FACTBOX - Key facts about Japan's opposition leader

(Reuters) - Democratic Party of Japan leader Yukio Hatoyama has a good chance of becoming Japan's next leader in an election that incumbent Prime Minister Taro Aso is expected to set for August 30.

Below are key facts about Hatoyama.

-- A fourth-generation politician from a rich family and the grandson of a prime minister, Hatoyama was elected to the lower house in 1986 from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). After bolting the LDP in 1993 with Ichiro Ozawa and dozens of other lawmakers, he served as deputy chief cabinet secretary in the pro-reform coalition that briefly took power that same year.

-- Hatoyama, 62, helped found the predecessor party to the DPJ in 1996 and served as the Democratic Party's leader for three years from 1999, during which time some criticised him as being too soft and indecisive. He was picked as leader again in May after his predecessor Ozawa resigned over a funding scandal, but faced funding woes of his own after media said some people listed as his political donors were actually dead.

-- Hatoyama has advocated revising Japan's pacifist constitution to acknowledge the nation's right to defend itself and maintain a military for that purpose. He has also been critical of Japan's foreign and security policies for being too subservient to the United States. He has said that rather than the "shared values" diplomacy urged by Prime Minister Taro Aso, Japan should also build good ties with countries with different values.

-- Hatoyama's catch phrase is "yuai," or "fraternity" -- a concept he inherited from his grandfather, former prime minister Ichiro Hatoyama, and which he has said refers to a society in which solutions to social problems would be found through volunteerism at the community level.

-- Hatoyama has said it was not appropriate to pay respects at Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni Shrine for war dead as long as wartime leaders convicted by an Allied tribunal after World War Two are honoured there.

-- Hatoyama has a doctorate in engineering from Stanford University in the United States. His brother is outspoken LDP lawmaker Kunio Hatoyama, who resigned as internal affairs minister in June, dealing another blow to Aso.

(Reporting by Linda Sieg, Yoko Kubota, Isabel Reynolds)