Sanae Takaichi

Based on Wikipedia: Sanae Takaichi

The Drummer Who Became Prime Minister

In the 1980s, a young Japanese woman with a passion for heavy metal music played drums in a rock band while commuting six hours daily to attend Kobe University. Her parents had refused to pay for her education at prestigious Tokyo schools—not because they couldn't afford it, but because she was a woman. Four decades later, that same woman would shatter the highest glass ceiling in Japanese politics.

Sanae Takaichi became Japan's first female Prime Minister in October 2025, simultaneously becoming the first woman to lead the Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP—the conservative political force that has dominated Japanese governance for most of the postwar era. Her rise to power represents both a historic breakthrough and a profound ideological shift, bringing ultraconservative policies and revisionist historical views to the apex of Japanese leadership.

An Unconventional Path to Politics

Born on March 7, 1961, in Yamatokōriyama, a city in Nara Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan, Takaichi came from a middle-class family with both parents working. Her father worked for a Toyota-affiliated automotive company, while her mother served in the prefectural police—an unusual career for a Japanese woman of that generation.

The young Takaichi excelled academically, qualifying for admission to both Keio University and Waseda University, two of Japan's most prestigious private institutions. But her parents drew a firm line. They would not fund her education if she left home for Tokyo, nor would they pay for an expensive private university. The reason was blunt: she was a daughter, not a son.

Rather than accept defeat, Takaichi found another way. She enrolled at Kobe University, a respected public institution, and paid her own way through part-time work while enduring a grueling daily commute. During these years, she channeled her rebellious energy into music, playing drums in various bands including a heavy metal group. In 1984, she graduated with a degree in business administration.

What happened next was even more unconventional. Takaichi enrolled in the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management, an elite training ground for future leaders founded by Konosuke Matsushita, the legendary industrialist behind Panasonic. The institute sent her to the United States in 1987, where she worked as a congressional fellow for Pat Schroeder, a Democratic congresswoman from Colorado known for her progressive stance on women's rights and her sharp wit.

This American experience would prove formative. Takaichi returned to Japan in 1989 with deep knowledge of American political systems and began writing books about what she had learned. She also moved into television, becoming a presenter for TV Asahi. In a twist of fate, her co-host on one program was Renhō—who would later become a prominent opposition politician and one of Takaichi's rivals.

Breaking Into the Old Boys' Club

Japanese politics in the early 1990s was almost exclusively male, dominated by factions, family dynasties, and backroom deals. For a woman without political connections to break in seemed nearly impossible.

Takaichi's first attempt came in 1992, when she sought a seat in the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of Japan's parliament, known as the Diet. She ran as an independent in Nara Prefecture but lost narrowly—receiving 137 votes to her opponent's 162 in a vote among just 313 eligible voters for her district.

The next year brought success. In the 1993 general election, running again as an independent, Takaichi won a seat in the House of Representatives, the more powerful lower chamber. Japan's political landscape was in flux that year—the LDP briefly lost power for the first time in nearly four decades—and voters were more willing to take chances on outsiders.

Her early career showed a pattern of strategic party-switching that would draw criticism. She first joined a small party called the Liberals, which soon merged into the New Frontier Party, an opposition coalition. When the New Frontier Party lost ground nationally in 1996, Takaichi nonetheless won re-election. Then, just two months after winning with anti-LDP votes, she defected to the LDP itself.

The backlash was fierce. Members of her former party accused her of betrayal. But Takaichi had made a calculation: real power in Japan resided within the LDP, and if she wanted to advance, that was where she needed to be.

Rising Through the Ranks

Within the LDP, Takaichi joined the Mori Faction, formally known as the Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyūkai or Clear and Harmonious Policy Research Council. This faction would later become synonymous with former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe, who would become Takaichi's most important political patron.

Her career followed the typical trajectory of an ambitious Japanese politician. She served as Parliamentary Vice Minister for the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, then as Senior Vice Minister of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. She chaired the Education and Science Committee. Each position added to her credentials and her network.

But Japanese politics is unforgiving to those who lose elections, and in 2003, Takaichi lost her seat to an opposition candidate in her Nara district. Rather than fade away, she used the interlude productively, taking a faculty position at Kinki University to teach economics. When she returned to politics in 2005, she had relocated to a nearby city and won a seat representing a different district.

The real acceleration came when Shinzō Abe became Prime Minister in 2006. Abe, a fellow member of the conservative wing of the LDP, appointed Takaichi to his cabinet with an impressive portfolio: Minister of State for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs, Science and Technology Policy, Innovation, Youth Affairs and Gender Equality, and Food Safety. It was a show of trust from a leader who saw in Takaichi a kindred ideological spirit.

The Abe Protégé

Shinzō Abe would prove to be the defining relationship of Takaichi's political career. Abe, the grandson of a former prime minister and the most significant conservative leader of his generation, served twice as Prime Minister—briefly from 2006 to 2007, then for a record-breaking tenure from 2012 to 2020. His assassination in 2022 while campaigning shocked Japan and the world.

