was a Japanese

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

of the

Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan The (CDP or CDPJ) is a social-liberal political party in Japan. It was founded in October 2017 as a split from the Democratic Party ahead of the 2017 general election. In late 2020, the party was re-founded following a merger with majoritie ...

and a member of the

House of Councillors The is the upper house of the National Diet of Japan. The House of Representatives is the lower house. The House of Councillors is the successor to the pre-war House of Peers. If the two houses disagree on matters of the budget, treaties, ...

in the

Diet of Japan The is the national legislature of Japan. It is composed of a lower house, called the House of Representatives (, ''Shūgiin''), and an upper house, the House of Councillors (, '' Sangiin''). Both houses are directly elected under a paralle ...

. A native of

Setagaya, Tokyo is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is also the name of a neighborhood and administrative district within the ward. The ward calls itself Setagaya City in English. Its official bird is the azure-winged magpie, its flower is the fringed orch ...

, and graduate of

Tamagawa University is a Japanese university in Machida, Tokyo, Japan. The university consists of 16 departments in seven faculties (undergraduate), as well as seven programs leading to a master's degree and four programs leading to a doctorate degree. Part of th ...

, he was elected to the House of Councillors for the first time in 1999, a position he retained until his death in 2020. Hata was the

Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism The is a member of the Cabinet of Japan and is the leader and chief executive of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. The minister is also a statutory member of the National Security Council, and is nominated by the Prime M ...

from 4 June 2012 to 26 December 2012. He was the son of the late 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 le ...

Career

Hata was a member of the Itochu Foundation during his time as a student at

. He graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Arts in March 1993. Early in his career Hata was a secretary to his father, Prime Minister

, during the latter's tenure in the House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives. Hata served as member of the

in the Diet of Japan, Diet beginning with his election in 1999. He was affiliated with the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) after the merger of the Democratic Party and Kibō no Tō, and finally

(CDP) after the DPP's dissolution. On 4 June 2012 Hata was appointed to be the

by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda. Following the loss of the Democratic Party of Japan to the Liberal Democratic Party in the 2012 Japanese general election, Noda and his Cabinet, including Hata, were succeeded by Shinzo Abe and his Cabinet on 26 December 2012. In all, he served as a legislator for five terms and was the initial Secretary-General of the Upper House caucus of the CDP at the time of his death in December 2020.

Visits to Yasukuni shrine

On 15 August 2012, Hata, along with National Safety Commissioner Jin Matsubara became the first cabinet ministers of the DPJ to openly visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine since the party came to power in 2009. They made their visits to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the end of World War II despite requests from South Korea to refrain from doing so, and despite Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda requesting his cabinet not to do so.

Political positions

Generally, Hata was part of Japan's center-left politics, center-left political parties. He was a member of the DPJ and later, the CDP, both of which are center-left parties. He held positions consistent with the platform of those parties. He was opposed to the revision of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution that prohibits Japan from going to war. After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, he became critical of Japan's use of nuclear power, stating that the country should aim to get rid of its plants eventually and that the country should not support nuclear projects in other countries. Hata was a supporter of agricultural protectionism in Japan, agricultural protectionism in regards to fair trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Death

Yuichiro Hata died from COVID-19 in Tokyo on 27 December 2020, at age 53, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan while being transported to the University of Tokyo Hospital. He is the first Japanese legislator to die of the disease.

References

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