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Junichiro Koizumi



         


Junichiro Koizumi (小泉 純一郎 Koizumi Jun'ichirō, born January 8, 1942) is a Japanese politician and the 87th, and current, Prime Minister of Japan.

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Personal life and education

He was born in Yokosuka City, Kanagawa prefecture to Junya Koizumi, a director general of the Defense Agency and a second-generation Diet member, and was educated at Yokosuka High School and Keio University, where he studied economics. He was briefly at University College London before returning to Japan in December 1969 on the death of his father.

Before becoming Prime Minister, he had married in 1978. The marriage ended in divorce in 1982 and he vowed never to marry again. He has three sons, two of whom live with him (Shinjiro Koizumi and Kotaro Koizumi) and have not met their mother since the divorce. The youngest, Yoshinaga Miyamoto, a student at Keio University, has never met his father and has been turned away when he tried to meet him by attending his grandfather's funeral.

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Political life

After a failed attempt to get elected he did become a member of the Lower House for the 11th Kanagawa Prefecture in December 1972. He was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and joined the Fukuda faction, he has been re-elected ten times. He became in 1992 Minister of Posts and Telecommunnications under the government of Kiichi Miyazawa. He was three times Minister of Health and welfare under the government of Noboru Takeshita, Sosuke Uno and Ryutaro Hashimoto.

He gained his first senior post in 1979 as Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Finance and his first ministerial post in 1988 as Minister of Health and Welfare under Noboru Takeshita. He had cabinet posts again in 1992 and 1996-1998. In 1994, with the LDP in opposition, he became part of a new LDP faction, Shinseiki, made up of younger and more motivated parliamentarians.

He competed for the presidency of the LDP in September 1995 and July 1999, but he gained little support losing decisively to Ryutaro Hashimoto and then Keizo Obuchi. In April 2000 Obuchi was replaced by Yoshiro Mori after falling seriously ill. Koizumi became leader of his party on his third attempt on April 24, 2001. He had 298 votes, while his closest rival, Ryutaro Hashimoto gained 155 votes, Koizumi's victory was due to local chapters being allowed to vote as well as Diet members. He was made Prime Minister on April 26, 2001. His coalition secured 78 of 121 seats in the Upper House elections in July.

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Popularity

Initially he was an extremely popular leader with his outspoken nature and colourful past. Nicknames included 'Lionheart'. He pushed for new ways to revitalise the moribund economy, aiming to act against bad debts with commercial banks, privatise the postal savings system, and reorganise the factional structure of the LDP. He spoke of the need for a period of painful restructuring in order to improve the future. However there was strong opposition to his reform plans within the LDP and the bureaucracy and little reform has occurred and the economy has remained in recession, "moribund". He sacked his Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka in January 2002, replacing her with Yoriko Kawaguchi and since then his approval rating has been in steady decline. Nevertheless, he was reelected in 2003.

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Controversy

Koizumi's liberal credentials with the rest of Asia were damaged by a controversial visit to the Yasukuni Shrine on August 13, 2001. His grandfather built an airfield in Kagoshima used for kamikaze missions, 1944-5, and a family relative (cousin) died on such a mission, which partly explains his keenness to visit the Yasukuni shrine. (Another reason is a desire in the LDP to 'stand up to' China and Korea, and a feeling that shrine visits are a domestic Japanese matter, a feeling not shared by neighbouring countries.) Koizumi also approved the expansion of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and in October 2001 they were given greater scope to operate outside of the country.

On January 1, 2004, Koizumi made a surprise New Year's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. It was his fourth visit to the shrine since becoming Prime Minister. Again, the visit drew strong condemnation and protests from Japan's neighbors, mainly the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China, and North and South Korea, who still hold bitter memories of Japanese wartime atrocities. The event held even greater significance than previous visits in light of the imminent dispatch of Self-Defense Forces troops to Iraq.

Their assemblyman and organization critical of an idea are called "resistance influence", and it becomes a vogue word. , such as postal administration privatization, Popular focusing on a woman because of the looks out of character with a politician. It became the center of attention of a variety show. Opera, kyogen, and kabuki appreciation are a hobby.

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List of Koizumi Cabinet members

|width="40%"|Prime Minister of Japan
2001— |width="30%"|Succeeded by:
Incumbent |}






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