Junichiro Koizumi

I

Introduction

Junichiro Koizumi (Western-style name order), born in 1942, Japanese politician and prime minister of Japan from 2001 to 2006. Koizumi was known as a reformer who was focused on improving Japan’s economy. His economic and political policies were largely conservative, and he advocated close ties with the United States.

II

Political Rise

Born in Yokosuka, Japan, Koizumi was educated at the prestigious Keio University in Tokyo, where he graduated with a degree in economics in 1967. Koizumi pursued graduate studies at the London School of Economics in England but dropped out after his father died in 1968. His father and maternal grandfather had both served in the Japanese government and were prominent in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Japan’s ruling party.

Koizumi ran for election to fill his father’s seat in Japan’s parliament, but he lost the election. In 1970 Koizumi became secretary to Takeo Fukuda, a high-ranking minister who later became a prime minister. Koizumi was first elected to the House of Representatives as a member of the LDP in 1972. He served in several ministerial and parliamentary posts, including minister of health and welfare, and minister of posts and telecommunications. He ran for the leadership of the party on three occasions, although top party officials viewed him as a maverick. Following the resignation of Yoshiro Mori in April 2001, however, a swell of grassroots support propelled him to the leadership.

III

Prime Minister

Koizumi was inaugurated as prime minister the same month and immediately underlined his reformist intentions by appointing five women to the cabinet. This included the appointment of Makiko Tanaka as foreign minister, the first woman ever to serve in that post. (She was subsequently removed in January 2002.) In July 2001 Koizumi’s economics minister, Heizo Takenake, announced a manifesto for reform that pledged both to cap government bond issues in an attempt to control Japan’s increasing government debt and to review the public works budget. Critics argued that such reforms would deepen Japan’s economic woes before any improvement would be seen. Despite this, in Koizumi’s first electoral test in elections for the upper house, he led the LDP to its best result since 1992, winning 65 of the 121 contested seats.

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In August 2001 Koizumi made a controversial visit to the Yasukuni war shrine, which honors Japanese killed during war, including Japanese convicted of war crimes during World War II (1939-1945). The visit caused outrage among many Asian countries—China and South Korea in particular—which were the victims of Japanese atrocities during World War II. The first visit to the shrine by a serving prime minister in 16 years, it also caused domestic opposition from those who associate Yasukuni with Japan’s militaristic past. During visits to China and South Korea in October, Koizumi publicly apologized to each country for both Japan’s wartime aggression and the brutality of its occupations. Two weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., Koizumi visited the United States and met with President George W. Bush to pledge Japan’s support for the United States in the war against terrorism.

In September 2002 Koizumi became the first Japanese leader since World War II to visit North Korea. During his visit the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted that his country’s secret services had abducted 13 Japanese nationals during the 1970s and 1980s, 8 of whom had since died. The confession was seen as an important step in enabling the two countries to establish full diplomatic relations.

Koizumi was reelected leader of the LDP in September 2003, comfortably deflecting challenges from conservative members of the party. He pledged to limit public borrowing and to stimulate growth in the deflated Japanese economy through structural reform, whereas his opponents in the party argued for greater increases in public spending to stimulate demand.

Koizumi pursued structural reform. In 2005, however, some LDP members in the upper house of Japan’s parliament blocked his goal to privatize the national postal service. In response, Koizumi called an early parliamentary election for the lower house. LDP members who had opposed him were officially banished from the party. In the September 2005 election the LDP and its coalition partner, New Komeito, won a landslide victory, taking 327 out of 480 seats. The two-thirds majority gave Koizumi the power to override any opposition to his economic reforms in the upper house. Koizumi was succeeded as prime minister in 2006 by Shinzō Abe (Western style).

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