Ny japansk kandidat öppnar för möte med Kim Jong-Un

Shinjirō Koizumi (小泉 進次郎, Koizumi Shinjirō, born 14 April 1981) is a Japanese politician who served as the Minister of the Environment from September 2019 to October 2021. He also serves as a Member of the House of Representatives for the Liberal Democratic Party. He is the second son of former Prime Minister Junichirō Koizumi and the younger brother of actor Kotaro Koizumi. After graduating from university, Koizumi worked as a researcher at the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies, and became active politically as Young Leader of the Pacific Forum CSIS. He also spent time working as a political secretary for his father in the final years of his second term as prime minister. In the 2009 election, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the seat his father had occupied for more than 35 years. After the election of the Abe Government in 2012, Koizumi was appointed as a Vice-Minister for Reconstruction, focusing on the northeastern region of Japan that was devastated by the March 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster. He publicly opposed his father's calls for Japan to abandon nuclear energy immediately. In 2019, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appointed Koizumi to the Cabinet as Minister of the Environment, a role he retained when Yoshihide Suga succeeded Abe as prime minister in September 2020. Koizumi endorsed Taro Kono in the 2021 LDP leadership election, which resulted in Fumio Kishida becoming prime minister. He subsequently left the cabinet and returned to backbench politics.