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Director-General, Fukushima Nuclear Accident Response and Reconstruction Policy

NII Yasuhito

picture of NII Yasuhito

Mr. Nii Yasuhito has been serving as Director-General of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Response and Reconstruction Policy since July 2023. In this capacity, he is engaged in ensuring the full recovery from the aftermath of the nuclear accident in Fukushima on March 11, 2011.

Since 2015 he has been working on the reconstruction and revitalization of Fukushima from the Great East Japan Earthquake and nuclear accident. As Director of the Support Team for Residents Affected by Nuclear Incidents at the Cabinet Office, he worked to lift the evacuation order so as to enable evacuees to return to their homes and designed the scheme for reconstruction of “difficult-to-return” zones. From 2019, he was stationed in Fukushima for two years, where he led the 200+-staff-member team of the Organization for Fukushima Region Soso Revitalization (a public-private joint team) as the Senior Executive Director, and worked hands-on in areas such as commerce and industry, agriculture and fisheries, urban development, and creation of new industries.

Before assuming his current roles, as Director-General for Policy Planning and Coordination in the Minister's Secretariat, and as Director-General of the Regional Economic and Industrial Policy Group, he coordinated Minister's meetings with representatives of all regional business associations from Hokkaido to Okinawa. He also set the direction of regional policy focusing on promoting domestic investment and industrial location as well as the policy of regional major and mid-tier businesses under the era of population decline. From 2021, as Deputy Commissioner of the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, he provided support to enable the business continuation, restructuring and reform, and growth of SMEs in the harsh conditions caused by the pandemic and crisis in Ukraine, and in addition, developed a framework for new support systems accompanying managers of SMEs.

Since joining the Ministry in 1991, he has been involved in policy areas such as natural resources and energy, industrial technology, competition, taxation, aerospace industries, and international trade and investment, in addition to the management of the Ministry as a whole in the Policy Planning and Coordination Division, and the Personnel Division in the Minister's Secretariat, as well as budgeting as Director of the Budget and Accounts Division in 2017.

In particular, in the areas of growth strategy and industrial policy, he brought about a corporate tax reform that was one of the pillars of ‘Abenomics’ as Director of the Corporate Affairs Division (2013 - 2015), and established the foreign dividend exclusion system in the international taxation system as Director of the Trade and Investment Facilitation Division (2008 - 2010). As Deputy Director-General for Economic and Social Policy, he promoted policies in 2019 in areas such as women's success in the workplace, diversity, risk money, startups, and corporate governance.

In the area of international relations, as a Counsellor to the Permanent Delegation of Japan to the OECD in France from 2010 to 2013, he worked with the IEA (International Energy Agency) and was involved in international energy issues before and after the Great East Japan Earthquake and nuclear accident. Before that, as Director of the Trade and Investment Facilitation Division in the Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau from 2008, he promoted foreign direct investment to Japan (FDI), and also managed the regulation of foreign capital. He also spent two years as a research associate in U.S.-Japan Studies and Cooperation at Vanderbilt University in the U.S. from 1997 to 1999.

Mr. Nii graduated from the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Law and earned an M.A. in Economics at Vanderbilt University in the United States.

He was born on November 23, 1966, in Tokushima Prefecture.

Last updated:2023-10-12