Yoshihide Suga

Biography

Yoshihide Suga was born in 1948 to a family of strawberry farmers in Ogachi (now Yuzawa) in rural Akita Prefecture. After high school he moved to Tokyo, worked in a cardboard factory and studied at night at Hosei University, earning a law degree in 1973. He then spent eleven years as secretary to the Liberal Democratic Party Diet member Hikosaburo Okonogi.

In 1987 he was elected to the Yokohama city council, and in 1996 he won the Kanagawa 2nd district seat in the House of Representatives, which he held for three decades. A close ally of Shinzo Abe, he served in Abe's first cabinet as minister for internal affairs and communications in 2006-2007, where he developed the 'hometown tax' donation scheme.

After the LDP returned to power in December 2012 he became Chief Cabinet Secretary, holding the post for the whole of Abe's second premiership and becoming the longest-serving in Japanese history. He managed government policy on tourism, foreign workers and mobile phone charges, and in April 2019 he publicly announced the name of the new imperial era, Reiwa, which made him widely known as 'Uncle Reiwa'.

When Abe resigned for health reasons in 2020, Suga won the LDP presidential election in September and became prime minister. His year in office was dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the vaccine rollout, the delayed Tokyo Olympics and a pledge of carbon neutrality by 2050. Facing falling approval ratings, he did not seek re-election as party leader in 2021 and was succeeded by Fumio Kishida in October. He later served as LDP vice president from 2024 to 2025 and retired from the Diet in 2026.