Kunio Hatoyama

Kunio Hatoyama (鳩山邦夫 Hatoyama Kunio) is a Japanese politician and younger brother of the former Prime Minister of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama. Both are members of the lower house of the Diet (Japanese parliament), but have spent some years on opposite political sides. In March 2010, Kunio left the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for the second time, stating his intention to form his own party due to his perception of the LDP as a spent political force. His brother, meanwhile, signalled that it was unlikely that the governing Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which ousted the LDP in 2009 after 55 years of near-uninterrupted rule, would work with any new party.

Hatoyama's grandfather, Ichiro Hatoyama (鳩山 一郎 Hatoyama Ichiroo), served as an LDP prime minister, making Hatoyama a so-called 'hereditary politician' due to his family's record of political office; it also founded the tyre company Bridgestone. The family's philosophy centres on the concept of yuai (友愛), meaning 'fraternity'.