Junichiro Koizumi, the former Japanese prime minister, has launched an unprecedented attack on Shinzo Abe, accusing the present Japanese leader of “railroading” policies past the public, of not even trying to accommodate the opinions of opposition parties and of exercising such power over his own politicians that they have become little more than “yes-men”. Koizumi, whose 1,979 days in office from April 2001 made him the most long-serving Japanese leader since the 1970s, gave vent to his frustrations over the prime minister in the most recent edition of the Bungeishunju monthly magazine, which was issued on Thursday. Pulling no punches, Koizumi claimed Abe is “railroading everything”. “He always gets things done through force and appears to be in a rush,” Koizumi said. He always gets things done through force and appears to be in a rush Former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi Pointing to the way in which the government had forced through controversial national security bills in September, despite large public demonstrations against the legislation and condemnation of the move by opposition politicians, Koizumi said he would have delayed enactment of the bills until the following Diet session. “If I were him, I would have sought support from the Democratic Party of Japan,” he said. “I believe their support would have been possible if he had sought their cooperation. “There must have been some faction within that party that could have supported the bill.” Hugely popular with the public while in office, Koizumi also criticised Abe’s management style, hinting that it verges on dictatorial. “Members of the LDP used to be free to say whatever they wanted to the prime minister,” he said. “Now, it is odd how they make no noise about that the prime minister wants.” The former prime minister’s comments will not have been welcomed at Abe’s headquarters, analysts said. “I really cannot remember something of this sort since the bloody factional fight between Takeo Fukuda and Masayoshi Ohira back in the 1970s,” Jun Okumura, a visiting scholar at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs, told The South China Morning Post . “An attack like this is unprecedented, but my biggest surprise is that Koizumi is surprised at Abe’s actions,” he said. The two men have a long shared political history and Abe owes much of his political heft today to Koizumi. When Koizumi stepped down in September 2006, he handed the leadership of both the party and the nation to Abe, who was seen as having been groomed for the post by his predecessor. Abe had remarkably little experience before becoming prime minister, never having headed a ministry and serving a “fairly unspectacular” stint as chief cabinet secretary. The suggestion that he was not ready for the post was borne out precisely one year later, when he was forced to retire due to poor public approval ratings and ill-health. Unusually, for a politician, Abe was able to engineer a comeback and was elected prime minister for a second time in December 2012. As his second stint unfolded, Koizumi became gradually more outspoken about some of his policies, but particularly Abe’s determination to turn nuclear reactors that had been mothballed since the March 2011 disaster at Fukushima back on. Koizumi is looking to open up the party again and return it to what it once was Professor Jeff Kingston In a speech in November 2013, Koizumi appealed to Abe to rethink his unswerving commitment to nuclear power and switch to renewable sources of energy, saying, “What a magnificent and fantastic project it would be. “He could use his power to utilise nature as an energy resource,” he added. “There are no other prime ministers who are as lucky as he is.” The appeal, and others like it, fell on deaf ears. Professor Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at the Japan campus of Temple University, agrees the comments are “unprecedented” and believes they hint at a degree of discontent within the party. “Criticisms like this are usually kept in-house and under wraps,” he said. “But I think they will resonate with quite a few people within the party. “There are some who way the Liberal Democratic Party has become too narrow, that is used to represent a far wider swathe of opinions,” he said. “Under Abe, it has become more reactionary and they are uncomfortable with that. “It may be that with these comments, Koizumi is looking to open up the party again and return it to what it once was,” he said. Another consideration might be to give his own son, Shinjiro Koizumi, the present minister in charge of rebuilding north-east Japan, a shot at the prime minister’s seat in the not-too-distant future.