| Marutei Tsurunen 弦念丸呈 | |
| Office: | Director of Democratic party Japan-South Korea relations department |
| Term Start: | 2003 |
| Term End: | 2016 |
| Office2: | Member of the House of Councillors |
| Term Start2: | 8 February 2002 |
| Term End2: | 28 July 2013 |
| Office3: | Ranking member of House of Councillors Natural disasters committee |
| Term Start3: | 2002 |
| Term End3: | 2013 |
| Office4: | Member of Yugawara Town Council |
| Term Start4: | 1992 |
| Term End4: | 1995 |
| Birth Name: | Martti Turunen |
| Birth Date: | 30 April 1940 |
| Birth Place: | Lieksa, Finland |
| Party: | Democratic |
| Nationality: | Japanese |
is a Finnish-born Japanese politician. He is the first foreign-born Japanese of European origin to serve as a member of the Diet of Japan.[1] He is a member of the Democratic Party of Japan, where he served as Director General of the International Department. He served in the House of Councillors from 2001 to 2013.[2]
Tsurunen was born Martti Turunen in the village of Höntönvaara in Lieksa, Finland, and grew up in nearby Jaakonvaara.[3] Near the end of the Continuation War, Tsurunen (then four years old) and his family were among the few survivors of a Soviet partisan attack on the village.[4]
In 1967, at the age of 27, Tsurunen traveled to Japan as a lay missionary of the Lutheran Church, accompanied by his first wife, who was also a Finn; they later divorced.[5] Having decided to become Japanese, he gained his Japanese citizenship in 1979.[6] He moved to Yugawaramachi in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1981.
He first ran for city council in 1992 in Yugawaramachi and won a seat, coming in fourth place with 1,051 votes.[7]
He ran for a seat in the Upper House for Kanagawa without party backing in 1995. He received 339,484 votes, coming in fourth (the top three candidates were elected), losing a seat to the Socialist candidate who won 371,889 votes. He ran again in 1998 and took 502,712, just 8,000 short of winning a seat, telling voters "Please vote for me and send the first Japanese citizen with blue eyes to the upper house" and "Let's change Japan from an economic power into a citizen-friendly nation, where you don't need to worry about old age and pollution". He also proposed "sexual quotas for legislative bodies, so that from 40% to 60% of parliament and local assemblies would be female".[8] In 2000, he ran as a candidate of the Democratic Party of Japan for a seat in the Lower House, and again in 2001 for a seat in the Upper House, both unsuccessfully. In 2001, he garnered 159,920 votes, 14,036 short of what he needed to win a seat.[9] However, in 2002, an incumbent, Kyosen Ohashi, resigned from the house and he won a seat by "kuriage" replacement, by which he took the seat because he had the largest number of votes after the winner.[10] [11]
He was directly reelected in 2007 with 242,742 votes, the 6th-highest in his party, but lost his seat in the 2013 election after garnering only 82,858 votes (finishing in 12th place).[2]
Tsurunen is married to Sachiko Tanaka, and they have two children. He also had three children with his Finnish wife.[12]
Finnish media personality Markus Kajo interviewed Tsurunen in Finnish for the third episode of the documentary series in 2006.[13]
Tsurunen published his autobiography Sinisilmäinen samurai ("The blue-eyed samurai") in 2015 via Gummerus.[12]