| Alex Saito | |
| Native Name Lang: | ja |
| Constituency7: | Kinki PR |
| Birth Date: | 30 June 1985 |
| Birth Place: | Madrid, Spain |
| Party: | FEFA (2023–present) |
| Otherparty: | DPFP (2018–2023) |
| Alma Mater: | Doshisha University |
| Office: | Member of the House of Representatives |
| Term Start: | 5 November 2021 |
Alex Saito (斎藤 アレックス, Saitō Arekkusu, born June 30, 1985) is a Spanish-Japanese politician who is a member of the House of Representatives of Japan since 2021, representing the Kinki proportional representation block.[1]
Saito was born in Madrid, Spain on 30 June 1985 to a Spanish father and a Japanese mother. He moved to Japan in 1990, growing up in Osaka and Moriguchi in Osaka Prefecture.[2] In 1999, due to economic downturn caused by the Lost Decades, his father's restaurant in Osaka closed and he returned to Spain, leaving Saito with a single-parent household. After observing his mother's hardships as a single parent amidst Japan's economic stagnation, Saito decided to pursue a career in politics.[3] [4]
After graduating from the Faculty of Economics at Doshisha University, Saito worked at a security company before entering the Matsushita School of Government and Management in 2013, where he interned with U.S. Representative Chuck Fleischman and graduated in 2017.[5] On April of the same year, Saito began serving as a secretary to House of Representatives member Seiji Maehara. In October 2018, the Democratic Party for the People announced that it would field Saito as a candidate in a constituency in Kyoto Prefecture for the 2019 Japanese House of Councillors election. However, the Constitutional Democratic Party also decided to field a candidate in the same constituency. In order to avoid splitting the votes between the two parties, Saito withdrew his candidacy in April 2019.[6]
In the 2021 Japanese general election, Saito ran as a candidate for the DPFP. Although he lost to Toshitaka Ooka of the Liberal Democratic Party in the Shiga 1st district election, he was elected through the Kinki proportional representation block.[7] [8] [9]
On 30 November 2023, Saito alongside 4 other members split from the DPFP to become a founding member of Free Education for All, in which he was appointed as Chairman of Political Affairs Research.[10] [11] [12]