{"id":36591,"date":"2021-09-08T09:50:41","date_gmt":"2021-09-08T00:50:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/08\/taro-kono-the-political-maverick-who-could-be-japans-next-prime-minister"},"modified":"2021-09-08T09:50:41","modified_gmt":"2021-09-08T00:50:41","slug":"taro-kono-the-political-maverick-who-could-be-japans-next-prime-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=36591","title":{"rendered":"Taro Kono, the political maverick who could be Japan\u2019s next prime minister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The outspoken vaccine minister is favourite for the top job partly thanks to his large social media following and backing from young people<\/p>\n<p>Japan\u2019s straight-talking, social media-savvy minister for vaccines and reform, Taro Kono, is the frontrunner <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/04\/outgoing-japanese-pm-backs-vaccine-minister-tara-kono-as-successor-report\">to become the country\u2019s next leader.<\/a> Seen as a maverick in Japan\u2019s staid political world, Kono has set his sights on shaking up the nation\u2019s entrenched bureaucracy.<\/p>\n<p>Kono has used<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/konotaromp\"> his platform on Twitter<\/a> \u2013 where his Japanese account has nearly 2.4 million followers and his English-language one nearly 50,000 \u2013 to berate civil servants for working into the wee hours and holding late-night press conferences.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2021\/sep\/08\/taro-kono-the-political-maverick-who-could-be-japans-next-prime-minister\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The outspoken vaccine minister is favourite for the top job partly thanks to his large social media following and backing from young peopleJapan\u2019s straight-talking, social media-savvy minister for vaccines and reform, Taro Kono, is the frontrunner to b&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":255,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,88,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-japan","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/255"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36592,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36591\/revisions\/36592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}