is a Japanese politician who served as the leader 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 ...

from its formation in 2017 until 2021. A member of 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 the

Diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

since 1993, he served as

Chief Cabinet Secretary The is a member of the cabinet and is the leader and chief executive of the Cabinet Secretariat of Japan. The Chief Cabinet Secretary coordinates the policies of ministries and agencies in the executive branch, and also serves as the government ...

and

Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry The is a member of the Cabinet of Japan and is the leader and chief executive of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. The minister is also a statutory member of the National Security Council, and is nominated by the Prime Minister of Ja ...

in the

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 Part ...

(DPJ) government from 2010 to 2012. Following the CDP's poor performance in the 2021 general election, Edano announced on 2 November his intention to resign as leader of the party, triggering a

leadership election A leadership election is a political contest held in various countries by which the members of a political party determine who will be the leader of their party. Generally, any political party can determine its own rules governing how and when a l ...

Early life

Edano was born in

Utsunomiya is the prefectural capital city of Tochigi Prefecture in the northern Kantō region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 519,223, and a population density of . The total area of the city is . Utsunomiya is famous for its ''gyoza'' ...

on 31 May 1964. He is named after Japanese progressive liberal political figure

Yukio Ozaki was a Japanese people, Japanese politician of Liberalism, liberal signature, born in modern-day Sagamihara, Kanagawa. Ozaki served in the House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet for 63 years (1890–1953). He is still revered in Japan as t ...

, who Edano's father admired. Edano graduated from

Tohoku University , or is a Japanese national university located in Sendai, Miyagi in the Tōhoku Region, Japan. It is informally referred to as . Established in 1907, it was the third Imperial University in Japan and among the first three Designated National ...

with a degree in law, and passed the Japanese

bar examination A bar examination is an examination administered by the bar association of a jurisdiction that a lawyer must pass in order to be admitted to the bar of that jurisdiction. Australia Administering bar exams is the responsibility of the bar associa ...

at the age of 24.

Political career

In the 1993 general election, at the age of 29, Edano joined

Morihiro Hosokawa is a Japanese politician and Nobility, noble who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1993 to 1994, leading a coalition government which was the first non-Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government of Japan since 1955 ...

Japan New Party The was a Japanese political party that existed briefly from 1992 to 1994. The party, considered liberal, was founded by Morihiro Hosokawa, a former Diet member and Kumamoto Prefecture governor, who left the Liberal Democratic Party to protest ...

and won a seat in the Saitama 5th district. He participated in the formation of the DPJ in 1996. As a legislator, Edano played a role in the government response to the HIV-tainted blood scandal of 1995 and the financial industry reorganization of 1998. Edano was appointed as the secretary general of the DPJ in March 2010 when it was the country's ruling party.

Katsuya Okada is a Japanese politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of Japan from January to December 2012. A member of the House of Representatives of Japan, he was the President of the Democratic Party (Japan, 2016), Democratic Party, and previously of th ...

, the former Foreign Minister, subsequently replaced him in September 2010.

Chief Cabinet Secretary

James Steinberg and Yukio Edano 20110127

In January 2011, Edano became

in the Kan Cabinet. In March 2011, he was temporarily appointed head of the

Foreign Ministry In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...

. In the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan, he was the face of the government efforts to combat the aftermath, frequently appearing on television to talk about the problems at the two reactor facilities in Fukushima. Because of the frequency of his appearances, Twitter users concerned with his health were prompted to post messages asking him to get some sleep. The Twitter

hashtag A hashtag is a metadata tag that is prefaced by the hash (also known as pound or octothorpe) sign, ''#''. On social media, hashtags are used on microblogging and photo-sharing services such as Twitter or Instagram as a form of user-generated ...

"#edano_nero" became popular, from the imperative word for in Japanese.

Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry

As economy minister in the

Noda Cabinet NoDa (short for "North Davidson") is a popular arts district in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. It is located in the North Charlotte neighborhood on and around North Davidson Street and 36th Street, approximately one mile northeast of Upt ...