Under Abe, Takaichi rose to her most prominent position yet: Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, a powerful portfolio overseeing local government, telecommunications, broadcasting, and postal services. She held this post twice, from 2014 to 2017 and again from 2019 to 2020.

In this role, Takaichi demonstrated both her administrative capability and her willingness to court controversy. She pushed the national broadcaster NHK—Japan's equivalent of the BBC—to cut its license fee and reform its governance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she oversaw the distribution of emergency cash payments to citizens.

But she also made statements that raised alarms about press freedom. In February 2016, Takaichi suggested that the government could suspend the operations of broadcasters that aired politically biased content. The United States State Department expressed concern about what it called "increasing government pressure against critical and independent media."

The Yasukuni Pilgrimages

Few places in East Asia carry more symbolic weight than Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. This Shinto shrine honors Japan's war dead, including more than two million soldiers who died in conflicts dating back to the nineteenth century. But it also enshrines fourteen Class A war criminals from World War II—men convicted of crimes against peace, including the wartime prime minister Hideki Tojo.

For Japan's neighbors, particularly China and South Korea, visits by Japanese politicians to Yasukuni are seen as glorifying militarism and refusing to fully acknowledge wartime atrocities. For Japanese conservatives, the shrine represents honoring ancestors and rejecting what they view as excessive war guilt imposed by foreign powers.

Takaichi has been a regular visitor. In August 2007, she was the only member of Abe's cabinet to join former Prime Minister Koizumi at the shrine on the anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II. In 2014, she was among three cabinet members to visit. In 2016, she became the first sitting cabinet member to attend the shrine's autumn festival. In 2020, she was one of four ministers who visited on the 75th anniversary of the war's end.

These visits are not casual. They are deliberate statements of ideological commitment, signaling a willingness to prioritize nationalist sentiment over diplomatic relations with China and Korea.

Historical Revisionism and the Murayama Statement

In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of World War II's end, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama issued a landmark statement. He acknowledged that Japan, "through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations." He expressed "deep remorse" and "heartfelt apology."

This became known as the Murayama Statement, and subsequent Japanese governments generally upheld its spirit. A companion document, the Kono Statement from 1993, specifically addressed the "comfort women"—women from Korea, China, and other occupied territories who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military.

Takaichi has criticized both statements. In 2013, as head of the LDP's Policy Research Council, she recommended that Abe issue a new statement to replace Murayama's apology. When Abe eventually released his own statement in 2015, it acknowledged that previous apologies would "remain unshakeable" while arguing that future generations of Japanese should not be "predestined to apologize." State media in China and North Korea, along with news agencies in South Korea, criticized the statement as inadequate.

These positions place Takaichi within a current of Japanese thought that views the postwar order as unjust—seeing Japan as unfairly singled out for crimes committed by many colonial powers, and the Tokyo war crimes trials as victor's justice. Critics argue this amounts to whitewashing genuine atrocities, including the Nanjing Massacre, in which Japanese troops killed large numbers of Chinese civilians and prisoners of war.

The Neo-Nazi Photograph

In 2014, when Takaichi was appointed to the cabinet, a photograph surfaced that caused international embarrassment. It showed Takaichi posing with Kazunari Yamada, the leader of the National Socialist Japanese Workers' Party—a small but genuine neo-Nazi organization in Japan.

The picture had been taken in 2011 when Yamada visited Takaichi's office. Another photograph showed Yamada with Tomomi Inada, another conservative LDP politician. Both women claimed ignorance of Yamada's background. Takaichi said she would not have agreed to the photograph had she known who he was.

Separately, researchers discovered that in 1994, Takaichi had been photographed promoting a book praising Adolf Hitler's electoral tactics. These associations, combined with her membership in Nippon Kaigi—a powerful nationalist organization that advocates for constitutional revision and patriotic education—have led critics to describe her views as far-right.

Nippon Kaigi and the Constitutional Question

Nippon Kaigi, which translates roughly as "Japan Conference," is a nationalist organization that wields substantial influence within the LDP. Founded in 1997, it promotes reverence for the Emperor, revision of Japan's pacifist constitution, and what it calls a "correct" understanding of Japanese history—generally meaning a more positive interpretation of Japan's wartime conduct.

Takaichi's membership aligns with her long-standing support for revising Article 9 of Japan's constitution. This article, imposed after World War II during the American occupation, states that Japan renounces war as a sovereign right and will not maintain military forces. In practice, Japan has the Self-Defense Forces, one of the world's most capable militaries, but Article 9 places constraints on what they can do, particularly regarding collective defense with allies.

Conservatives like Takaichi argue that Article 9 is an outdated relic that prevents Japan from fully defending itself and contributing to regional security. They point to threats from North Korea and an increasingly assertive China. Opponents worry that removing these constraints could lead Japan back toward militarism and destabilize the region.

Three Runs for the Top

Takaichi first ran for LDP president in 2021, with Abe's explicit endorsement. In the LDP's system, the party president typically becomes Prime Minister because the LDP usually controls the Diet. Takaichi finished third and was eliminated before the runoff, which Fumio Kishida won.

