Yoshirō Mori (Japanese: 森 喜朗, Hepburn: Mori Yoshirō; born 14 July 1937) is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party from 2000 to 2001.
Born in present-day Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan, Mori worked as a journalist before entering politics. In 1969, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the Ishikawa 2nd district. He served in government as education minister in 1983 and 1984, international trade and industry minister in 1992 and 1993, and construction minister in 1995 and 1996, and later became secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). After Keizō Obuchi suffered a stroke and cerebral hemorrhage on 2 April 2000 and was unable to continue in office, Mori became president of the LDP and prime minister, weeks before Obuchi's death.
Media coverage of Mori's term as prime minister was dominated by his gaffes and undiplomatic comments, which led to him becoming unpopular in opinion polls. Members of his cabinet resigned due to fundraising scandals, which also contributed to his unpopularity. In November 2000, with Mori's approval ratings below 30%, opposition politicians attempted to win a vote of no confidence against Mori by soliciting support from rebels within the LDP, although this was quashed after LDP politicians who voted for the measure were threatened with expulsion. Towards the end of Mori's term, his approval rating dropped to single digits. In April 2001, Mori officially announced his intention to resign. Junichiro Koizumi won the subsequent LDP leadership election and became prime minister on 26 April 2001.
After resigning as prime minister, Mori remained a member of the House of Representatives until announcing in July 2012 that he would not stand in the 2012 general election. He remained an important player in Russo-Japanese relations due to his close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. Following his premiership, Mori served as the President of the Japan Rugby Football Union as well as the Japan-Korea Parliamentarians' Union. In 2014, he was appointed to head the organizing committee for the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, but resigned ahead of the games' opening following gaffes made at a committee meeting that were perceived as sexist. In 2003, Mori received the highest distinction of the Scout Association of Japan, the Golden Pheasant Award.
Yoshiro Mori was born in present-day Nomi, Ishikawa, Japan, as the son of Shigeki and Kaoru Mori, wealthy rice farmers with a history in politics, as both his father and grandfather served as the mayor of Neagari, Ishikawa Prefecture. His mother died when Yoshiro was seven years old. He studied at the Waseda University in Tokyo, joining the rugby union club. He developed a passion for the sport but was never a high-level player; he once compared rugby to his relationship with other parties in the ruling coalition by stating: "In rugby, one person doesn't become a star, one person plays for all, and all play for one."
After university, Mori joined the Sankei Shimbun, a conservative newspaper in Japan.
In 1962, Mori left the newspaper and became secretary of a Diet member, and in the 1969 general election, he was elected in the lower house at age 32. He was reelected 10 consecutive times. In 1980, he was involved in the Recruit scandal about receiving unlisted shares of Recruit (company) before they were publicly traded, and selling them after they were made public for a profit of approximately 1 million dollars.
Mori was education minister in 1983 and 1984, international trade and industry minister in 1992 and 1993, and construction minister in 1995 and 1996.
In 1999, Mori began to assume control of the Mitsuzuka faction (formerly Abe faction) that had been headed by Hiroshi Mitsuzuka in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
In the midst of a battle with Liberal Party leader Ichirō Ozawa, Prime Minister Keizō Obuchi suffered a stroke and cerebral hemorrhage on 2 April 2000 and was unable to continue in office. The Cabinet held an emergency meeting and resigned en masse. Mori, who was the secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was unanimously elected president, and became prime minister with the votes of the LDP, New Komeito and New Conservative Party (composed of members who left Ozawa's party on 3 April). Mori announced that he would keep Obuchi's cabinet in place.
His government further supported the foreign policies of his predecessor.
The media coverage of Mori's term as prime minister was dominated by his gaffes and undiplomatic comments. Even prior to his election as prime minister, he had been described in the Japanese media as having "the heart of a flea and the brain of a shark".
In January 2000, he made a joke about his campaign in the 1969 election: "When I was greeting farmers from my car, they all went into their homes. I felt like I had AIDS."
In February 2000, when asked about the Year 2000 problem in the United States, Mori quipped that "when there is a blackout, the murderers always come out. It's that type of society."
At Obuchi's funeral, Mori failed to clap and bow properly before Obuchi's shrine, an important portion of a traditional Japanese funeral rite. The other world leaders present at the funeral, including then U.S. President Bill Clinton, performed the ritual correctly.
At a meeting of Shinto followers in Tokyo in May 2000, Mori described Japan as "a divine nation (kami no kuni) with the Emperor at its center". This "divine nation statement" stirred controversy in Japan as it invoked the official interpretation of the Emperor as a divine entity during the days of the Empire of Japan. Days after this statement, Mori questioned whether the Japan Communist Party could "ensure Japan's security and defend the kokutai", using a term for Japan's unity with its divine emperor which had not been in common use since World War II.
During the June 2000 election, when asked about recent newspaper reports that showed that roughly half of the voters still had not decided for whom to vote, he replied that they could "stay in bed for the day".
In October 2000, during a dialogue with British prime minister Tony Blair, Mori stated that the Japanese government had suggested in 1997 that Japanese nationals believed to be abducted by North Korea be arranged to be "found" elsewhere in order to ensure a smooth normalization of the relation between North Korea and Japan, which upset the foreign ministry and led to calls for Mori's resignation from conservative voices within the LDP.