A Maverick Is Elected Japan Premier

While studying at the London School of Economics in 1969, Junichiro Koizumi received a telegram that his lawmaker father had died of lung cancer. Returning to Tokyo, he found a simple handwritten message from his dad: “Junichiro Koizumi, be victorious.”

Koizumi was elected today as prime minister of Japan. With his ascendancy, the dark horse 59-year-old reformer will far exceed his father’s expectations--and those of most Japanese as recently as a week ago.

The upset victory by a politician long seen as something of an odd duck--stubborn in a nation that idealizes compromise, passionate in a world of political hacks, idealistic in a system known for its corrupt special interests--has given many Japanese their best hope of real change in years.

Koizumi’s honeymoon as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the nation will be short-lived, however. He faces an upper house election in three months, an economy on life support and powerful enemies in the wings. And he needs to enact reform quickly, before a fickle public becomes disenchanted, while pushing change through a political system that he’s simultaneously trying to upend.

Even many supporters sometimes wonder who the real Koizumi is, what’s behind his “Change the LDP, Change Japan” slogan and whether he has the qualities to pull it off.

That said, if Koizumi falls off the political map tomorrow, he’s already made one lasting change. By forcing the LDP to name him prime minister against its will after it was overwhelmed by a grass-roots rebellion within the party, he’s arguably changed the face of Japanese politics.

“That alone is a big achievement,” said Hiroshi Takaku, an independent political analyst. “People have tasted power. The LDP can no longer go back to its old way of deciding leaders in smoke-filled rooms.”

Reform advocates hope that this development can combine with lasting popular outrage, Koizumi’s untested abilities and recent moves to weaken the bureaucracy and strengthen the prime minister’s powers--and finally bring real change to Japan.

Koizumi, the fourth of six children, was born into a political family in 1942. His grandfather, also a lawmaker, championed expanding suffrage in the 1920s at a time when poor men could not vote. Koizumi’s father took over the seat and eventually became defense minister.

Koizumi showed little interest in politics as a child. In fact, classmates and teachers from his district on the outskirts of Tokyo say he never mentioned his distinguished political pedigree. He played hooky to go to the cinema and at one point told friends that he wanted to become a violinist.

“He was a rather quiet, gentle sort of person, a bit of a literary type,” recalled Shoji Ogawa, 76 and now retired, his teacher at Yokosuka High School.

All the while, however, he was breathing political fumes. He and his siblings frequently attended campaign speeches, and his parents stressed the importance of standing up for what one believes in, no matter the odds.

“Our father always said, if you’re right you should stick to your guns,” said younger brother Masaya, an LDP official in Koizumi’s district of Kanagawa. “Maybe this was absorbed in our blood.”

Junichiro Koizumi took his time getting through school, including a year off after high school and a six-year college career reportedly filled with ski trips and mah-jongg games. He caught the political bug while attending prestigious Keio University after working on one of his father’s campaigns, and his decision to go into politics was solidified by the senior Koizumi’s handwritten note.

“When my father wrote it, he was sure Junichiro would take over his position in parliament,” said the brother. The framed note hangs in Koizumi’s office and goes with him when he campaigns.

Koizumi ran for his father’s seat in 1969 and lost, went to work in a lawmaker’s office and won the seat in 1972. He’s held it since.

Over the last three decades, Koizumi has developed a reputation as a reformer, albeit within the confines of the highly traditional LDP. Many of his causes have been anathema to the party mainstream, including broad-based economic reform and privatization of the national postal service, which funnels votes and money to the LDP. But he paid his dues, gradually rising to become health and welfare minister in the late 1980s and telecommunications minister in the early 1990s.

His personal life also has been rather unconventional. As a young lawmaker he had no time to date. He met his wife Aug. 25, 1977, in an arranged ceremony, decided on the 26th to marry her and received his mentor’s blessing on the 27th.

The wedding, held a few months later, was attended by about 2,000 constituents and fellow politicians, and the honeymoon lasted two days before he rushed back to parliament. Koizumi reportedly told a friend that he thought it was a good time to marry because he was the same age that John F. Kennedy had been when the latter tied the knot.

