Spotlight on Japan’s ‘Macron’ ahead of cabinet reshuffle

TOKYO (Reuters) – He’s young, good-looking and media call him “Japan’s Macron,” so it is little surprise that lawmakers say Shinjiro Koizumi may be offered a post when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffles his cabinet next month in a bid to revive sagging public support.

Abe wants to repair his popularity, battered by a scandal over suspected favoritism for a friend’s business and by many voters’ perception that he takes them for granted after more than four years in office.

Shinjiro Koizumi, the 36-year-old bachelor son of charismatic former premier Junichiro Koizumi, has been suggested as a future leader since being elected in a 2009 lower house poll that temporarily ousted his Liberal Democratic Party.

But Shinjiro, as he is popularly known, to distinguish him from his father, has acknowledged the risks of taking on a high-profile post too soon.

“People often say, ‘You’re young, so you shouldn’t fear failure,’” he told the Nikkei business daily in a rare interview in April. “But the ones who say that are waiting for you to fail. And if you fail, they will thoroughly beat you down.”

Other young Japanese politicians have come to grief in prominent posts, although Abe first attained the premiership in 2006, after serving as deputy chief cabinet secretary in his mid-forties and then as chief cabinet secretary.

Abe resigned abruptly the following year, after a troubled tenure, but surged back to power in 2012.

Some in the ruling party warn that Shinjiro’s accepting a key portfolio would have its downside, while perhaps not yielding Abe a big boost in popularity.

“He’s still young to be tasked with such heavy expectations,” LDP lawmaker Hajime Funada told Reuters. “It would be a difficult mission.”

The closest Shinjiro has come to a cabinet post was his 2014 appointment as parliamentary vice minister for reconstruction of tsunami-hit northeastern Japan.

Shinjiro shares some of Abe’s conservative views - he has paid his respects at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni shrine for war dead - but is hardly a protege of the premier, having voted for a rival in a 2012 party leadership election.