caption website native_name_lang predecessor successor birth_place imagesize party office primeminister native_name birth_date term_start image article_title term_end name alma_mater
-lrb- in hokkaido on 18 july 2001 -rrb- -lsb- http://www.ozawa-ichiro.jp/ personal website -rsb- ja tōru furuya constituency established nobuyuki hanashi mizusawa , japan 250px liberal -- 1994 -rrb- new frontier -lrb- 1994 -- 1998 -rrb- democratic liberal -lrb- 1998 -- 2003 -rrb- democratic -lrb- 2003 -- -lrb- 2012 -rrb- people 's life first -lrb- 2012 -rrb- tomorrow before -lrb- 2012 -rrb- people 's life -lrb- 2012 -- present 1993 -rrb- -rrb- renewal -lrb- 1993 minister representatives for iwate 4th district of home affairs member of the house of yasuhiro nakasone 小沢 一郎 24 may 1942 28 december 1985 27 december 1969 ichiro_ozawa_cropped_2_yoshitaka_kimoto_and_ichiro_ozawa_20010718 . jpg ichirō ozawa
 22 july 1986 ichirō ozawa keio university nihon university
ichirō ozawa

he was initially a member of the liberal democratic party -lrb- ldp -rrb- , serving as its secretary general from 1989 to 1991 .
he left the ldp in 1993 and subsequently served as head of a number of other political parties , first by co-founding the japan renewal party with tsutomu hata , which formed a short-lived coalition government with several other parties opposed to the ldp .
ozawa later served as president of the opposition new frontier party from 1995 to 1997 , president of the liberal party from 1998 to 2003 -lrb- which was part of a coalition government with the ldp of keizō obuchi from 1999 to 2000 -rrb- , president of the opposition democratic party of japan -lrb- dpj -rrb- from 2006 to 2009 and secretary-general of the dpj in government from 2009 to 2010 .
in july 2012 he left the dpj with around fifty followers to found the people 's life first party in a protest against the dpj 's plan to raise the japanese consumption tax .
ozawa 's party merged with the newly founded tomorrow party of japan of shiga governor yukiko kada prior to the 2012 general election , in which the party performed poorly .
ozawa and his followers then left to form the life party .