, Edano approved the introduction of

feed-in tariffs A feed-in tariff (FIT, FiT, standard offer contract,Couture, T., Cory, K., Kreycik, C., Williams, E., (2010)Policymaker's Guide to Feed-in Tariff Policy Design National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy advanced renewable tariff, ...

on 18 June 2012, whereby a percentage of energy use fees are used to subsidize (a shift to) renewable energy.

Post-cabinet

Edano left the Cabinet following the DPJ's defeat in the December 2012 general election, but retained his seat representing the Saitama 5th district. Edano was named secretary general of the DPJ in September 2014. He retained this position in the

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

following the merger of the DPJ with the

Japan Innovation Party The was a political party in Japan. It was launched on 22 September 2014, following the merger of the Japan Restoration Party headed by Tōru Hashimoto, and the Unity Party, led by Kenji Eda. On 27 March 2016 the party merged with the Democrati ...

in March 2016. DP leader Renho resigned in July 2017 after the party suffered a poor result in the 2017 Tokyo assembly election. With the liberal wing of the party losing clout due to the influx of conservative

members after the merger, Edano only managed to garner 40% of the points up for grabs in the election. In an attempt to unify the party, the freshly-elected leader Maehara appointed Edano as the deputy president.

Constitutional Democratic Party

Prime Minister

Shinzo Abe Shinzo Abe ( ; ja, 安倍晋三, Hepburn romanization, 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 (Japan), President of the Lib ...

made a surprise announcement for a

snap election A snap election is an election that is called earlier than the one that has been scheduled. Generally, a snap election in a parliamentary system (the dissolution of parliament) is called to capitalize on an unusual electoral opportunity or to ...

on 25 September 2017, only three weeks after the DP leadership election. With the party unprepared and in disarray, Maehara was scrambling to find a way to shore up support for the party. At the same day as Abe's election announcement, Tokyo Governor

Yuriko Koike is a Japanese politician who currently serves as the Governor of Tokyo since 2016. She graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1976 and was a member of the House of Representatives of Japan from 1993 until 2016, when she resigned to ...

launched a new conservative party called

Kibō no Tō was a conservative political party in Japan founded by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike. The party was founded just before the call of the 2017 general election. The party's ideology was mainly Japanese conservatism and nationalism. Kibō no Tō ...

(Party of Hope). Seeing Koike's high popularity at that time as a potential asset, Maehara coordinated with Koike on DP candidates' nominations for the election. Koike agreed to endorse DP candidates and Maehara effectively disbanded the party in order to allow the candidates run under the Kibō banner. However, despite Maehara's request, Koike imposed an ideological filter that effectively barred liberal-leaning members of the DP, such as Edano, from joining Kibō. Edano then decided to form a separate party to house liberal DP members rejected by Koike. On 2 October 2017, Edano founded the

Constitutional Democratic Party ) , newspaper = ''Rech'' , ideology = ConstitutionalismConstitutional monarchismLiberal democracyParliamentarism Political pluralismSocial liberalism , position = Centre to centre-left , international = , colours ...

as a split from the Democratic Party, becoming the party's leader. Despite being formed only less than three weeks before the election, the CDP ran a very efficient campaign with a principled platform and used social media in a level unprecedented in

Japanese politics Politics of Japan are conducted in a framework of a dominant-party bicameral parliamentary constitutional monarchy, in which the Emperor is the head of state and the Prime Minister is the head of government and the head of the Cabinet, which d ...

. Edano led the party to become the second largest party in the Diet in the

general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

. He won the 2020 Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leadership election.

Political views

Edano has described himself as both liberal and conservative, believing the labels do not conflict with one another. He supports separate surnames for married couples.

Family

Edano is married and has twin sons.

References

External links

* , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - , - {{DEFAULTSORT:Edano, Yukio 1964 births Democratic Party of Japan politicians Foreign ministers of Japan Government ministers of Japan Japan New Party politicians Liberalism in Japan Living people Japanese social liberals Members of the House of Representatives from Saitama Prefecture People from Utsunomiya, Tochigi Tohoku University alumni Noda cabinet 21st-century Japanese politicians Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan politicians