Yukio Hatoyama

His paternal great-grandfather, Kazuo Hatoyama, was speaker of the House of Representatives of the Diet of Japan from 1896 to 1897 during the Meiji era.

Kazuo later served as the president of Waseda University.

His paternal great-grandmother, Haruko Hatoyama, was a co-founder of what is known today as Kyoritsu Women's University.

His paternal grandfather, Ichirō Hatoyama, was a major politician; he served as Prime Minister and was a founder and the first President of the Liberal Democratic Party in 1956.

As Prime Minister, he restored diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, which cleared the way for Japan's membership in the United Nations.

Hatoyama is the son of Iichirō Hatoyama, who was Foreign Minister for a time.

His mother, Yasuko Hatoyama, is a daughter of Shojiro Ishibashi, the founder of Bridgestone Corporation and heir to his significant inheritance.

Yasuko Hatoyama is known as the "Godmother" within the Japanese political world for her financial contributions to both of her sons' political ambitions.

Hatoyama graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Tokyo in 1969 and received a PhD in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University in 1976.

He met his wife, Miyuki Hatoyama, while studying at Stanford (Miyuki was working at a Japanese restaurant).

The couple married in 1975 after Miyuki divorced her ex-husband.

The couple's son, Kiichirō (紀一郎), graduated from the urban engineering department of the University of Tokyo, is a visiting engineering researcher at Moscow State University.

Hatoyama worked as assistant professor (1976–1981) at Tokyo Institute of Technology and later transferred to Senshu University as associate professor (1981–1984).

Hatoyama's son Kiichiro Hatoyama (1976) is married and has given Hatoyama senior two grandchildren.

First elected to the House of Representatives in 1986, Hatoyama became President of the DPJ, the main opposition party, in May 2009.

He represented the Hokkaido 9th district in the House of Representatives from 1986 to 2012.

Hatoyama ran for a seat in the Hokkaido 9th District and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1986 representing the ruling LDP.

In 1993 he left the LDP to form the New Party Sakigake with Naoto Kan, Masayoshi Takemura and Shūsei Tanaka (田中秀征).

In particular, Yasuko donated billions of yen when Kunio and Yukio co-created their previous Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in 1996 to help establish her sons' fledgling political party.

He and Kan then left to join the newly formed Democratic Party (Japan, 1996).

Hatoyama and his younger brother, Kunio Hatoyama, co-created the party, using billions of yen donated by their mother, Yasuko.

Kunio Hatoyama eventually left the DPJ, saying the party had drifted too far to the left from its original centrist roots, and rejoined the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Yukio remained with the party through its merger with several other opposition parties in 1998.

The elder Hatoyama became the Democratic Party of Japan's chairman and leader of the opposition from 1999 to 2002, after which he resigned to take responsibility for the confusion that arose from rumors of mergers with Ichirō Ozawa's then Liberal Party.

Yukio Hatoyama (鳩山 友紀夫, born 鳩山 由紀夫) is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and Leader of the Democratic Party of Japan from 2009 to 2010.

He was the first Prime Minister from the modern Democratic Party of Japan.

He then led the party to victory in the August 2009 general election, defeating the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had been in power for over a decade.

His younger brother, Kunio Hatoyama, served as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications under Prime Minister Taro Aso until 12 June 2009.

His younger sister-in-law Emily Hatoyama (鳩山エミリ) who is Kunio's wife, an Australian Japanese, was a TV personality in Japan.

He was Secretary-General of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) before he succeeded Ozawa as party leader following Ozawa's resignation on 11 May 2009.

Hatoyama was chosen by fellow party representatives on 16 May 2009, winning 124 of the 219 votes and defeating rival Katsuya Okada.

Because of his quirky hairstyle, prominent eyes, and eccentric manner, he is known by his supporters and his opposition alike as "ET" or "The Alien", a nickname his wife states he earned because of how different he is from old-style Japanese politicians.

Another nickname commonly used by the Japanese public in press was Popo, after a children's song about a pigeon that starts with the lyric "popopo, hato popo"; the first character in Hatoyama's last name is the Japanese word for 'pigeon'.

In 2012, Hatoyama announced his retirement from politics.

Since then, he has made large online presence such as on Twitter with his outspoken political views.

He generated controversy when he visited Crimea in 2015 and claimed that the annexation by the Russian Federation was constitutional and falsely claimed that Ukraine and NATO would launch a nuclear strike against Russia in 2023.

Hatoyama is currently the founder and leader of Kyowa Party, a minor political party established in 2020 after he announced his return to politics.

In 2020, Hatoyama formed the Kyowa Party and announced his intentions to re-enter Japanese politics.

Hatoyama comes from a prominent Japanese political family which has been likened to the Kennedy family of the United States.

Hatoyama, who was born in Bunkyō, Tokyo, is a fourth-generation politician.