was a Japanese politician who served as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications under Prime Ministers

Shinzō Abe Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍晋三, Hepburn: , ; 21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 20 ...

and Yasuo Fukuda until 12 June 2009.

Biography

Kunio Hatoyama was born in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.46 ...

in 1948. He was a son of Yasuko Hatoyama and Iichirō Hatoyama, a bureaucrat who later became a third-generation politician, and grandson of

Ichirō Hatoyama was a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1954 to 1956. A conservative, Hatoyama helped oversee the 1955 merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party to create the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), of which Hatoy ...

, who became the President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and

Prime Minister of Japan The prime minister of Japan ( Japanese: 内閣総理大臣, Hepburn: ''Naikaku Sōri-Daijin'') is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its Ministers of S ...

between 1954 and 1956. His brother

Yukio Hatoyama is a former Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 16 September 2009 to 8 June 2010. He was the first Prime Minister from the modern Democratic Party of Japan. First elected to the House of Representatives in 1986, Hat ...

, also a politician and leader of the rival

Democratic Party of Japan The was a centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist: * * * * * * * to centre-left liberal or social-liberal political party in Japan from 1998 to 2016. The party's origins lie in the previous Democratic ...

, became the country's Prime Minister in September 2009 following a landslide victory in the August 2009 election. His maternal grandfather was Shōjirō Ishibashi, founder of

Bridgestone is a Japanese multinational tire manufacturer founded in 1931 by Shojiro Ishibashi (1889–1976) in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan. The name Bridgestone comes from a calque translation and transposition of , meaning 'stone bridge' in Japa ...

. Hatoyama attended the Faculty of Law at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

and graduated with a degree in political science. He wanted to get into politics right away and became an aide to Prime Minister

Kakuei Tanaka was a Japanese politician who served in the House of Representatives from 1947 to 1990, and was Prime Minister of Japan from 1972 to 1974. After a power struggle with Takeo Fukuda, he became the most influential member of the ruling Liberal ...

. He ran for the

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

in 1976 as a member of the

New Liberal Club was a political party in Japan that was founded on 25 June 1976 as a breakaway from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The New Liberal Club formed a coalition government with the LDP in December 1983, with the New Liberal's president, Seiichi T ...

and entered the LDP after winning. In 1993, he left the LDP and became a conservative independent, saying he wanted to form a new party to oppose the LDP. He was briefly Minister of Education, Science, Sports and Culture in the Cabinet of Prime Minister

Tsutomu Hata was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan for nine weeks in 1994. He took over from Morihiro Hosokawa at the head of a coalition government. Shortly after he had been appointed Prime Minister, the Japanese Socialist Party ...

. In 1994, he helped form the now-defunct New Frontier Party, which he left in 1996 to form the

with his brother,

, and became the Vice Leader of the opposition. Divisions between the brothers eventually led him to leave the DPJ in 1999, and he re-joined the LDP in 2000 after running unsuccessfully for the seat of the Governor of Tokyo. He joined the

cabinet as Justice Minister in August 2007, and maintained his post through the September inauguration of the cabinet of Yasuo Fukuda. Serial killer

Tsutomu Miyazaki was a Japanese serial killer who murdered four young girls in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture between August 1988 and June 1989. He abducted and killed the girls, aged from 4 to 7, in his car before dismembering them and molesting their corpses. ...

was executed during his tenure. After the execution, he was called "Grim Reaper" by the ''

Asahi Shimbun is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition a ...

'', which made him angry. Subsequently, in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Tarō Asō, appointed on 24 September 2008, Hatoyama was moved to the post of Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications. In a dispute with Asō over a possible replacement of

Japan Post Holdings is a Japanese publicly traded conglomerate headquartered in Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda, Tokyo. It is mainly engaged in postal and logistics business, financial window business, banking business and life insurance business. The company offers letters ...

president Yoshifumi Nishikawa Hatoyama resigned on 12 June 2009.

Personal life

He was married to Emily Hatoyama (née Emily Baird, aka Emily Takami), the daughter of an Australian army sergeant, Jimmy Baird, and a Japanese woman. Emily is a former model and actress. The couple has three children, Tarō Hatoyama, Hanako Hatoyama and Jirō Hatoyama. Hatoyama died on 21 June 2016 in a hospital in Tokyo, at the age of 67. He was survived by his wife, three children and five grandchildren.

Controversies

Views on the death penalty

In September 2007, Hatoyama caused a controversy after making a remark during a press conference, where he suggested a system in which execution of death row inmates could take place without him having to sign the final execution order, as currently required by Japanese law. He came under criticism from opponents to capital punishment such as Amnesty International Japan for his attitude, which said that he was trying to avoid accountability as well as showing disregard for human rights.

Remarks about the Bali bombing

In October 2007, during a news conference, Hatoyama attempted to justify plans to fingerprint and photograph all foreigners at immigration by claiming that an unidentified "friend of a friend", who is an

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets in various countr ...

terrorist involved in the

2002 Bali bombings The 2002 Bali bombings occurred on 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta on the Indonesian island of Bali. The attack killed 202 people (including 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians, 23 Britons, and people of more than 20 other national ...

, was able to sneak in and out of Japan repeatedly over the following years using different passports and wearing a fake moustache. He added that he had received prior warning to stay away from the centre of Bali because it would be bombed. The remarks were made during a news conference at Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, where he was trying to explain the necessity of new anti-terrorism measures being implemented whereby all foreigners entering the country will be fingerprinted and photographed. Later that day, he gave another press conference in which he retracted his remarks, saying instead that it was actually his friend who had received a prior warning about the bombing, and that he only found out about the warning three or four months after the bombing. He also issued a statement denying any connections to members of Al-Qaeda, as well as apologising to Prime Minister Fukuda for the confusion he caused.

Revisionism

Hatoyama was affiliated to the openly revisionist organization

Nippon Kaigi The Right side up ...

.Pro-Yasukuni lineup features Aso Cabinet
- Japan Press Weekly - 24 September 2008

Ancestry

Notes

References

* Itoh, Mayumi (2003)
''The Hatoyama Dynasty: Japanese Political Leadership through the Generations''
New York: Palgrave Macmillan. , . .

External links

* , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Hatoyama, Kunio 1948 births 2016 deaths Bridgestone people Democratic Party of Japan politicians Education ministers of Japan Ministers of Labour of Japan

Kunio Kunio (written: 邦夫, 邦男, 邦雄, 邦生, 國男, 國士, 国男, 国夫, 州男 or 久仁生) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese businessman *, Japanese businessman *, Japanese judge *, Jap ...

Liberal Democratic Party (Japan) politicians Members of the House of Representatives (Japan) Ministers of Internal Affairs of Japan Ministers of Justice of Japan New Frontier Party (Japan) politicians 20th-century Japanese politicians Politicians from Tokyo Tokyo gubernatorial candidates Members of Nippon Kaigi University of Tokyo alumni 21st-century Japanese politicians Presidents of the Japan Futsal Federation