KOIZUMI TO HOST IFTAR FOR MUSLIM AMBASSADORS

The details are few, but according to a report by Jiji Press, it appears that Prime Minister Koizumi has decided to host an “iftar” meal for ambassadors from Islamic countries on the evening of October 24th, in order to express Japanese-Islamic friendship. Apparently, he did the same thing once before in 2003. As many of you know, iftar is a communal meal after sunset during the month of Ramadan in which Muslims break their daily fast.

According to the report, about 40 ambassadors will participate in the iftar, as will Environment Minister Yuriko Koike.

As briefly mentioned in Shingetsu Newsletter No. 46, Yuriko Koike is fluent in Arabic and has called Egypt her spiritual home. Now I offer more detail about her, since she is clearly becoming an important player in Japanese-Islamic relations.

Photo: Yuriko Koike
Source: Unknown

She was born on July 15, 1952 (which she likes to note was the time of the Egyptian Revolution). She attended the Faculty of Sociology of Kansai Gakuin University in 1971, and then went to Egypt for her further education. She passed an intensive Arabic course at the American University of Cairo, and in 1976 received a BA in Sociology from Cairo University.

Returning to Japan, she became an interpreter and translator for the Japan-Arab Association. In 1978 she coordinated a program for Nippon TV called “Colonel Qadhafi and Yasser Arafat.” She spent the entire decade of the 1980s as a popular newscaster on various business and current affairs programs. In 1990 she became Secretary-General of the Japan-Arab Association. Two years later she was elected to the Diet as an opposition parliamentarian. Before eventually joining the ruling LDP, she belonged to the Japan New Party, the New Frontier Party, and the Liberal Party. In the recent September 11 elections, she was the lead member of Koizumi’s lipstick assassins. She was taken from her regular district in Hyogo Prefecture and parachuted into the Tokyo No. 10 constituency to knock off Koki Kobayashi, a well-entrenched pork-barrel politician. She had no local campaign staff and no ties to the local community. Nevertheless, in three weeks’ time she pulled it off, and Mr. Kobayashi is now out of a job and stewing about the “Koizumi dictatorship” and the new “Roman Empire.”

This is a brainy lady, and with a resume like hers you might expect her to be a liberal of some sort. The fact, however, is that she may be on the hard right. It was this same Yuriko Koike who was the first to begin criticizing the “irresponsibility” of the three young Japanese hostages of the April 2004 Iraq hostage crisis. She is also a frequent visitor to Yasukuni Shrine, going there even on August 15th of this year. Whether this springs from a deep personal belief on her part, or is a shrewd political calculation, I’m not in any position to say.

However, it should be noted that she is one of most intelligent and dynamic members of the Koizumi cabinet. I was surprised a few weeks ago to see her name mentioned as a possible darkhorse candidate to succeed Koizumi as Prime Minister. I don’t think that will happen so soon, but the idea that she will eventually become the first female (and first Arabic-fluent) Prime Minister of Japan is becoming conceivable.