The outspoken vaccine minister is favourite for the top job partly thanks to his large social media following and backing from young people

Japan’s straight-talking, social media-savvy minister for vaccines and reform, Taro Kono, is the frontrunner to become the country’s next leader. Seen as a maverick in Japan’s staid political world, Kono has set his sights on shaking up the nation’s entrenched bureaucracy.

Kono has used his platform on Twitter – where his Japanese account has nearly 2.4 million followers and his English-language one nearly 50,000 – to berate civil servants for working into the wee hours and holding late-night press conferences.