Akihisa Nagashima

Akihisa Nagashima (長島 昭久, Nagashima Akihisa) is a member of the House of Representatives of Japan with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), representing the Tokyo 21st Constituency, as well as a Visiting Professor at Chuo University's Graduate School of Public Studies. He served as the Parliamentary Vice Minister of Defense in the Kan Naoto Cabinet.

From 1993 to 1995, he was a Visiting Scholar at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, before becoming a Research Associate in Asian Security Studies in 1997, and an Adjuct Senior Fellow in Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., in 1999. From 2000 to 2001, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Washington, D.C. After coming back to Japan, he taught as a Professional Lecturer at Keio University's Graduate School of Law from 2003 to 2007.

During his time as an opposition legislator at the National Diet of Japan, he has served as the Senior Director of the Committee on National Security, Director of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Special Committee on North Korean Abductions and Other Issues, as well as a member of the Committee on Education, Sports, Science and Technology, the Special Committee on Iraq and Terrorism and the Special Committee on Responses of Armed Attacks. From 2003 to 2004, he served as the Deputy Director-General of the Cultural and Organizations Department of the DPJ, as well as the Next Vice-Minister of Defense before becoming the Next Minister of Defense from 2005 to 2006. Later he has served as the Vice-Chair of the Diet Affairs Committee, the Policy Research Committee, and Deputy Secretary General of the DPJ.

Representative Nagashima received his B.A. in Law in 1984, his B.A. in Government in 1986, and his Master of Laws (LL.M) from Keio University in 1988. He received his M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 1997. He was born on February 17, 1962, in Yokohama-City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.

Affiliated to the openly revisionist lobby Nippon Kaigi, Nagashima contributed, with Yoshiko Sakurai, Eriko Sanya, and Masahiro Akiyama, to a forum on the Constitution about security, independence, and the article 9 in their journal in July 2009