Published on July 15, 2019.
This article critically discusses Junichiro Koizumi’s lecture at Ichiro Ozawa’s political school and their alignment under the banner of “zero nuclear power” and opposition to the Abe administration. It records the contradiction of Koizumi, who promoted nuclear power while serving as prime minister but advocated abandoning it after retirement, as well as his defeats in the Niigata gubernatorial election and Tokyo gubernatorial election, and the gap between his present state and past political glory.

July 15, 2019.
“If he is so opposed to nuclear power, he should have said so when he himself was prime minister,” a senior government official criticized him, and that is exactly right.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Emphasis in the text other than the headings is mine.
An unprincipled alliance with Mr. Ozawa.
Among them, the one who makes me feel that he has truly fallen as far as he can fall, and that it is truly regrettable, is Junichiro Koizumi today, whose present state stands in great contrast to his past glory.
It is painful to watch him become jealous of Prime Minister Abe, his former subordinate, who is now becoming a great prime minister far surpassing him in both length of service and achievements, and try to drag him down.
On July 15, Koizumi astonishingly gave a lecture at an intensive summer course held in Tokyo by a political school headed by Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the Liberal Party.
In the lecture, he developed his own theory for realizing “zero nuclear power,” a position he shares with Ozawa, and showed himself joining forces with Ozawa in an anti-Abe administration stance.
Koizumi emphasized the following before the students of the political school.
“Now I have no ill feelings toward Mr. Ozawa at all.
That is why I came.
In politics, enemies and allies change places all the time…”
Even so, the sight of these two former “archenemies” moving in step was the first such scene in almost thirty years, since Heisei 1, when Ozawa, after becoming secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party, appointed Koizumi chairman of the national organization committee.
Originally, they had few points of contact and did not get along.
During his years as an active Diet member, Koizumi had regarded the Keiseikai, which followed the line of the LDP Tanaka faction centered on Ozawa, as his enemy.
It was in Heisei 3 that he formed the “YKK” with former vice president Taku Yamasaki and former secretary-general Kōichi Katō in order to resist Keiseikai domination.
Ozawa was once a powerful figure favored by former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka and former LDP vice president Shin Kanemaru, and was said to be someone who “could become prime minister whenever he wanted.”
Even during the Democratic Party’s Hatoyama administration, he was called the supreme power, surpassing Hatoyama himself.
However, in the end, “the position of prime minister is not something one can assume by choosing the timing oneself,” as one former prime minister has said.
Ozawa has now “fallen” to the point of being the leader of a small minor party, and there is no trace of the once intimidating, strong-arm politician.
He has almost no presence in the political world either.
His criticism of the Abe administration on SNS, or social networking services, merely becomes a small topic on the internet from time to time.
No matter how much Koizumi, after the accident at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in March 2011, reversed the position he had held when he was prime minister and began calling for abandoning nuclear power, and no matter how much his position agrees with Ozawa’s on that point, this is far too unprincipled.
In the Niigata gubernatorial election this June as well, in which the issue of whether to restart nuclear power plants and related matters became points of contention, Koizumi sent encouragement to the candidate recommended by six opposition parties and groups, but the opposition candidate lost.
It goes without saying that Koizumi’s stock fell greatly when, despite having himself served as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, he harassed the Abe administration and the party and lost.
“If he is so opposed to nuclear power, he should have said so when he himself was prime minister.”
A senior government official criticized him in this way, and that is exactly right.
After the lecture, Ozawa, responding to reporters alongside Koizumi, smiled and expressed his expectations, saying, “The fact that a former prime minister is talking to the people about ‘zero nuclear power’ is itself extremely encouraging.”
In the Tokyo gubernatorial election as well, Koizumi supported former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa, who also advocated anti-nuclear power, and lost there too.
Perhaps he cannot forget the mysterious power he displayed at the time of the postal privatization dissolution and general election in August 2005, but he is now a person of the past.
This article continues.