Junichiro Koizumi

Junichiro Koizumi ( koy-ZOO-mee; 小泉 純一郎, Koizumi Jun'ichirō [ko̞iꜜzɨmʲi (d)ʑɨ̃ɰ̃iꜜtɕiɾo̞ː]; born 8 January 1942) is a Japanese retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2009. He is the sixth-longest serving and second longest-uninterrupted serving Prime Minister in Japanese history.

Coming from the prominent Koizumi family, Koizumi was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1972. He became the Parliamentary Vice Minister of Finance in 1979, before gaining his ministerial post in 1988 as Minister of Health and Welfare, which he served until 1989. He served as the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications from 1992 to 1993, and again as the Minister of Health and Welfare from 1996 to 1998. During this time, he became part of a new LDP faction, Shinseiki, and ran in the LDP leadership elections of 1995 and 1998, losing both times. In 2001, he again contested the LDP leadership, which he won.

Widely seen as a maverick leader of the LDP upon his election to the position in 2001, Koizumi became known as a neoliberal economic reformer, focusing on reducing Japan's government debt and the privatisation of the Japan Post. In the 2005 election, Koizumi led the LDP to win one of the largest parliamentary majorities in modern Japanese history. Koizumi also attracted international attention through his deployment of the Japan Self-Defense Forces to Iraq, and through his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine that fueled diplomatic tensions with neighbouring China and South Korea. Koizumi resigned as prime minister in 2006.

Although Koizumi maintained a low profile for several years after he left office, he returned to national attention in 2013 as an advocate for abandoning nuclear power in Japan, in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which contrasted with the pro-nuclear views espoused by the LDP governments both during and after Koizumi's term in office.