He has a large audience of followers on social media

Kono, the frontrunner for Japan's prime minister, is popular with young people

The Japanese Minister of Vaccines, Taro Kono, who is described as a political rogue, may be the next Prime Minister of Japan, as he is a “bold” person, a favorite among young people on social media, and is followed and supported by a large group of them.

Speaking directly and frankly on social media, Kono is the likely candidate to become the country's next leader. A rebel against Japan's long-established political world, Kono has set his sights on changing the bureaucracy that is rooted in government offices.

Kono has used his Twitter platform — his Japanese-language account has nearly 2.4 million followers and his English-language account nearly 500,000 others — to reprimand civil servants who work into the wee hours and hold late-night press conferences. .

The ambitious Kono, who held the “foreign” and “defense” portfolios under former prime minister Shinzo Abe, laid out his vision for how the nation could advance in areas such as geopolitics, digitalisation, social security and education, in a book titled Let's Move Japan Forward, published last month.

When he was defense minister, he announced the abolition of the Aegis Ashore missile defense system in June of last year, causing consternation among sections of the LDP and the military, due to the lack of backroom consensus that usually precedes such a decision. decisions.

But despite his reputation for unpredictability, Kono hails from one of Japan's famous political dynasties, and radical shifts on key issues are unlikely under his premiership.

His father, Yohei Kono, was head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and deputy prime minister, his grandfather was the head of a powerful faction within the party in the 1950s and 1960s, while his great-uncle was Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1970s.

After graduating from the elite Keio University in Tokyo, Kono studied in the United States, where he honed his English language skills, and upon his return to Japan spent a decade in the corporate world before winning a seat in 1996 at the Kanagawa Foundation, south of Tokyo, where he has held it ever since. now.

As minister of administrative reform, Kono has sought, since last September, to address red tape and end the use of measures such as faxes and official seals in the government and its agencies, and announced in April that ministries should phase out faxes by June, unless there was a vital reason to do so. Its administrative work has more than 400 claims from government agencies that fax is indispensable, and is still widely used.

However, Kono's outspokenness has earned him support among the public, and in a poll conducted over the weekend, he had a 31.9 percent approval rating on who should be the next prime minister, followed by another former defense minister, Shigeru Ishiba, with 26.6% approval. A former defense minister is also Fumio Kishida, with an 18.8% share.

Politicians Seiko Noda and Sanya Takaishi, who are the first two women vying for the position, scored only 4.4% and 4%, respectively.

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