Yukio Edano

After the election, the Hosokawa Cabinet, the first since the 1950s not to include the LDP, was formed.

Edano became a member of the Commerce and Industry Committee, and helped to craft a Product Liability Act.

However, the Hosokawa Cabinet was cut short by a campaign finance scandal which led to the collapse of the cabinet, and Hosokawa resigned.

He voted for Tsutomu Hata in the next prime minister election, believing the LDP should be blocked from forming a government at all costs.

Following this, Edano opposed the formation of a new parliamentary group made up of all parties outside of the Socialists and LDP, and thus left the JNP to form his own parliamentary group briefly, known as "Democratic Wind".

He shortly after joined the New Party Sakigake, and opposed the motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata, which divided the Sakigake group.

Edano was born in Utsunomiya on 31 May 1964, into a salary-man family.

He is named after Japanese progressive liberal political figure Yukio Ozaki, who Edano's father admired.

He attended Utsunomiya City Mine Elementary School and Utsunomiya City Yoto Junior High School, serving as the student council president at both.

Edano graduated from Tohoku University with a degree in law, and passed the Japanese bar examination at the age of 24.

In 1992, Morihiro Hosokawa founded the Japan New Party.

Edano, who had found a job in Tokyo as a lawyer, found himself drawn to Hosokawa's words of idealism and anti-corruption, as Edano had maintained an interest in politics since he was young.

He was elected to parliament in the 1993 Japanese general election under the Japan New Party, and served briefly in the governments of Morihiro Hosokawa, Tsutomu Hata, Tomiichi Murayama, and the first Ryutaro Hashimoto cabinet before leaving the New Party Sakigake to join the Democratic Party in 1998.

After the New Party announced an open call for candidates to the Japanese House of Representatives before the 1993 general election, Edano applied to become a candidate for the party.

In 1994, the Murayama Cabinet, a coalition between the LDP, the JSP, and Edano's own group, the NPS, was formed.

He became vice chairman of the Policy Research Group inside the NPS under Policy Research Chairman Naoto Kan.

He played a role in investigating the HIV tainted blood scandal beginning in 1995, when he was contacted by the plaintiffs defense team and became convinced of the government's responsibility in the issue.

In August 1995, a meeting between the Minister of Welfare Shoichi Ide and the victims of the scandal was secretly arranged.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare refused to accept responsibility for the crisis, even after a court ordered them to, so the matter was pursued by the House of Representatives Committee on Health and Welfare.

He submitted a written inquiry requesting an explanation from the Ministry at the time.

In the First Hashimoto Cabinet, he also supported Naoto Kan's efforts to solve the problem, leading to the investigation of the truth and the continued use of non-heat products even after heat products had been developed to treat HIV.

He presided over the ministry's apology in February, and in July he took the stand to question Hideo Abe, the former head of the AIDS research team.

In January 1996, around two years later, the First Hashimoto Cabinet was formed, who was selected to lead after the resignation of Tomiichi Murayama.

He voted for confidence in the new Hashimoto cabinet, allegedly because Hashimoto himself was a member of a group of legislators who resisted removing blood products from the Product Liability Law, which would remove government accountability from them.

In the new cabinet, he served as chairman of an administrative reform team, and presented his own plan for civil service reform, including blanket hiring of civil servants and reforms on the practice of Amakudari.

He also became the leader of a bipartisan study group composed of young politicians, which was mainly seen as a networking event for politicians who had their eye on joining the new Democratic Party.

He participated in the formation of the Democratic Party in 1996, and ran under the party's banner in the 1996 Japanese general election.

He attempted to defend his seat in Saitama's 5th district in an election centered around volunteers, running against both Zenjiro Kaneko of the New Frontier Party and Nobuhiko Fukunaga of the LDP.

He ultimately lost in a close three-way election only decided by five points to Fukunaga, but was re-elected to the House after being placed on the Northern Kanto proportional representation block.

He became Policy Research Chairman of the Democratic Party in 1997, and establish the "2010 Association", a group of young politicians who criticized the clan-like nature of Japanese politics and the Social Democratic Party.

In 1998, the Democratic Party, Good Governance Party, New Fraternity Party, and splinters from the New Frontier Party all merged into one group, and the party was refounded as the Democratic Party of Japan to create a big-tent opposition force.

He then held various roles inside the party, and upon the group's landslide victory in the 2009 election, served roles in all three opposition cabinets.

He was a major part of the response to the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

Following the defeat of the Democratic Party in 2012, he held his seat in parliament, and joined the various opposition groups that formed around the time, including the 2016 form of the Democratic Party.

After the JNP had screened down 150 candidates to about 15 people, Edano had passed, and it was soon after announced he would be the JNPs candidate for the Saitama 5th district.

He initially struggled; lacking funding, political experience, and a rushed schedule due to his initial expectation for the House to be dissolved in the fall instead of June, he resorted to delivering speeches on the side of the road in the morning, a similar strategy to that used by Yoshihiko Noda.

He placed second but was still elected, falling slightly behind Kiyoshi Ueda.

Yukio Edano (枝野 幸男) is a Japanese politician who served as the leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan from its formation in 2017 until 2021.

With his attempt to join Kibō no Tō being blocked by Yuriko Koike's refusal to let liberal members of the former Democratic Party inside the group, he left to form the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan for liberal factions of the former party, which he led to a surprising second place finish in the 2017 Japanese general election.

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.