Chief Cabinet Secretary

The  is a member of the cabinet and is the leader and chief executive officer of the Cabinet Secretariat of Japan. They are also a  member of the National Security Council, and is appointed by the Emperor upon the nomination by the Prime Minister.

The Chief Cabinet Secretary is the second in line of succession to the Prime Minister, unless the office of Deputy Prime Minister is being used.

## Background

Since 1947, the office of Chief Cabinet Secretary has been seen as the job to have before wanting to become Prime Minister. The first Chief Cabinet Secretary to become Prime Minister was Ichirō Hatoyama. Since then, eight other former Chief Cabinet Secretaries have become Prime Ministers, most recently Shinzō Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, and Yoshihide Suga.

Yoshihide Suga, who later became Prime Minister of Japan, was Chief Cabinet Secretary under Shinzo Abe for almost eight years, making him the longest-serving Chief Cabinet Secretary in history.

### Shōwa era

|colspan=3|Chief Cabinet Secretary|colspan=3|Term of office|style="width:160px;" rowspan=2 colspan=2|Prime Minister|||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
||Jōji Hayashi|May 3, 1947|May 24, 1947|||||||||
|Shigeru Yoshida||||||||||||
||Suehiro Nishio|June 1, 1947|March 10, 1948|||||||||
|Tetsu Katayama||||||||||||
||Gizō Tomabechi|March 10, 1948|October 15, 1948|||||||||
|Hitoshi Ashida||||||||||||
||Eisaku Satō|October 17, 1948|February 16, 1949|||||||||
|rowspan=6|Shigeru Yoshida|||||||||||
||Kaneshichi Masuda|February 16, 1949|May 6, 1950|||||||||
||Katsuo Okazaki|May 6, 1950|December 26, 1951|||||||||
||Shigeru Hori|December 26, 1951|October 30, 1952|||||||||
||Taketora Ogata|October 30, 1952|May 21, 1953|||||||||
||Kenji Fukunaga|May 21, 1953|December 10, 1954|||||||||
|rowspan=2||rowspan=2|Ryutarō Nemoto|December 10, 1954|November 22, 1955|rowspan=2||style="background-color: "||rowspan=2|Ichirō Hatoyama|
|November 22, 1955|December 23, 1956|style="background-color: "||||||||||
|rowspan=2 style="background-color: "||rowspan=2||rowspan=2|Hirohide Ishida|rowspan=2|December 12, 1956|rowspan=2|July 10, 1957|rowspan=2||
|Tanzan Ishibashi||||||||||||
|rowspan=4|Nobusuke Kishi|||||||||||
||Kiichi Aichi|July 10, 1957|June 12, 1958|||||||||
||Munenori Akagi|June 12, 1958|June 18, 1959|||||||||
||Etsusaburō Shiina|June 18, 1959|July 19, 1960|||||||||
||Masayoshi Ōhira|July 19, 1960|July 18, 1962|||||||||
|rowspan=3|Hayato Ikeda|||||||||||
||Yasumi Kurogane|July 18, 1962|July 18, 1964|||||||||
||Zenkō Suzuki|July 18, 1964|November 9, 1964|||||||||
||Tomisaburō Hashimoto|November 9, 1964|August 1, 1966|||||||||
|rowspan=6|Eisaku Satō|||||||||||
||Kiichi Aichi|August 1, 1966|December 3, 1966|||||||||
||Kenji Fukunaga|December 3, 1966|June 22, 1967|||||||||
||Toshio Kimura|June 22, 1967|November 30, 1968|||||||||
||Shigeru Hori|November 30, 1968|July 5, 1971|||||||||
||Noboru Takeshita|July 5, 1971|July 7, 1972|||||||||
||Susumu Nikaidō|July 7, 1972|November 11, 1974|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Kakuei Tanaka|||||||||||
||Noboru Takeshita|November 11, 1974|December 9, 1974|||||||||
||Ichitarō Ide|December 9, 1974|December 24, 1976|||||||||
|Takeo Miki||||||||||||
||Sunao Sonoda|December 24, 1976|November 28, 1977|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Takeo Fukuda|||||||||||
||Shintaro Abe|November 28, 1977|December 7, 1978|||||||||
||Rokusuke Tanaka|December 7, 1978|November 9, 1979|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Masayoshi Ōhira|||||||||||
|rowspan=2 style="background-color:  "||rowspan=2||rowspan=2|Masayoshi Ito|rowspan=2|November 9, 1979|rowspan=2|July 17, 1980|rowspan=2||
|_Himself (Acting)_||||||||||||
||Kiichi Miyazawa|July 17, 1980|November 27, 1982|||||||||
|Zenkō Suzuki||||||||||||
||Masaharu Gotōda|November 27, 1982|December 27, 1983|||||||||
|rowspan=3|Yasuhiro Nakasone|||||||||||
||Takao Fujinami|December 27, 1983|December 28, 1985|||||||||
||Masaharu Gotōda|December 28, 1985|November 6, 1987|||||||||
||Keizō Obuchi|November 6, 1987|January 7, 1989|||||||||
|Noboru Takeshita||||||||||||

