Jun'ichirō Koizumi

Jun'ichirō Koizumi (2010)

Jun'ichirō Koizumi ( Japanese 小泉 純 一郎 Koizumi Jun'ichirō ; born January 8, 1942 in Yokosuka , Japan ) is a Japanese politician . He was chairman of the ruling LDP party and from 2001 to 2006 the 87th, 88th and 89th Prime Ministers of Japan . He was the 56th holder of this office.

Life

Koizumi was born on January 8, 1942 in Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture. His father Junya Koizumi was Director General of the Defense Office and a second-generation member of the Japanese Parliament, and his grandfather Matajirō Koizumi was the Japanese Minister of Post. Koizumi attended Yokosuka High School and studied economics at Keiō University . For a short time he studied at University College London until he returned to Japan in December 1969 due to the death of his father.

Koizumi married in 1978 but divorced in 1982, and he vowed to "never remarry." He is the father of three sons, two of whom ( Shinjirō and Kōtarō) live with him and have not seen their mother since the divorce. The youngest son, Miyamoto Yoshinaga, is a student at Keio University and has never met his father; his attempt to meet at his grandmother's funeral was rejected.

Political career

After a first, unsuccessful attempt in 1969 , Koizumi won a seat in the Japanese lower house in the December 1972 election in his father's constituency. He is a member of the LDP and within this joined the Fukuda faction , of which he was chairman between 2000 and 2001. He defended his parliamentary seat in ten other elections.

Koizumi's first important post was that of Parliamentary State Secretary for Finance in 1979. In 1998, like his grandfather, he became Minister for Post and Telecommunications in the cabinet of Kiichi Miyazawa . Koizumi was Japanese Minister of Health three times under Prime Ministers Noboru Takeshita , Sōsuke Uno and Ryūtarō Hashimoto .

In 1995 and 1998 he ran for chairmanship of the LDP , but he was clearly defeated by Ryūtarō Hashimoto and Keizō Obuchi . In April 2000, Obuchi was replaced by Yoshirō Mori due to a serious illness . Koizumi was elected party chairman on April 24, 2001 at the third attempt. He defeated Hashimoto by 298 votes to 155. On April 26, 2001, Koizumi became Prime Minister. In the upper house elections the following July , his coalition won 78 out of 121 seats.

In the elections on September 11, 2005 , he was able to increase his majority in parliament again. With the second-best election result in its history, his party achieved an absolute majority with 296 seats. Together with his coalition partner Kōmeitō , which won 31 seats, he even had a two-thirds majority in the chamber.

When Koizumi reached his term limit as party chairman in 2006, Shinzō Abe won the post-Koizumi dubbed intra-party race for his successor. In September 2008 Koizumi announced his retirement from politics: he would not run again in the 2009 Shūgiin election . His son Shinjirō won his constituency .

popularity

Elvis Fan Koizumi at Graceland (2006)

After taking office, Koizumi initially achieved unprecedented popularity levels that were attributable to his extroverted nature, which was widely represented by Japanese standards and in the media. Due to his appearance, his nicknames included "Lionheart" and "Outsider" (in a positive sense). Koizumi is also an avowed Elvis Presley fan. Because of the coverage in the tabloid media, he has also been referred to as "Japan's first media prime minister".

During his tenure, the popularity declined, with the interim economic recovery, his popularity rose again temporarily in 2003 and his party again achieved the election victory. In the 2004 upper house elections , the LDP ended up just ahead of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). In the election campaign for the new elections after the failure of the postal reform in the House of Lords (2005), popularity rose again and the elections were won again.

politics

Economic policy

Koizumi tried to tackle bad loans, to privatize the postal savings system and to reform the parliamentary group structure of the LDP. He announced a period of “painful restructuring” and to this end commissioned television business commentator Heizo Takenaka to reform the banking system. In January 2002, after internal party quarrels, Koizumi dismissed the popular Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka , whom he initially knew how to use well as a partner in this struggle, but dropped her when he did not want to support her further reform efforts. Under Takenaka, the proportion of unpaid loans from Japanese banks fell to half its 2001 level. The Japanese economy experienced a slow recovery during this period, which meant that high unemployment and the increased rich-poor gap were no longer the focus of the debate. Takenaka was appointed Minister of Postal Reform in 2004, and Japan's postal savings reform was entering its crucial phase.

While he enjoyed great support with his banking reform, the planned post-privatization was very controversial within the LDP and because of the inner-party rebels it was not possible to find a parliamentary majority for the privatization. In 2005 he had the opponents of privatization excluded from the LDP and the privatization was then decided in parliament. With a proposal to cut pension payments in favor of a tax reform, Koizumi met with strong opposition from the population. In the 2004 polls, a large majority of citizens named the stability of the social security systems as the most important political issue (well ahead of issues such as postal reform). In the pension reform adopted in 2004, among other things, insurance contributions were increased and benefits were taken from the catalog. The state pension insurance system with national pension insurance (kokumin nenkin), a compulsory insurance for all Japanese adults between the ages of 20 and currently 63, was basically retained and the topic played a role in the 2005 election campaign, which was generally not very political subsequently no major role.

