Japan's former PM Takeo Fukuda, proponent of ties with China, dies at 90

TOKYO -- Former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who led the country for just one year and spent years afterward trying to build better ties with China, has died, officials said Monday. He was 90.He died on Thursday, the governing Liberal Democratic Party said, without disclosing further details, including cause of his death.Born in 1936, Fukuda grew up in a political family in Gunma, northwest of Tokyo. His father Takeo Fukuda also served as prime minister and worked to build Tokyo's ties with Beijing.After graduating from Waseda University in Tokyo, Yasuo Fukuda worked for a Japanese oil company for more than 17 years before entering politics, first serving as his father's private secretary just before the elder Fukuda became Japan's leader in 1976.The younger Fukuda was first elected to parliament in 1990, taking his father's former seat. He landed his first ministerial post as Chief Cabinet Secretary, or top spokesperson, for gaffe-prone then-Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori in 2000. During that time Fukuda jokingly called himself the “secretary of explanations.”As a lawmaker, Fukuda served in a number of foreign affairs-related roles and developed a reputation as a diplomacy e...