Sanae Takaichi has mentioned in some interviews that whenever she is stressed, she plays the electric drums at home and sings Iron Maiden songs at the top of her lungs. The daughter of a policewoman and a worker in an automotive company, the woman who was a drummer in a university band and rode a Kawasaki Z400GP, was elected this Tuesday as the first female Prime Minister of Japan, breaking the country's significant glass ceiling.
Her profile breaks away from everything Japan has experienced in its recent history. Takaichi, at 64 years old, is the first woman to lead the world's fourth-largest economy. She is the leader of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the party that has governed almost continuously since the post-war period, but she comes from the more right-wing faction. Additionally, unlike her predecessors, she does not come from any political dynasty.
Takaichi often states that she considers Margaret Thatcher, Britain's 'Iron Lady,' her political role model to follow. She embraces a very nationalist vision of Japan's future, even more so than her mentor, the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot in the back during a campaign event in 2022.
Her message has revolved around Japan's resurgence as a superpower, both geopolitically and militarily. She supports increased rearmament and an economic policy of tax cuts and significant increases in public spending.
She advocates for an international stance that strengthens the traditional alliance with the United States and is less conciliatory towards China, where she is often criticized for downplaying the massacres committed by the imperial Japanese army in the giant Asian country during the Second World War and for visiting shrines that pay tribute to war criminals. Takaichi has also publicly questioned the Washington-imposed ban on Tokyo having nuclear weapons.
During the race for the leadership of the LDP, which she won in the primaries a month ago, one of her flagship proposals was to toughen the immigration policy in a country where foreigners barely represent 3% of the population. Her critics, even within her own party, point out that this narrative aims to attract the most extremist voters who facilitated the rise of the Sanseito, a rising far-right populist party, in the parliamentary elections held earlier this year, mirroring Donald Trump's strategy in the US, with a "Japan first" message and positioning itself as an anti-immigration platform.
In those elections, the LDP suffered a historic defeat, losing its majority and causing turmoil within the party that led to the then unpopular Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, resigning.
Takaichi now assumes power after two weeks of uncertainty. Within her own party, there were voices, like Ishiba's, questioning whether the hardline stance promoted by his successor is what Japan needs at this time. The LDP's coalition partner for the past 26 years, Komeito, broke ties with the ruling party because it did not share the new leader's ultra-conservative security approach and because the LDP continues to struggle with a scandal of irregular financing that has plummeted the party's popularity ratings, leading to a loss of majority in both houses of Parliament.
On Monday, the LDP secured governance by agreeing to a new coalition with a minor party, the also conservative Nippon Ishin (Japan Innovation Party). However, it was not until Tuesday that legislators from both houses of Parliament voted to elect their first female Prime Minister. In the Lower House, she garnered 237 votes, surpassing the majority needed by four.
At the end of the month, Takaichi will make her international debut by participating in the APEC summit in South Korea. But before that, probably on October 27, she will host Trump at home, with whom Tokyo has been trying to strengthen trade relations after the Republican imposed a 15% tariff on Japanese products.
Her economic agenda, in addition to dealing with trade negotiations with Washington, will face a harsh reality shaken by inflation, particularly the significant rise in prices of a staple food in the Japanese diet like rice, which has doubled this year. This is compounded by the weakness of the yen and the declining birth rate, implying an increasingly smaller workforce in an aging super-aged country where almost 30% of the population is over 65 years old.
For the more progressive opposition, Takaichi currently embodies a significant contradiction: a woman at the pinnacle of the country's political sphere who faces the largest gender gap among major economies, publicly declares herself as anti-feminist, and does not advocate for reforming outdated laws that perpetuate gender inequalities, such as the requirement for spouses to share a surname, which practically pressures women to adopt their husband's surname.
Takaichi has committed to increasing the number of female ministers in her Cabinet and providing financial support for fertility treatments. However, she is against the imperial family changing its male succession line, a debate that has periodically resurfaced for decades. She also opposes same-sex marriage.
Prior to embarking on her political career, Takaichi, who grew up in Nara in western Japan, was a television presenter. She entered Parliament in 1993, eventually holding the position of Minister of Communications and, more recently, the portfolio of Economic Security. Her personal life has been under scrutiny by the Japanese public: she has been married twice to the same man, a former legislator named Taku Yamamoto, and has three stepchildren.
In a recent statement, the new Prime Minister described herself as a workaholic with little inclination for socializing. After two failed presidential candidacies within her party, her advisors pushed her to make more friends and spend less time secluded at home playing the drums. "I will work, work, work, work, and work. I have given up on the idea of a work-life balance," she declared after being elected as the LDP leader in September.
Her predecessors, Yoshihide Suga, Fumio Kishida, and Shigeru Ishiba, barely lasted a year in office, contrasting significantly with the long tenure of the late Abe, who governed from 2012 to 2020. Now it is Takaichi's turn, and it remains to be seen if she will break the recent trend of a Japan plagued by corruption scandals and short-lived Prime Ministers.