TOSHIMI KITAZAWA:
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Japan's newly appointed Defence Minister Toshimi Kitazawa arrives at the prime minister's official residence in Tokyo September 16, 2009.[Agencies]
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Defense Minister. An upper house lawmaker and relatively unknown, Kitazawa, 71, was a Liberal Democratic assemblyman in his hometown of Nagano, in central Japan, before his advance to the upper house as a Democrat in 1998. He has served key party policy-making posts in defense, transport and land development. He supports Japan's pacifist constitution and opposed the country's 2004-2006 troop dispatch to Iraq in support of the US.