Sanae Takaichi does not have the conventional background of an establishment conservative Japanese politician. She is known to enjoy motorcycles and rock music, and even once sang in a televised variety show. Most exceptionally, she is a woman.
Becoming Prime Minister on 21 October, by a narrow margin of 237 votes in Japan’s 465-member lower house, Takaichi will face difficulties governing as the leader of a minority government. In order for her coalition to pass bills, parties from outside the government will have to be convinced to support legislation on a case-by-case basis.
Before even taking power, her route to the premiership was complicated by her party’s centrist ally withdrawing from the quarter-century-long coalition, shortly after she won the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). However, following weeks-long coalition negotiations, Takaichi was able to seal a deal with the right-wing Japan Innovation Party to push her over the line.
Committing to “work, work, work” following her election to the leadership of the LDP in early October, Takaichi shares the drive and ability to work into the night of Margaret Thatcher, one of her political role models. Takaichi has stated she wants to become Japan’s ‘Iron Lady’ and has aspired to be Prime Minister since she was 24, during the height of Thatcher’s power in Britain.
Takaichi’s party has dominated post-war Japanese politics, maintaining its rule for virtually every year since its founding in 1955. The party is highly factional, made up of figures ranging from right-wing conservatives such as Takaichi to relatively centrist moderates. Factional divides have driven the high turnover rate for Japanese Prime Ministers because the various blocs within the LDP continuously vie for power. Post-war Japanese PMs have an average tenure of less than three years.
Coming from the conservative wing of the broadly right-of-centre LDP, Takaichi’s rise to the premiership comes as the long-governing party encounters increasing pressure from the far-right. Notably increasing its seats in the 2025 elections in Japan’s upper house, far-right party Sanseito has cast the LDP as antiquated both in terms of its policies and its leadership. Despite Japan’s relatively small number of immigrants, Sanseito has gained traction campaigning on anti-immigration policies with a “Japanese First” platform. Sanseito’s leader made clear his party would not enter into a coalition with the LDP.
Takaichi’s defeat of her moderate rival in the LDP leadership election, Shinjiro Koizumi, son of a former Prime Minister and viewed as a youthful figure within the LDP, suggests the party wants to punch right to handle the threat from the populist far-right. Indeed, while Takaichi names Thatcher as her political role model, Koizumi names John F Kennedy. Ultimately, Koizumi’s vision to modernise the party was not the revamp the party wanted. While he is popular with Japan’s general public, the LDP’s legislators chose to appeal to their base and head off the populist far-right.
The new PM played on anti-immigration rhetoric during her run for the leadership. She promised to take extra measures to handle issues related to foreigners and clamp down on rule-breaking immigrants and tourists. Commenting on Japan’s attitude towards migration, Shogo Suzuki, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester, pointed out that, given its low birth rate, Japan has nowhere else to turn for its labour needs, especially in its hospitality and retail industries. He highlighted that the Japanese government has so far kept the official number of immigrants low by allowing foreign students to work. Given Japan’s circumstances, Takaichi may have no option but to allow for further de facto immigration.
Takaichi has shown a strong commitment to socially conservative policies. Dubbed “Taliban Takaichi” by former PM and LDP leader Fumio Kishida, Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage and supports excluding women from the line of succession to Japan’s throne. Furthermore, she opposes changes to legislation requiring married couples to share the same family name, a policy which virtually always results in married women taking their husband’s family name. Notably, when Takaichi remarried her husband, whom she had previously divorced, he took her family name.
A protege of the late Shinzo Abe, she is expected to pursue many similar policies. Most notably, ‘Abenomics‘ is likely to make a comeback. Abenomics has three main prongs: loose monetary policy, high government spending, and structural reforms to increase competition and encourage investment. The markets expect her to pursue this agenda; however, with inflation high, Takaichi may struggle to implement these policies.
Her goal to increase government spending ties in well with her policies on defence and foreign affairs. Takaichi, like Abe, is a hawk who will aim to increase defence spending and reduce restrictions on the Japanese Self-Defence Forces. Japan’s post-war constitution renounces the use of war and commits the country to never maintain military forces. However, it has been interpreted to allow for the Self-Defence forces, and in 2015, it was further reinterpreted to allow for collective self-defence.
In addition to strengthening Japan’s military capabilities, Takaichi will pursue a close relationship with Japan’s allies, including the United States, South Korea, and Taiwan. She is a critic of China’s military and economic influence and views these measures as essential to counter Chinese influence.
Complicating matters, she has been a regular visitor to the Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial to Japan’s war dead. Following the honouring of Japanese war criminals at the shrine in the late 1970s, visits by senior Japanese politicians to the site have attracted controversy abroad, especially in South Korea and China. While Takaichi’s foreign policy does not involve strengthening ties with China, visiting the shrine will complicate relations with South Korea. What’s more, Takaichi has not stopped at merely visiting the shrine but has also claimed that Japan’s wartime atrocities are overstated.
On Takaichi’s attraction to the shrine, Shogo Suzuki pointed out that when a previous Prime Minister and father of Shinjiro Koizumi, Junichiro Koizumi, visited the shrine, both China and South Korea refused to meet with him. He also highlighted that when Abe decided to visit the shrine, relations with South Korea were so bad that he had nothing to lose by visiting. Takaichi may take a similar tack, having not visited the shrine following her election as LDP party leader, she is likely concerned about the foreign policy consequences of visiting.
However, Suzuki points out that Abe was “a darling of the Japanese hawkish right,” and as such had little domestic pressure to go. For Takaichi, with the rising threat from far-right Sanseito and a right-wing coalition partner, she may be compelled to maintain her right-wing image by visiting, unable to delay her visit to an internationally strategic time as Abe did.
Becoming Japan’s first woman PM is certainly groundbreaking; however, Takaichi’s policies do not suggest her identity will be particularly relevant to the policies she will pursue during her premiership. Indeed, so far she has only appointed two women to her cabinet. The LDP had a chance to modernise under Koizumi, but instead chose to appeal to its base with the deeply conservative Takaichi. She is unlikely to make any substantive changes on social issues at home. Her economic and foreign policies will be far more notable. If she can achieve the economic success Abe did and strengthen Japan’s alliances, she may well go down as a PM of consequence. However, with her nationalist views, her aversion to immigration, and Japan’s high inflation, she will struggle to achieve success in her economic and foreign policy goals.
