Yukio Hatoyama

Biography

Yukio Hatoyama was born in Tokyo in 1947 into one of Japan's leading political families: his grandfather Ichirō Hatoyama was prime minister and his maternal grandfather founded Bridgestone. He studied engineering at the University of Tokyo, graduating in 1969, earned a doctorate in industrial engineering at Stanford in 1976, and taught at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Senshu University until 1984.

He entered the House of Representatives for the Liberal Democratic Party in 1986. In 1993 he left it to co-found New Party Sakigake and served as deputy chief cabinet secretary under Morihiro Hosokawa. In 1996 he and his brother Kunio created the Democratic Party, which merged into the Democratic Party of Japan in 1998; he led the DPJ from 1999 to 2002 and again from May 2009.

In August 2009 he led the DPJ to a landslide victory over the long-governing LDP, and he became prime minister in September. His government raised social spending, sought closer ties with China and South Korea and ended Japan's refuelling mission for Afghanistan. A funding scandal involving donations from his mother and his failure to move the U.S. Marine base at Futenma off Okinawa eroded his support, and he resigned in June 2010.

He left the Diet at the December 2012 election. In retirement he apologised in Nanjing for Japanese wartime crimes, visited Crimea in 2015 and drew criticism for outspoken comments online. He co-founded the minor Kyowa Party in 2020 and left it in 2022.