(January 24, 1904 – August 10, 1969) was a Japanese politician who served as Director General of the Japan Defense Agency during the 1960s.

Life and career

Koizumi was born in Higashi-Kaseda, Kagoshima Prefecture (now part of Minami-Satsuma); his family were fishermen. He attended high school at night while working in a department store, and then attended law classes at

Nihon University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Japan. Its predecessor, Nihon Law School (currently the Department of Law), was founded by Yamada Akiyoshi, the Minister of Justice (Japan), Minister of Justice, in 1889. ...

while working as a secretary to a

Diet Diet may refer to: Food * Diet (nutrition), the sum of the food consumed by an organism or group * Dieting, the deliberate selection of food to control body weight or nutrient intake ** Diet food, foods that aid in creating a diet for weight loss ...

member. He graduated in 1930 and joined the Rikken Minseitō political party. He was elected to the Diet in 1937. He married Yoshie Koizumi, the daughter of Rikken Minseitō director and postal minister Matajirō Koizumi, taking her family name. Junya and Yoshie Koizumi had six children, including Jun'ichirō Koizumi, who later became the

Prime Minister of Japan The prime minister of Japan (Japanese: 内閣総理大臣, Hepburn: ''Naikaku Sōri-Daijin'') is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its Ministers of Sta ...

. Koizumi was purged from politics by the Allied occupation government in the late 1940s, but returned to the Diet in 1952. He was a close ally of Nobusuke Kishi in the postwar years, served as Vice-Minister of Justice under

Ichirō Hatoyama was a Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1954 to 1956. A conservative, Hatoyama helped oversee the 1955 merger of the Liberal Party and the Democratic Party to create the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), of which Hatoy ...

and became Director General of the Japan Defense Agency under

Hayato Ikeda was a Japanese bureaucrat and later politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1960 to 1964. He is best known for his Income Doubling Plan, which promised to double Japan's GDP in ten years. Ikeda is also known for repairing U.S.- ...

and

Eisaku Satō was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister from 1964 to 1972. He is the third-longest serving Prime Minister, and ranks second in longest uninterrupted service as Prime Minister. Satō entered the National Diet in 1949 as a membe ...

Life and career

See also