Japanese PM keeps lost son at bay

The Times

Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent

September 4, 2005

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1763663,00.html

Webmaster's Note: Additional information about Junichiro Koizumi is also available.

TO THE adoring voters of Japan who are likely to re-elect him next Sunday, prime minister Junichiro Koizumi is a reforming samurai, possessed of flinty resolve and a heart of steel.

But to his unfortunate third son, Yoshinaga, that stubborn streak has given his father a heart of stone. Separated by the barrier of a bitter divorce and the cold rigidity of Japanese social custom, the 23-year-old has never met his famous father.

Koizumi, 63, called the election to outflank rivals within his own party over plans to reform and break up the gigantic state postal savings system. He has faced internal opposition because the system is a source of government funding and jobs for supporters of his party.

If his personal life is any guide, whoever expects the prime minister to crumple under pressure is in for a disappointment.

At home with Koizumi's former wife in the seaside town of Kamakura, Yoshinaga is following his father's election campaign as he did the last one - remotely, on television and the internet. His misfortune is that he was not yet born when his parents divorced in 1982 after an acrimonious four-year marriage.

Koizumi kept the couple's first two sons, Kotaro and Shinjiro, who were raised by his sister. He did not remarry and retains a useful image among female voters as a debonair bachelor. Political insiders in Tokyo say he has a constant companion, but she has never been identified.

His former wife, Kayoko Miyamoto, gave birth to Yoshinaga a few months after the divorce and brought him up with her family.

In keeping with Japanese custom, however, Koizumi has never met his third son, Yoshinaga has never met his two brothers and their mother has not seen them for two decades.

"I respect my dad and I think he's cool," said Yoshinaga in a plaintive interview with the Japanese magazine Shukan Shincho. Like millions of Japanese youths he sports spiky dyed hair and torn jeans.

His father has resisted all his efforts to make contact. Yoshinaga even showed up at a political rally during the last election but could not summon the courage to step forward. He says he was even turned away from his grandmother's funeral.

Miyamoto has told talk shows that she found the Koizumi dynasty oppressive after marrying in 1978. "It was campaign, children, campaign, children," she said.

Koizumi has always refused to comment on his family life. According to his former wife, he has dutifully paid child support but has never been in contact.

The reality of divorce in Japan is that such bleak arrangements are not unusual. The law does not allow for joint custody. Children often live with the parent who has won custody and never see their other one again.

Some political analysts think Koizumi's broken marriage may make him seem a less remote figure to voters. The polls show his Liberal Democratic party is well ahead of the opposition Democratic party and his personal ratings are at a high of 49%.

The voters have been told almost everything about Koizumi: how he admires Winston Churchill, plays The Phantom of the Opera on his CD, likes Robert De Niro movies, goes to the kabuki theatre and finds tranquility watching birds nesting in the garden of his official residence.

But there is a sad young man in Kamakura who would like to get to know the prime minister of Japan just a little bit better than that.