Yukio Takeuchi, former deputy vice minister for foreign policy, has been appointed Japanese ambassador to Indonesia, and Ryuichiro Yamazaki, former Foreign Ministry press secretary, will become the envoy to Vietnam, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
Takeuchi, 57, joined the ministry in 1967 after graduating a year earlier from Kyoto University. He served as director general of the Treaties Bureau and the North American Affairs Bureau before becoming chief of the Foreign Policy Bureau in 1999. He will succeed Takao Kawakami.
Yamazaki, 56, who joined the ministry after graduating from Hitotsubashi University in 1967, formerly served as Japanese ambassador to the United Nations and counselor on loan at the Defense Agency. He will replace Takeshi Nakamura.
In other ambassadorial appointments, Yasukuni Enoki, 54, former director general of the Middle Eastern and African Affairs Bureau, will succeed Atsushi Hatakenaka as ambassador to South Africa, and Yoshiki Mine, a 57-year-old former counselor at the Defense Agency, will succeed Noriaki Owada as envoy to Yugoslavia.
Masamitsu Oki, 53, who served as counselor at the former Education Ministry until early January, will become ambassador to Yemen, succeeding Akira Hoshi, and Nobuyoshi Takabe, 58, a senior assistant for protection of Japanese nationals abroad at the Foreign Minister's Secretariat, was named as envoy to the Central African Republic, succeeding Tomoji Kawai.
All appointments were endorsed by the Cabinet Friday morning and will be effective Monday, the ministry said. All of the appointees except Takabe were assigned to the Foreign Minister's Secretariat earlier this month.