Hatoyama Yukio

Hatoyama Yukio (born February 11, 1947, Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese politician who served as prime minister of Japan (2009–10) after his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ousted the long-ruling Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) from the government.

The Hatoyama family had produced four generations of politicians, beginning with Yukio’s great-grandfather, Hatoyama Kazuo, who served in the Imperial Diet in the 1890s. His grandfather, Hatoyama Ichirō, was a founder of both the Democratic Party and its successor, the LDP, and served as prime minister in 1954–56. In addition, Hatoyama’s maternal grandfather, Ishibashi Shōjirō, was the founder of the tire manufacturer Bridgestone Corporation.

Hatoyama Yukio was educated as an engineer, earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Tokyo (1969) and a doctorate at Stanford University (1976). He taught at Senshū University in Tokyo beginning in 1981, then became private secretary to his father, Hatoyama Iichirō, a member of the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet. He began his own political career as a member of the LDP, winning election in 1986 to the House of Representatives as a member from Hokkaido. He held the seat until 2012.

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In 1993 Hatoyama broke with family tradition and left the LDP; he took a position in the coalition government of Hosokawa Morihiro (founder of the reform Japan New Party), which lasted until 1994. Over the next few years he joined the newly formed DPJ and rose through its ranks. The DPJ quickly became the main opposition party to the LPD. From September 1999 to December 2002 Hatoyama served as president of the party. He was elected again to that position in May 2009, after the resignation of Ozawa Ichirō.

In July 2009 LDP Prime Minister Asō Tarō called a general election for August 30. Hatoyama, as the DPJ’s leading candidate, promised to end wasteful spending and move toward government decentralization. Although the LDP had dominated political life in Japan since the mid-1950s for all but a brief period in the 1990s, its public standing had faltered since the popular Koizumi Junichiro stepped down as prime minister in 2006. Predictions of a landslide DPJ victory came true as scores of LDP candidates were swept from office. On September 16, 2009, Hatoyama succeeded Asō as prime minister.

In the ensuing months, he made good on his promise to reduce spending, ordering the suspension of work on a number of large infrastructure projects. However, his administration came to be seen as increasingly ineffectual, and it also was dogged by a continuing fund-raising scandal to which Ozawa—who remained a central figure in the DPJ hierarchy—was linked. In addition, Hatoyama came under sharp criticism regarding a U.S. military base on Okinawa, which during the 2009 campaign he had vowed to have removed from the island. In late May 2010 he reached an agreement with U.S. officials to move the location of the base but keep it on Okinawa, precipitating protests from Okinawans and others and defections from his ruling coalition. Faced with plummeting approval ratings and concerned about upper-house elections scheduled for July, Hatoyama stepped down as both prime minister and party president on June 4. He was succeeded by Kan Naoto, another high-ranking member of the DPJ.