Masako Mori

is a Japanese politician and lawyer who has served in the House of Councillors since 2007, and as Minister of Justice from October 2019 to September 2020. She is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party.

Early life

Masako Mori was born on 22 August 1964, to an impoverished family in Fukushima Prefecture. She decided to pursue a career as a lawyer after her father, who had lost his entire fortune, was saved by a lawyer. She graduated from Tohoku University in 1988. After working in a legal cram school, she passed the Japanese bar examination on her fifth attempt, and qualified as an attorney at law in 1995.

After three years practicing consumer rights law, she was selected for a Japan Federation of Bar Associations scholarship to study in the United States. She was a visiting fellow at the New York University School of Law starting in 1999. Following the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, she put great effort in trying to restore the damaged territories of her native Tohoku region.

Following the LDP's victory in the 2012 general election, Mori was named to the second Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as Minister of State for the Declining Birthrate and consumer affairs.

Minister of Justice Mori was appointed Minister of Justice in October 2019 after the resignation of Katsuyuki Kawai, who had been involved in a campaign finance scandal.

In December 2019, Masako Mori confirmed Wei Wei's death sentence for murder.

After former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn escaped from Japan while awaiting trial on criminal charges, Mori publicly stated that he should "prove his innocence", but later retracted the comment and apologized. She also defended Japanese interrogation and detention practices against public criticism.

In February 2020, she defended the Cabinet's decision to delay the retirement of top Tokyo prosecutor Hiromu Kurokawa, which the opposition criticized as illegal.

In March 2020, she apologized and retracted a comment accusing public prosecutors of fleeing from her home city of Iwaki before evacuation orders were issued amid the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

Personal life

Her legal name is , but she is professionally known by her maiden surname of Mori.