川口 頼子
Current
Minister of Foreign Affairs of
Japan, in the cabinet of
Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro. Born in Tokyo in 1941, she graduated from the
University of Tokyo with a
bachelor's degree in
international relations, and went to work for the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry.
She left MITI to work on her master's degree at Yale University. After graduating from Yale in 1972, she moved to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where she worked until returning to MITI in 1990.
In 1993, she left the government to become managing director of Suntory, but she returned in 2000 to become the director of the Japanese Environment Agency under Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro, and was promoted to ministerial level in January of 2001.
She became foreign minister after the ousting of Tanaka Makiko in February of 2002, and attended the G8 summit in Kananaskis.