Ex-Japan PM Yasuo Fukuda Dies at 90

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.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]