(January 24, 1904 – August 10, 1969) was a Japanese politician who served as Director General of the

Japan Defense Agency The is an Ministry of Japan, executive department of the Government of Japan responsible for preserving the peace and independence of Japan, and maintaining the country’s national security and the Japan Self-Defense Forces. The ministry is ...

during the 1960s.

Life and career

Koizumi was born in Higashi-Kaseda,

Kagoshima Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture has a population of 1,599,779 (1 January 2020) and has a geographic area of 9,187 km2 (3,547 sq mi). Kagoshima Prefecture borders Kumamoto P ...

(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 member. He graduated in 1930 and joined the

Rikken Minseitō was one of the main political parties in pre-war Empire of Japan. It was commonly known as the ''Minseitō''. History The ''Minseitō'' was founded on 1 June 1927, by a merger of the ''Kenseikai'' and the ''Seiyu Hontō'' political parties. I ...

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 Junichiro Koizumi (; , ''Koizumi Jun'ichirō'' ; born 8 January 1942) is a former Japanese politician who was Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 2001 to 2006. He retired from politics in 2009. He is ...

, 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 Stat ...

. 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 was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. Known for his exploitative rule of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Northeast China in the 1930s, Kishi was nicknamed the "Monster of the Shō ...

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 Hatoyam ...

and became Director General of the Japan Defense Agency under Hayato Ikeda and Eisaku Satō.

Life and career

See also