Profile 路 Japan
Yasukazu Hamada
Politician 路 League Chair LDP Former Defence Minister 馃嚡馃嚨 Tokyo
Bio
Yasukazu Hamada is a senior member of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan and currently serves as head of LDP parliamentary affairs. He has been a member of the House of Representatives for the Chiba 12th district since 1993, succeeding his father in the seat. Hamada has served twice as Minister of Defence, first under the Aso government in 2008 to 2009 and again under the second Kishida government in 2022 to 2023. His departmental experience covers acquisitions, joint operations with US Forces Japan, and the post-2020 internal Defence Ministry policy on the recording and reporting of unidentified aerial phenomena.
On 6 June 2024 Hamada chaired the inaugural meeting of the cross-party Parliamentary League for Unraveling Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena from a National Security Perspective, bringing together more than eighty Diet members across the LDP, Japan Restoration Party, and other opposition groupings. It is the most cross-party national legislative body on UAP convened anywhere in the world to date.
On UAP
Hamada's framing of the UAP question is structurally that of a former defence minister: he treats it as a national-security data problem that the Ministry of Defence is not yet structured to handle, and pursues policy change accordingly. Under his chairmanship the league has delivered two formal proposals to the executive branch, the first to Defence Minister Gen Nakatani on 16 May 2025 and the second to the Cabinet Office on 30 March 2026. The second proposal called for a specialised government UAP office sitting directly under the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary for Crisis Management.
On 7 August 2025 Hamada and other league members held closed-door hearings in the House of Representatives to review the 26 July 2025 Genkai Nuclear Power Station incident, in which four security guards reported three drone-like lights at the main entrance. The league has cited Genkai as a driver for the March 2026 proposal, noting that Kyushu Electric Power Company's operational records and the Saga Prefectural Police's official explanation of the incident are in the league's framing irreconcilable.
Notable Public Statements
Inaugural league press conference, 6 June 2024: Hamada described the league's purpose as ensuring the Japanese government is structured to investigate and respond to UAP "from a national security perspective" and named the Ministry of Defence's existing internal framework as inadequate to the scale of the question.
16 May 2025 proposal to Defence Minister Gen Nakatani: the league requested the establishment of a specialised UAP division to collect and analyse data, disclose findings publicly, and report regularly to the Diet.
30 March 2026 fourth general meeting: Hamada chaired the finalisation of the proposal for a specialised government UAP office under the Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary for Crisis Management.
Where to Find Them
In the Archive
Editorial note. This profile is built strictly from publicly available material: Diet records, the official league press conferences, Japan Times and South China Morning Post coverage, and the published league proposals. The NHI Archive takes no position on the substance of the proposals, only documents that they were made and links to the original sources. If anything on this profile needs correcting, please get in touch.
