and welfare minister before being appointed as education minister, director general of the Defense Agency, and justice minister.
Kyodo News