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Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) elected Sanae Takaichi as its new leader on Saturday (October 4), putting her on course to emulate her hero, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, to become the country’s first woman premier.
The conservative Takaichi, 64, came out on top in an internal party vote, beating the centrist Shinjiro Koizumi in a runoff election at the LDP headquarters in Tokyo. The lower house of Japan’s parliament, known as the Diet, is expected to choose her as prime minister in a leadership vote in mid-October.
Takaichi is set to replace incumbent Shigeru Ishiba less than a year after the latter entered office last year. Ishiba had announced his intent to resign last month, amid mounting pressure from within the LDP, which has lost its majority in both houses of the Diet.
Takaichi’s win represents a victory for the right in the LDP, and a departure from the politics of the moderate Ishiba. For a party in crisis, this is being seen as a much needed pivot.
As Takaichi herself alluded to in her victory speech on Saturday, “Recently, I have heard harsh voices from across the country saying we don’t know what the LDP stands for anymore or do you really understand how hard life is, and that the LDP’s policies show no vision.”
Takaichi definitely has a vision, although where that vision will take her — and Japan — remains to be seen. A protégé of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, her politics combines ultranationalism and social conservatism with an aggressive fiscal stance.
“I am determined to always put national interests first and lead the country with a sense of balance. Let us make the Japanese archipelago strong and prosperous, and pass it on to the next generation,” she said on Saturday.
Postwar politics in Japan was defined by pacifism borne out of the experiences of World War II. This was also a state policy, with Article 9 of Japan’s constitution explicitly rejecting the state’s right to wage war.
The article reads: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation…land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained…”.
In the last two decades, amid an economic stagnation and a population crisis, ultranationalist currents, figures who embrace the actions of Imperial Japan instead of decrying them, have gained currency in the country. Abe, who served as prime minister for nearly nine years, from 2012 to 2020, represented this politics. Takaichi seeks to take this legacy forward.
Among other things, she shares Abe’s revisionist view of Japanese crimes during World War II. She is a frequent visitor to the Yasukuni shrine, which honours Japan’s war dead — including executed war criminals — and is viewed by some Asian neighbours, notably China and Korea, who bore the brunt of Japanese war crimes, as a symbol of its past militarism. Takaichi has notably said that Japan need not apologise further for its war crimes.
Takaichi is also a member of the Nippon Kaigi, Japan’s largest ultranationalist lobbying group which aims to “change the postwar national consciousness” and to revise Japan’s current Constitution, specifically Article 9. Like Abe, who gave impetus to Japan’s military rebuilding, Takaichi seeks to bolster the country’s military capacities to take on China, who she considers to be a primary rival.
In fact, Takaichi has long been a China hawk. She has even sought to form a “quasi-military alliance” with Taiwan, a country perenially under the looming threat of a military invasion from Beijing; she is also likely to seek and build on strategic partnerships across the Indo-Pacific.
Socially, Takaichi is an ultra-conservative who fails two key gender-related litmus tests for politicians in Japan.
One, she opposes allowing married couples to use separate surnames — a move that has long been popular with voters but one she claims will “undermine traditional family values”. Two, she is against allowing members of the imperial family’s maternal line to ascend the throne. She also opposes same-sex marriage.
This is why many voters, particularly women, do not view Takaichi’s elevation as progress.
“Takaichi has made no reference at all to the hardships women face or to gender disparities during the leadership contest,” Yayo Okano, a professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto who specialises in feminism and political theory told The Washington Post. “In that sense, I fear this signals a very harsh situation for women, because it effectively rules out any prospect of real improvement in Japan’s gender inequality going forward.”
Fiscally, however, Takaichi borrows from Abe’s playbook, advocating for aggressive public spending and cheap borrowing to stimulate Japan’s stagnant economy. She has repeatedly criticised the Bank of Japan’s rate hikes. Once in power, she is likely to want to stimulate growth, regardless of its fallout — a sharp break with the entrenched LDP caution over deficits.
One of her most pressing tasks over the next weeks would be to deal with Donald Trump, who is set to visit Japan in late October or early November. The trade agreement that Trump and Ishiba arrived at last month may be up for renegotiation under Takaichi.
“If, during the course of implementation, elements that harm Japan’s national interest are found, then renegotiation is a possibility,” Takaichi had said during a Fuji TV debate last month.
Takaichi is also staunchly anti-immigration. In a speech last month, she complained about tourists kicking sacred deer that roam Nara Park, pledging a crackdown on “badly behaved” foreigners — an issue that has become a lightning rod for some voters amid record rises in migrants and tourists.
Experts say that Takaichi’s elevation can potentially help the LDP strengthen itself and regain some of the conservative vote that had drifted following Abe’s assassination in 2022. But she will find it difficult to end the instability that has plagued Japanese politics over the past few years.
This is because her prescriptions also run the risk of pushing Japan further into crisis.
For one, Takaichi’s foreign policy stance could leave Japan isolated: her historical revisionism could fray ties with South Korea, her quest to renegotiate better terms could invite the ire of the White House, and her longstanding hawkishness on China could send the two powers on a collision course.
Moreover, while she has galvanised support internally, the LDP is still a shadow of its former self. A pivot to the right may not necessarily stem the rise of the far-right Sanseito, which enjoyed unexpected electoral success last year on the back of a harsh anti-immigration, “Japan First” campaign.
Given that her party is in the minority in both houses, Takaichi will also have to make compromises which will invariably invite attack from both the right and the left.
“During the leadership race, Takaichi toned down her more radical proposals, including withdrawing her earlier suggestion to cut the consumption tax. However, if she were to revive such proposals in response to demands from major opposition parties, it could lead to higher interest rates, a weaker yen, and accelerated inflation – developments that may not help restore public trust,” Kazutaka Maeda, an economist at Tokyo’s Meiji Yasuda Research Institute, told Reuters.
“Overall, there is skepticism surrounding Takaichi’s ability to manage the administration effectively.”
With inputs from Reuters
