a friend of his father's, but chose to study abroad instead. Career After he returned to Japan from his studies abroad, he entered the Aso Industry Company in 1966. Working for the company, he lived in Brazil during the 1960s and became fluent in Portuguese. For two years from 1970, he worked in the diamond mining industry in Sierra Leone as a local representative of the Asō family at a new mining area offered by a local authority after the nationalization of the diamond industry in the country. He was forced to return to Japan at the outbreak of civil unrest in the country. He served as president of the Aso Mining Company from 1973 to 1979. He was also a member of the Japanese shooting team at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and President of the Japan Junior Chamber in 1978. Political career Asō is affiliated with the openly historical negationist organization Nippon Kaigi. Cabinet Minister He joined the Cabinet of Jun'ichirō Koizumi in 2003 as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. On 31 October 2005, he became Minister for Foreign Affairs. There has been some speculation that his position in the Cabinet was due to his membership in the Kōno Group, an LDP caucus led by pro-Chinese lawmaker Yōhei Kōno: by appointing Asō as Minister for Foreign Affairs, Koizumi may have been attempting to "rein in" Kōno's statements critical of Japanese foreign policy. Candidate for the LDP Leadership Asō was one of the final candidates to replace Koizumi as prime minister in 2006, but lost the internal party election to Shinzo Abe by a wide margin. Both Abe and Asō are conservative on foreign policy issues and have taken confrontational stances towards some East Asian nations, particularly North Korea and, to a lesser extent, the People's Republic of China. Abe was considered a more "moderate" politician than the more "hard-line" Asō, and led Asō in opinion polling within Japan. Asō's views on multilateralism are suggested in a 2006 speech, "Arc of Freedom and Prosperity: Japan's Expanding Diplomatic Horizons". Asō acknowledged that he would most likely lose to Fukuda, but said that he wanted to run so that there would be an open election, saying that otherwise LDP would face criticism for making its choice "through back-room deals". In the President election, held on 23 September, Fukuda defeated Asō, receiving 330 votes against 197 votes for Asō. On