How a Military Nerd Became a Leading Analyst on Russia
Yū Koizumi analyzes Russia for TV viewers in Japan
I have seen many Japanese Russia experts comment on the Russo-Ukrainian war on news programs since its outbreak on February 24, 2022. One of those experts is Yū Koizumi, who is currently a lecturer at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST), the University of Tokyo.
The biggest reason why I want to introduce him to the readers is that he is an outstanding Russia and military expert with a unique ability of analyzing small details and presenting a big picture based on a huge accumulation of specialized knowledge on Russian military affairs.
Koizumi was born in 1982 in the city of Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, to the east of Tokyo. He received his master’s degree in political science from the Graduate School of Political Science, Waseda University.
After working in a private company, he served consecutively as a specialized analyst for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, a visiting researcher for the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a researcher for the National Diet Library, Japan, besides working as a special research fellow at the Institute for Future Engineering (“IFENG”). His special field of study is Russian security and military policies with a particular focus on military reforms, hybrid warfare, and nuclear strategy. He is married to a Russian woman.
An offline meeting in Shinjuku in 2015 was my first opportunity to meet Koizumi in person
The Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014 marked a turning point for Koizumi being increasingly requested by the news media for comment on Russian military issues. Because I am a Japanese translator with an avid interest in international politics, I started to pay attention to him for his expert knowledge about Russia.
Fortunately, in December 2015, I was invited to a small offline meeting through my Twitter network. I participated in the meeting held at a Russian restaurant in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and one of the participants was Koizumi, who was a researcher at the Institute for Future Engineering at that time. It was my first time to meet him in person. I remember his talking about his memory of news reports on the August 1991 coup attempt by hard-line conservatives against the reformist Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, when he was in elementary school.
“Military nerd”
Koizumi now receives many offers from TV stations. He is competent enough to explain complicated things in an easy-to-understand manner from the TV viewers’ point of view, with a clear analytical capability of weaving the whole picture of the situation combining a huge amount of military information, staying dispassionately neutral to both Russia and Ukraine. In addition, he occasionally shows a sense of humor and has lots of many different topics, hard and soft, stored away in his brain. He professes himself to be a “military nerd,” though.
Koizumi was born the son of a picture book illustrator (mother) and a junior high school social studies teacher (father). His local neighborhood was so close to a Maritime Self-Defense Force base that he always saw P-3C patrol aircraft in the sky when he was a child. In his elementary and junior high school days, he often scribbled battleships in the blank space of his notebook during class or enjoyed listening to the sounds of P-3C engines from outside the classroom windows.
He soon found it comfortable to spend time in the library of a neighboring community center and a nearby plastic model shop. He read books at the library one after another and found himself deeply absorbed in military books and war literature in particular. He met many grown-up military enthusiasts at the plastic model shop, including MSDF personnel. When he showed them the plastic models he had made by himself, they said, “This is not the way it should be. Look more closely at the structure.”
An encounter with an illuminating book
When he was in junior high school, he encountered a book by Kensuke Ebata, a military analyst, at a bookstore in his neighborhood, which helped him broaden his horizons — the opportunity to learn how fighter aircraft are used and what political implications it has. This is how his interest expanded to foreign militaries, including Russian forces, beyond Japanese military affairs.
After graduating from high school, Koizumi enrolled in Waseda University and was soon invited to an airplane enthusiasts’ club where its members enjoyed talking about airplanes and military affairs. The member who recruited Koizumi recalls, “He was so versed in Russian military affairs that everyone asked him for information about them.” He also had strikingly keen intellectual curiosity about cultures and society as well as military affairs.
He later decided to go to a master’s course at the graduate school of Waseda. But Koizumi, who preferred drawing a big picture from military details, was not interested in international order theory and legal philosophy, which are essential to international relations studies. He managed to write his master’s thesis, but gave up becoming a researcher. He started job-hunting activities and finally got a sales promotion position at an electric appliance maker. But he found that he was unfit for the role and quit a year later. Meanwhile, he found himself really enjoying making research and writing articles for military magazines. He found writing to be his true calling.
A life-changing phone call from former Japanese Ambassador to Uzbekistan
One day, he received a life-changing phone call at his home — it was from former Japanese Ambassador to Uzbekistan Akio Kawatō. Kawatō worked as a commentator after quitting the Foreign Ministry. Although Kawatō was unacquainted with Koizumi, he read Koizumi’s military magazine articles. Kawatō says, “He was capable of not only finding facts meticulously but also conceptualizing what they mean, an ability which differentiated him from other authors.” Kawatō invited Koizumi to eat together at a hotel restaurant in Tokyo.
In 2009 Kawatō recommended Koizumi for a position as a specialized analyst for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Intelligence and Analysis Service. Every time Koizumi wrote analysis reports on Russian military affairs, people praised him for being versed in them, which helped him regain confidence.
An encounter with his future wife Elena
In addition, he learned that there was an exchange project for sending young researchers to Russia, applied for it, and successfully got the ticket to Moscow. In December 2009, he landed in Moscow and started his first solo living in a freezing cold place with a temperature of minus 28 degrees. He made a study tour of Russian military bases and met many people, such as leading experts in Russian nuclear strategy and government and military officials. Koizumi also made friends with Russian military researchers. And more than anything else, he encountered his future wife Elena, who studied rakugo, traditional Japanese comic storytelling, at a Russian university.
Award-winning book
Geopolitics of Russia as “Empire,” which Koizumi published in 2019, elevated him to prominence as a writer. He was awarded the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in recognition of his brilliant description in this book of the concepts of sovereignty and territory peculiar to Russia with an approach entirely different from that of conventional international relations theory.
Now that you’ve been through this story, I am sure that you understand what an excellent Russia and military expert Koizumi is.
References
【小泉悠】「いいところなし」の少年に、「細部から全体像を描く」を教えてくれた人
