Hiroaki Nakanishi, chairman of the Keidanren business group (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
Hiroaki Nakanishi, the head of Japan’s most powerful business lobby, Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), will step down on June 1 over suspicions that lymphoma has resurfaced in his body, sources said.
Nakanishi, 75, who is also chairman of Hitachi Ltd., will be the first chairman to resign from the post at Keidanren before his term expires since 2002, when the former Keidanren and Nikkeiren (Japan Federation of Employers’ Associations) merged.
Nakanishi has been hospitalized for lymphoma treatments for nearly a year. He told Keidanren that he will resign as chairman, sources said.
2021-05-10 08:36:22 GMT2021-05-10 16:36:22(Beijing Time) Xinhua English
TOKYO, May 10 (Xinhua) Hiroaki Nakanishi, the head of the Japan Business Federation known as Keidanren, will step down at the beginning of June owing to ill health, local media quoted sources close to the matter as saying Monday.
Nakanishi, the executive chairman of Hitachi Ltd. took over the chairmanship of Keidanren, Japan s largest business lobby, in May 2018.
The 75-year-old has been battling lymphoma since 2019 and has been in hospital due to a recurrence of the condition since July 2020. His doctors had said he had entered remission in November 2019.
Since his most recent hospitalization, Nakanishi has been working remotely. Sources close to the matter said that Nakanishi s condition took a turn for the worst in April this year.
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Last November, Yoshiaki Yoshida, founder and CEO of DHC Corp., which mainly sells health supplements and cosmetics, posted a message on its official online store about DHC’s rival, an affiliate of Suntory Holdings Ltd., in which he said that almost all the talent employed by the affiliate in its advertising are “Korean-related.” He then referred to the company with a made-up word that merged a derogatory Japanese term for Koreans with the Suntory name.
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