Tokyo, Oct. 26 (Jiji Press)–Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda died at a Tokyo hospital on Thursday. He was 90. The House of Representatives, the all-important lower chamber of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, announced his death Monday. As the country’s prime minister, he chaired a Group of Eight summit in Toyako, Hokkaido, northern Japan, in 2008 and spearheaded climate change measures. Amid struggles due to a divided Diet, however, he lasted only a year in office. After serving as secretary to his father, Takeo, a former prime minister, the younger Fukuda won his first seat in the 1990 Lower House, representing a constituency in Gunma Prefecture, eastern Japan, and was elected seven times in a row to the chamber. Fukuda first took a cabinet post as chief cabinet secretary in 2000 under the administration of then Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori. He was retained as the country’s top government spokesperson in the cabinet formed the following year by then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. As chief cabinet secretary, Fukuda took charge of the country’s foreign and national security policies, such as the dispatch of Japanese Self-Defense Forces personnel to Iraq, earning him the nickname of “Shadow Foreign Minister.” Fukuda served as chief cabinet secretary for 1,289 days, the second-longest tenure in the post’s history, and was known for being highly trusted by bureaucrats. Following the abrupt resignation of then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during his first cabinet, Fukuda became the LDP’s president and subsequently the country’s prime minister in September 2007, becoming the first to serve as prime minister in succession to his father in Japan’s constitutional history. Pledging to implement reforms from the perspective of citizens, Fukuda worked on establishing the Consumer Affairs Agency, as well as converting revenues from road-related taxes earmarked for road projects into general revenue. His “Fukuda Vision” outlined concrete measures to combat global warming. Under his diplomatic approach, which placed equal emphasis on the Japan-U.S. alliance and relations with other parts of Asia, he worked on improving Japan-China relations. Hoping to resolve the impasse in the Diet caused by opposition parties holding a majority in the House of Councillors, the upper chamber, now called the Senate, Fukuda held talks with Ichiro Ozawa, then leader of the now-defunct Democratic Party of Japan, in November 2007 on forming a grand coalition. The move failed, however, due to opposition within the DPJ. Under mounting pressure from the DPJ, including the rejection by the Upper House in March 2008 of a nominee for Bank of Japan governor, Fukuda also faced a censure motion passed by the chamber in June that year. With his cabinet’s public approval ratings also remaining low, Fukuda resigned in September 2008. In 2012, he announced that he would not run in the Lower House election and retired from politics. Even after retirement, he frequently visited China, meeting with President Xi Jinping in 2014, and continued to advocate for stronger Japan-China relations. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