### Heisei era

|colspan=3|Chief Cabinet Secretary|colspan=3|Term of office|style="width:160px;" rowspan=2 colspan=2|Prime Minister|||||||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
||Keizō Obuchi|January 8, 1989|June 3, 1989|||||||||
|Noboru Takeshita||||||||||||
||Masajuro Shiokawa|June 3, 1989|August 10, 1989|||||||||
|Sōsuke Uno||||||||||||
||Tokuo Yamashita|August 10, 1989|August 26, 1989|||||||||
|rowspan=3|Toshiki Kaifu|||||||||||
||Mayumi Moriyama|August 26, 1989|February 28, 1990|||||||||
|||February 28, 1990|November 5, 1991|||||||||
||Koichi Kato|November 5, 1991|December 12, 1992|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Kiichi Miyazawa|||||||||||
||Yōhei Kōno|December 12, 1992|August 9, 1993|||||||||
||Masayoshi Takemura|August 9, 1993|April 28, 1994|||||||||
|Morihiro Hosokawa||||||||||||
|||April 28, 1994|June 30, 1994|||||||||
|Tsutomu Hata||||||||||||
||Kozo Igarashi|June 30, 1994|August 8, 1995|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Tomiichi Murayama|||||||||||
||Koken Nosaka|August 8, 1995|January 11, 1996|||||||||
||Seiroku Kajiyama|January 11, 1996|September 11, 1997|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Ryutaro Hashimoto|||||||||||
|||September 11, 1997|July 30, 1998|||||||||
||Hiromu Nonaka|July 30, 1998|October 10, 1999|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Keizo Obuchi|||||||||||
|rowspan=2 style="background-color:  "||rowspan=2||rowspan=2|Mikio Aoki|rowspan=2|October 10, 1999|rowspan=2|July 4, 2000|rowspan=2||
|rowspan=3|Yoshiro Mori|||||||||||
||Hidenao Nakagawa|July 4, 2000|October 27, 2000|||||||||
|rowspan=2 style="background-color: "||rowspan=2||rowspan=2|Yasuo Fukuda|rowspan=2|October 27, 2000|rowspan=2|May 7, 2004|rowspan=2||
|rowspan=3|Junichiro Koizumi|||||||||||
||Hiroyuki Hosoda|May 7, 2004|October 31, 2005|||||||||
||Shinzo Abe|October 31, 2005|September 26, 2006|||||||||
||Yasuhisa Shiozaki|September 26, 2006|August 27, 2007|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Shinzo Abe|||||||||||
||Kaoru Yosano|August 27, 2007|September 26, 2007|||||||||
||Nobutaka Machimura|September 26, 2007|September 24, 2008|||||||||
|Yasuo Fukuda||||||||||||
||Takeo Kawamura|September 24, 2008|September 16, 2009|||||||||
|Taro Aso||||||||||||
||Hirofumi Hirano|September 16, 2009|June 8, 2010|||||||||
|Yukio Hatoyama||||||||||||
||Yoshito Sengoku|June 8, 2010|January 4, 2011|||||||||
|rowspan=2|Naoto Kan|||||||||||
||Yukio Edano|January 4, 2011|September 2, 2011|||||||||
||Osamu Fujimura|September 2, 2011|December 26, 2012|||||||||
|Yoshihiko Noda||||||||||||
||Yoshihide Suga|December 26, 2012|April 30, 2019|||||||||
|Shinzo Abe||||||||||||

### Reiwa era

|colspan=3|Chief Cabinet Secretary|colspan=3|Term of office|style="width:160px;" rowspan=2 colspan=2|Prime Minister||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
||Yoshihide Suga|May 1, 2019|September 16, 2020||||
|Shinzo Abe|||||||
||Katsunobu Katō|September 16, 2020|October 4, 2021||||
|Yoshihide Suga|||||||
||Hirokazu Matsuno|October 4, 2021|December 14, 2023||||
|rowspan=2|Fumio Kishida||||||
|rowspan=2||rowspan=2|Yoshimasa Hayashi|December 14, 2023|October 1, 2024||
|October 1, 2024|October 21, 2025||||||
|Shigeru Ishiba|||||||
||Minoru Kihara|October 21, 2025|Incumbent||||
|Sanae Takaichi|||||||

## Infobox (political post)

- **post**: Chief Cabinet Secretary
- **body**: Japan
内閣官房長官
_Naikaku-kanbō-chōkan_
- **insignia**: Goshichi no kiri.svg
- **insigniasize**: 80px
- **insigniacaption**: Emblem of the Government of Japan
- **image**: Minoru Kihara 20230914.jpg
- **incumbent**: Minoru Kihara (politician), Minoru Kihara
- **incumbentsince**: 21 October 2025
- **style**: Mr. Secretary
- **member of**: Cabinet of Japan, Cabinet
National Security Council (Japan), National Security Council
- **department**: Cabinet Secretariat (Japan), Cabinet Secretariat
- **reports to**: The Prime Minister of Japan, prime minister
- **appointer**: The Prime Minister of Japan, prime minister
- **appointer qualified**: <small>attested to by the Emperor of Japan, emperor</small>
- **termlength**: No fixed term
- **precursor**: Secretary-General of the Cabinet
- **inaugural**: Jōji Hayashi
- **succession**: Second
- **deputy**: Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary
- **salary**: ¥20,916,000
- **website**: http://www.cas.go.jp/