Yoshio Hachiro

Who is Yoshio Hachiro?

Yoshio Hachiro is a Japanese politician of the Democratic Party of Japan, a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet. A native of Kabato District, Hokkaidō and graduate of Hokkaido University, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1990 as an independent. He later joined first the Japan Socialist Party and then the DPJ. In 2003 he left the Diet to run for governorship of Hokkaido, which was unsuccessful. In the same year he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives and was elected. In September 2011 he was appointed as Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry in the cabinet of newly appointed prime minister Yoshihiko Noda.

He resigned only one week after for his declarations regarding his visit in the exclusion zone of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster: on September 9, he compared the vicinity of the plant to a "ghost town", and the previous day, jokingly mimicked rubbing his jacket on a journalist while telling him "I'll give you radiation".