1. Naoto Kan is a Japanese former politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Democratic Party of Japan from June 2010 to September 2011.
30 Facts About Naoto Kan
1. 2.
On 1 August 2012, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Naoto Kan would be one of the members of the UN high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda.
3.
Naoto Kan was born in Ube, Yamaguchi, the eldest son of Hisao Naoto Kan, the executive director of the glass manufacturing company Central Glass.
4.
Naoto Kan graduated in 1970 from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and became a licensed benrishi in 1971.
5.
Naoto Kan actively engaged in civic grassroots movements for years and served on election campaign staff for Fusae Ichikawa, a women's rights activist.
6.
Naoto Kan's face was used as the trademark of the campaign against the LDP.
7.
However, in 2004 Naoto Kan was accused of unpaid annuities and again resigned the position of leader.
8.
In mid-October 2005, Naoto Kan, who turned 60 in 2006, proposed the creation of a new political party to be called the "Dankai Party".
9.
Naoto Kan believes the Japan Self-Defense Forces should play a more prominent role on the international stage.
10.
Local rank-and-file party members and activists overwhelmingly supported Naoto Kan, and according to opinion polls the wider Japanese public preferred Naoto Kan to Ozawa by as much as a 4:1 ratio.
11.
Several weeks later, Shinzo Abe circulated information that Naoto Kan had ordered pumping to stop, which the Yomiuri Shimbun and other news outlets reported as fact, and opposition leader Sadakazu Tanigaki accused the government of causing the Fukushima meltdowns.
12.
Naoto Kan took an increasingly anti-nuclear stance in the months following the Fukushima disaster.
13.
One year into his premiership on 2 June 2011, Naoto Kan proposed his resignation, hours before the Diet put forward a vote of no-confidence.
14.
In July 2011, Naoto Kan said that Japan must reduce its dependence on nuclear energy, breaking with a decades-old Japanese government drive to build more nuclear power plants in the country.
15.
Naoto Kan said Japan should abandon plans to build 14 new reactors by 2030.
16.
Naoto Kan wants to "pass a bill to promote renewable energy and questioned whether private companies should be running atomic plants".
17.
That convinced Naoto Kan to "declare the need for Japan to end its reliance on atomic power and promote renewable sources of energy such solar [sic] that have long taken a back seat in the resource-poor country's energy mix".
18.
Naoto Kan told a parliamentary investigation in 2012 that the nuclear industry had "shown no remorse" for the disaster, and was trying to push Japan back to nuclear power.
19.
Naoto Kan announced his intention to resign on 10 August 2011.
20.
Naoto Kan joined the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan along with the liberal-leaning members of the Democratic Party following the party split prior to the 2017 general election.
21.
In 2023, Naoto Kan stated publicly he would not run for a seat in the House of Representatives again.
22.
Naoto Kan further said that he would "still probably be involved in politics someway".
23.
Naoto Kan's term ended when the House was dissolved in October 2024.
24.
Nobuko, born in Okayama Prefecture, entered a relationship with the Tokyo-dwelling Naoto Kan after entering Tsuda College.
25.
Naoto Kan later served as political secretary to his father and was elected to the Musashino City Council in December 2023.
26.
Naoto Kan is nicknamed "Ira-Naoto Kan" due to his reputed short temper.
27.
Naoto Kan built a machine to calculate the complicated mahjong point system and applied for a patent in 1973.
28.
Naoto Kan was portrayed by Shiro Sano in the 2020 film Fukushima 50, and by Fumiyo Kohinata in the 2023 Netflix series The Days.
29.
Naoto Kan was the only one to have guessed the extreme gravity of the accident and to have realized that we were one step away from the collapse of Japan.
30.
Naoto Kan has an important cameo appearance in the 2023 Documentary Film SOS: The San Onofre Syndrome directed by James Heddle, Mary Beth Brangan and Morgan Peterson.