Ichirō Hatoyama (鳩山 一郎, Hatoyama Ichirō, 1 January 1883 – 7 March 1959) was a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1954 to 1956. A conservative, Hatoyama helped oversee the 1955 merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party to create the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), of which Hatoyama was the first party president and first prime minister, and which would go on to rule Japan for most of the next seven decades.