Newsmaker: Self-belief and strategy: Japan's Taro Kono upends race for next premier
14/09/2021 24:00
By Elaine Lies
TOKYO, Sept 14 (Reuters) - When Taro Kono, Japan's leading
contender to be prime minister, was a senior in high school, he
asked his father to send him overseas for university, but was
flatly refused.
Instead, the elder Kono, a leading politician in the ruling
party, took his son to a U.S. embassy reception in a bid to
prove his English was not good enough.
But the move backfired.
"I went around the room telling people enthusiastically, in
my broken English, how I wanted to study abroad but my father
was against it, so I had a problem," Kono wrote in a recent
book.
Everyone said no, he should wait. But that response, and
perhaps his son's audacity, somehow convinced the father, and
Kono wound up spending four years at Georgetown University in
Washington, D.C.
Now 58, Japan's popular vaccines minister is fluent in
English and hopes to parlay that early combination of
self-belief, strategy and stubbornness into becoming leader of
the conservative ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and prime
minister. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N2QC2I8
In addition to a resume studded with high-profile portfolios
such as foreign affairs and defence, he runs a Twitter feed in
two languages and, in a world of staid politicians, speaks
bluntly, by contrast with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
"Kono's a tight communicator, he's talking," said Corey
Wallace, a foreign policy specialist at Kanagawa University.
"He's always out there, giving press conferences on the
vaccine rollout and so on," Wallace added. "Suga looked like he
only communicated when he absolutely had to."
Kono regularly tops opinion polls as voters' choice for the
next prime minister, which will help him with both rank-and-file
members in the LDP contest, and young lawmakers worried about
keeping their jobs as a general election looms this year.
Image, at which Kono excels, could trump policy, said Airo
Hino, a professor of political science at Waseda University.
"Lawmakers are definitely going to pick who they think is
better for re-election," Hino added.
"They're thinking of election posters, and their faces on
them with the LDP president. This is especially true in urban
areas, and with the young."
SOCIAL MEDIA REACH
Kono's outreach has flourished on social media, where he has
garnered 2.4 million followers on Twitter.
The whimsical posts of early this year, featuring memes, his
lunch, or a mask with a dinosaur skull, have shifted to
promoting the vaccine and highlighting online policy meetings.
That Kono had forged a genuine connection with those who do
not usually care about politicians became clear when debate
erupted online after he blocked some of those who disagreed with
him on Twitter.
But that incident also throws light on one of his biggest
weaknesses, say analysts.
"He wants you to like him, and he wants to like you, and he
wants to engage, but he has a little bit of an angry streak and
it can be a liability," Wallace said.
In 2019, when foreign minister, Kono berated the South
Korean ambassador during a meeting in front of cameras, telling
him he was "extremely rude".
These memories stir consternation in South Korea, already
nervous about the conservative stance Kono took on key policies
when a cabinet minister.
That is a contrast with his father, Yohei Kono, the chief
cabinet secretary who authored a landmark apology in 1993 to
"comfort women," a euphemism for those forced to work in Japan's
wartime brothels.
South Korean media have played up his hardline stance, and
some commentators fear already-strained ties might not improve.
But at home there is hope that Kono, whose maverick nature
brings to mind the wildly popular Junichiro Koizumi, prime
minister from 2001 to 2006, may be able to get things done.
Analysts say most of the blame for Japan's handling of the
pandemic has landed on Suga, sinking his cabinet, while Kono has
built an image of working hard on the vaccine rollout.
Japan's emergency measures achieved little until recently to
curb virus infections that swamped its hospitals, but after a
slow start vaccination rates have risen to a little more than
half, pulling close to the United States and other G7 nations.
"He ... overcame all the hurdles and bureaucratic excuses
notably made by the ministry of health," said Kenji Shibuya,
former director of the Institute for Population Health at King’s
College London, who directed municipal vaccinations in Fukushima
prefecture, north of Tokyo, the capital.
"I think he is the only candidate who can challenge the
status quo."
But first Kono must win, which means he will have to
overcome the deep-seated fears of party elders that he could be
difficult to keep in check.
"That's not to say Kono is completely against what the party
wants to do," Wallace added. "But he will be his own prime
minister, one way or another."
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FACTBOX-Possible candidates to be Japan's next PM
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FACTBOX-Key economic policy stance of candidates
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FACTBOX-Five facts on favoured PM contender Kono
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Interactive graphic: https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/vaccination-rollout-and-access/
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FACTBOX-Worldwide coronavirus deaths exceed 4.7 mln
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(Additional reporting by Ju-min Park and Rocky Swift; Editing
by Clarence Fernandez)
((elaine.lies@thomsonreuters.com; +81-3-4563-2748; Reuters
Messaging: elaine.lies@thomsonreuters.com))