Five years later, the couple got a rather messy divorce reportedly sparked by his wife’s desire to send their two children to a fancy private school in Tokyo--a step he refused to take on the grounds that he had to live in his district.

Koizumi retained custody of the two boys, and his brother says the family hasn’t seen or heard from his ex-wife in years. The media is fretting that Koizumi now becomes Japan’s first prime minister without a first lady.

By all accounts he’s been a devoted father, breaking away from work to attend his younger son’s high school baseball games.

Despite growing responsibilities, Koizumi never completely shook his habit of playing hooky. Fellow LDP lawmaker Sanae Takaichi recalls receiving repeated messages from him during a recent crisis over unseating gaffe-prone Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori--who resigned today--only to learn that Koizumi wanted to go sing karaoke together.

“We were just amazed and asked him how he could do this when everything else was in crisis,” she said. “He responded that you can’t be a lawmaker if you’re so obsessed that you can’t take a break.”

Koizumi likes opera, Kabuki, and classical, pop and heavy metal music. He lives in a 70-year-old house and by most accounts maintains a modest lifestyle, holding meetings in low-end noodle shops and frequently commuting by train, even as many lawmakers take Mercedes-Benzes.

Particularly distinctive is his hair, marked by long gray locks done in a perm--reportedly chosen in part because it requires little maintenance. “He comes in once every three or four months,” said Teruo Nakagomi, his barber of 34 years. “Now that he’s prime minister, I hope more men get permed hair. Our business hasn’t been that good lately.”

Analysts say many of the personality traits that make him so unusual in Japanese political circles, however, also burnish his credentials as a reformer.

He’s known for being scrupulously honest, nearly to the point of absurdity, in a culture where gift giving can easily slide into influence peddling. Lawmaker Takaichi sent him a $2.50 box of chocolates last year on Valentine’s Day. Though members of parliament are only banned from accepting expensive gifts, he returned the candy. “I ended up eating them myself,” she said.

He has also shown a dogged determination to push for change, often in defiance of the derision he engenders. Many Japanese felt great insecurity when he first raised the issue of privatizing the postal system--which operates the world’s largest bank and insurance company in competition with private firms--out of concern that mail service and savings accounts would be cut off.

For years, however, he patiently hammered home his message. “He was a Don Quixote when he first mentioned it,” said political analyst Takaku. “But he hasn’t changed his views for 10 years, and now many have come to support him.”

Colleagues say Koizumi nonetheless is able to listen, absorb new ideas and change his mind if confronted with a better argument. He also has shown a willingness to work with opponents--near sacrilege in the tribal world of Japan’s parliament--and has called for greater political participation among women and the young.

He’s even managed to maintain a sense of outrage after years at the center of the soft, squishy LDP. And he is not above shouting, banging his fist on desks and decrying the injustice of it all when confronted with stubborn opponents.

“He’s very pure, like a university student who went directly into politics,” said former LDP lawmaker Raizo Matsuno.

Despite views that have alienated many in the LDP mainstream, Koizumi has shown great party loyalty, which ultimately convinced colleagues and opposition members that he’s trustworthy.

While many of his traits and policies are refreshing to the Japanese public and foreigners alike, the track record here for reformers without a strong power base is poor. For instance, Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa in the early 1990s ultimately fell to scandals unearthed by LDP members of parliament, who were then in the opposition.

Koizumi appears less vulnerable on this front. The only hint of scandal was a tabloid’s suggestion in 1992 that a 31-year-old geisha operating under the professional name of Kohan committed suicide after she had an affair with him and he refused to marry her. He denied the report.

But his calls for a revision of the post-World War II constitution that limits Japan’s military activities, and his promise to visit Yasukuni Shrine, where the nation’s war dead are memorialized, has made his Asian neighbors nervous. And he faces enormous resistance to change by an establishment long weaned on slush funds and parochial thinking--one that is well versed in the art of back stabbing.

“He’s got some freedom for three months until the upper house election in July,” predicted Hidekazu Kawai, political science professor at Gakushuin University. “After that, there’ll be a move to try and tie up Gulliver.”

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Rie Sasaki in The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.