Yasuo Fukuda
Fukuda was born in Takasaki, Gunma, the eldest son of politician (later the 67th Prime Minister) Takeo Fukuda. He grew up in Setagaya, Tokyo, attending Azabu High School and graduating from Waseda University in 1959 with a degree in economics. After university, he joined Maruzen Petroleum (now part of the Cosmo Oil Company). He was only minimally involved in politics over the next seventeen years, working his way up to section chief as a typical Japanese "salaryman". He was posted to the United States from 1962-64. While his father Takeo Fukuda was prime minister from 1976–78, Yasuo became a political secretary. From 1978 to 1989, he was a director of the Kinzai Institute for Financial Affairs, serving as a trustee from 1986 onward.
Tadashi Yamamoto
Yamamoto worked directly with numerous Prime Ministers of Japan and their administrations during his career as well. Yamamoto became the director of the Japan-US Economic Relations Group from 1979 to 1981, the US-Japan Advisory Commission fromn 1983 to 1984, and the Korea-Japan 21st Century Committee from 1988 until 1991. He was appointed to both the First and Second Prime Minister’s Private Council on International Cultural Exchange; the first Council from 1988 to 1989 and again during the Second Council from 1993 until 1994. Former Prime Minister Keizō Obuchi appointed Yamamoto as the executive director of the Prime Minister’s Commission on Japan’s Goals in the 21st Century from 1999 to 2000. In February 2010, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama named Yamamoto to a policy panel on defense issues.