Security and Foreign Policy

Koizumi at the 2004 G8 summit

During his tenure, previously unthinkable Japanese defense measures reached a new high. Immediately after September 11, 2001, the Japanese government under Koizumi supported US policies and military actions. Koizumi extended in October 2001, the possibilities of the Self-Defense Forces (Engl. Self Defense Forces , SDF) to take part in foreign missions. 22 days after the start of the Afghanistan war, for which Japan provided 40% of the aviation fuel, a special law with anti-terror measures was passed by the Japanese parliament, on the basis of which an SDF Aegis destroyer was dispatched to the Indian Ocean in December 2002 .

As early as three days before the start of the Iraq war , Koizumi announced that Japan would support America in military operations in Iraq even without a UN mandate. On July 26, 2003, a special law was passed in support of the reconstruction of Iraq, which made it possible for the first time to send Japanese soldiers to a crisis area under the administration of an occupying power. On December 9, 2003, Koizumi's cabinet decided, despite criticism from 55% of the population, to send Japanese soldiers to Iraq. Koizumi stated in November 2004 that the area in which the SDF forces operate was a non-combat area, although shells had already hit the SDF camp in Samawa. In this way, the compatibility of the mission with Article 9 of the constitution could be better justified. On December 9, his cabinet decided that the SDF troops should remain stationed in Iraq until December 14, 2005, without Koizumi giving any conditions for a withdrawal. The majority of the population remains skeptical about the extension of this mission, 76% of those questioned by the Asahi Shimbun said that Koizumi had not complied with his obligation to provide a declaration on this issue. For the anti-terrorism law of 2001, the SDF refueling mission in the Indian Ocean in support of US operations in Afghanistan and the Iraq mission, Koizumi was also vilified as Bush's poodle by opponents of his policies .

Visits to the Yasukuni Shrine

Koizumi's image abroad was damaged when he paid a controversial visit to Yasukuni Shrine on August 13, 2001, January 2003, and again in January 2004 . His grandfather had built an airfield in Kagoshima in 1944 and 1945 that was used for kamikaze missions, and one of Koizumi's cousins ​​died on such a mission, which was one of the reasons Koizumi's visit to the shrine. Other reasons include the attitude within the LDP not to be influenced by China and North Korea and the opinion that visits to the shrine are an intra-Japanese matter. This is not seen in this way by all neighboring states that were victims of the deployments of soldiers who were revered as “divine” there, including all war criminals without distinction. Like the current Prime Minister Abe and other cabinet and LDP party members, Koizumi is close to Nippon Kaigi , who is considered revisionist .

On October 17, 2005, there was a surprise visit to Yasukuni Shrine. It was his fifth visit since taking office. In contrast to previous visits, Koizumi appeared as a private person this time, but entered his title of Prime Minister in the guest book. Since Japanese war criminals are also honored at this shrine, the recent visit to the neighbors, especially the People's Republic of China, North and South Korea and the Philippines, met with sharp criticism, where the memory of the crimes under Japanese colonial rule is still alive. For the governments of these countries, this visit was an even more significant affront than the previous ones, since at the same time Japanese troops were being deployed in Iraq .

On the other hand, Koizumi, like some prime ministers before him, as head of government at the Jakarta summit, apologized to the neighbors because of his country's colonial policy during World War II and the aggression in many countries. "Humblingly accepting this fact of history, we once again express our deep remorse and heartfelt apologies, and extend our condolences to the victims of the war at home and abroad."

literature

• Aurelia George Mulgan: Japan's Failed Revolution: Koizumi and the Politics of Economic Reform . ANU Press, Canberra 2013, ISBN 978-1-925021-04-2 .

Web links

Commons : Jun'ichirō Koizumi  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Departing Japanese Leader Shook Up Politics as Usual , New York Times , September 19, 2006
• Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi resigns from office. The reformer leaves (tagesschau.de archive), Tagesschau , September 20, 2006

Individual evidence

1. ↑ JANJAN (Japan Alternative News for Justices and New Cultures), The Senkyo: 1972 election results, constituency Kanagawa 2  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ AFP, September 26, 2008: Japan's Koizumi to retire from politics ( Memento of February 11, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ Junichiro Koizumi - Japan's creative destroyer , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , September 16, 2006
4. ↑ cf. Werner Kamppeter, Head of Department Labor and Social Policy. Message Tokyo: Pension reform in Japan - Sustainable without radical cuts (PDF; 235 kB), November 2005
5. ↑ Hirata, Keiko. "Politics of Contention: Japanese Debates on the US-Japan Security Alliance" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the ISA's 50th ANNUAL CONVENTION "EXPLORING THE PAST, ANTICIPATING THE FUTURE", New York Marriott Marquis, New York City, NY, Feb 15 , 2009