Yasukazu Hamada

Yasukazu Hamada has been in Japan's House of Representatives since 1993, and he has held the defense portfolio twice — once under Prime Minister Taro Aso in 2008, and again from 2022 to 2023. The gap between those two appointments is the part worth pausing on. Thirteen years is long enough for a political generation to turn over, and being called back to the same ministry after that interval is not luck. It is a party deciding, in a difficult moment, that it wants the safe pair of hands rather than the exciting one. Defense is an unforgiving brief in Japan, hemmed in by constitutional argument and public unease; do it loudly and you frighten people, do it quietly and nothing moves. Hamada is not a politician who trades in soundbites, and I suspect that is precisely the qualification. He came out of Futtsu in Chiba and Senshu University, stayed with his home constituency for three decades, and became the person you hand the hard file to.

Name (English)

Yasukazu Hamada

Name (Japanese)

浜田靖一

Reading

はまだ やすかず

Born

October 21, 1955 (age 70)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Libra / Goat

Origin

Futtsu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

politician

University

Senshu University

• Official sitehttps://www.office-hamada.jp/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukazu%20Hamada
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B5%9C%E7%94%B0%E9%9D%96%E4%B8%80
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1132836

Tags

• Chiba Prefecture
• politician

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.