Yukio Hatoyama, born February 11, 1947 in Japan is a Japanese politician and the current Prime Minister of Japan.

In May of 2009, Yukio Hatoyama was elected president of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). It was his second time in the role, having previously headed the party from 1999 to 2002, but the reprise was particularly auspicious in that it corresponded with the likelihood of wresting power from the half-century-long grip of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Hatoyama, who was a fourth-generation politician, was thus poised to become prime minister of Japan in September. As expected, Hatoyama took office as prime minister on September 16, 2009.

To Politics Born

Hatoyama was born into a Japanese political dynasty on February 11, 1947. His great-grandfather had been speaker of parliament, his grandfather prime minister, and his father foreign minister. And not incidentally, his mother was heiress to the Bridgestone Tire fortune. It is thus perhaps not surprising that the family was often compared to the Kennedys of the United States. Hatoyama, the eldest son, earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from Tokyo University (1969) and a doctorate in the field from Stanford University (1976). He then taught at Senshyu University for a while and served as his father's private secretary before following family tradition and launching his own political career in 1986.

First elected to the House of Representatives in 1986, Hatoyama was a member of the long-dominant LDP at the time. That changed when he jumped ship to join the New Party Sakigake in 1993, but that alliance was relatively brief as he co-founded the DPJ in 1996. (His younger brother, Kunio, who went on to become minister of internal affairs and communications, joined him in the new party.) Hatoyama served as secretary general (1997), deputy secretary general (1998), and leader (1999 to 2002) of the DPJ, as well as chairing various committees in the House