is a former Japanese politician who served in the House of Representatives in the Diet (national legislature) as a member of the Democratic Party of Japan.
A native of Amakusa District, Kumamoto, he attended Nihon University as undergraduate and graduate students and Keio University as a research student.[1]
Sonoda was elected for the first time in 2003 after unsuccessful runs in 1998 and 2000.[1]
Sonoda became internationally known for drinking a glass of water, collected from puddles under the reactor buildings at the radioactively polluted Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and then decontaminated, during a press conference in October 2011 after being challenged to do so.[2] [3]
Sonoda quit politics in June 2015, following a failed run in the 2014 Japanese general election.[4]
He served as representative director of ACD, an online shopping subsidiary of All Nippon Airways, from March 2018 to March 2020, when he was transferred to WeSearch, an ACD subsidiary.[5]
In the wake of the August 2023 discharge of ALPS-decontaminated water of the Fukushima Daiichi, widespread hoaxes on the Chinese internet claimed that Sonoda died of cancer in Palau.[6] On September 2, 2023, Sonoda was interviewed by Kyodo News via telephone, in which he "once again" apologized to the people of Fukushima - for his actions being made into a rumor.[7] The Kyodo News was accompanied with neither an interview audio nor any latest photo of Sonoda.