In 2024, after Kishida announced he would not seek re-election following a scandal involving unreported political funds, Takaichi tried again. This time she emerged as a frontrunner alongside Shigeru Ishiba, a former defense minister known for his more moderate views and his willingness to criticize party orthodoxy, and Shinjirō Koizumi, the son of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

The election went to two rounds. Takaichi came first in the initial ballot with 181 votes. But in the runoff, Ishiba won 215 votes to Takaichi's 194. The party had opted for a safer, less ideologically charged choice.

Ishiba's tenure proved brief and troubled. His government struggled to maintain coalition unity and address the lingering political funding scandal. When he announced his resignation in September 2025, Takaichi launched her third campaign for the leadership.

This time, she prevailed. In the first round, she and Shinjirō Koizumi emerged as the top two candidates. In the runoff, Takaichi won decisively with 185 votes to Koizumi's 156. At sixty-four years old, after decades in politics and three attempts at the top job, she had broken through.

The Coalition Crisis

Becoming LDP president did not guarantee becoming Prime Minister. Japan's political system required Takaichi to command a majority in the Diet, and the LDP had governed for decades in coalition with Komeito, a Buddhist-influenced party with more moderate views on social issues and foreign policy.

Within weeks of Takaichi's election, that partnership collapsed. On October 10, 2025, Komeito's leader announced his party would leave the governing coalition, citing disagreements with Takaichi's leadership and the LDP's handling of the slush fund scandal. After twenty-six years, one of the most durable political alliances in Japanese history had ended.

Takaichi needed to find new partners quickly. She turned to the Japan Innovation Party, a populist reform-oriented party based in Osaka that had positioned itself as an alternative to both the LDP establishment and the traditional opposition. On October 19, the two parties reached a coalition agreement.

Two days later, the Diet voted. Takaichi received 237 votes in the lower house against 149 for the opposition leader, Yoshihiko Noda of the Constitutional Democratic Party. She avoided a runoff and was officially appointed Prime Minister by Emperor Naruhito in a ceremony at the Tokyo Imperial Palace.

She was the first woman to hold the office. She was also the first Prime Minister from Nara Prefecture—the ancient heartland of Japanese civilization, home to some of the country's oldest temples and former imperial capitals.

Economic Visions and Market Reactions

Takaichi has positioned herself as an heir to Abenomics, the economic program associated with Shinzō Abe that combined aggressive monetary easing by the Bank of Japan, fiscal stimulus through government spending, and structural reforms. The approach weakened the yen, boosted exports and corporate profits, and sent stock prices soaring—though critics argued it failed to generate sustained wage growth or solve Japan's deeper demographic challenges.

Takaichi supports proactive government spending and has generally opposed tax increases. The Bank of Japan had begun cautiously raising interest rates in 2024 after years of keeping them at zero or negative levels, and observers speculated that a Takaichi government might accommodate further increases early in her tenure.

Financial markets reacted dramatically to her election as party leader. The Nikkei 225 stock index surged past 47,000 for the first time in history, rising more than 4% in a single day. The yen, meanwhile, weakened against the dollar. Investors appeared to be betting that Takaichi would continue pro-business policies while the weak yen would boost Japanese exporters.

The Taiwan Tinderbox

Takaichi's premiership quickly faced its first major crisis, and it concerned the issue she had long championed most vocally: Taiwan.

Taiwan occupies a unique and precarious position in world affairs. The island of twenty-four million people has its own government, military, currency, and thriving democratic system. But the People's Republic of China claims Taiwan as a breakaway province that must eventually be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. Most countries, including Japan and the United States, do not formally recognize Taiwan as an independent nation, maintaining instead a policy of "strategic ambiguity" that has kept the peace for decades.

Takaichi had long advocated a more explicitly pro-Taiwan position. She supported strengthening ties between Japan and Taiwan, and she made clear that Japan should prepare to respond if China attacked the island. This represented a significant departure from the careful diplomatic balancing that previous Japanese leaders had maintained.

Shortly after becoming Prime Minister, Takaichi made a statement regarding Japan's potential involvement in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. The specifics were characteristically provocative for someone of her views. A Chinese diplomat responded with threatening remarks of his own. Suddenly, the long-simmering tensions over Taiwan had become a diplomatic crisis between Asia's two largest economies.

The situation highlighted a fundamental tension in Japan's strategic position. Japan depends on the United States for its security guarantee under their postwar alliance. Taiwan sits just over a hundred kilometers from Japanese territory in the Ryukyu Islands. A war over Taiwan would inevitably involve Japanese bases and potentially Japanese forces. But Japan's constitution, Article 9, and its public memory of World War II all counsel caution about military involvement abroad.

Social Conservatism in a Changing Society

On domestic social issues, Takaichi holds views that place her at odds with much of Japanese public opinion and with trends in other developed democracies.

She opposes same-sex marriage. Japan remains the only member of the Group of Seven major economies that does not recognize same-sex unions, though courts have increasingly ruled that this violates constitutional guarantees of equality. Polling consistently shows majority public support for legalization, particularly among younger Japanese, but the LDP's conservative wing has blocked legislative action.

Takaichi also opposes allowing married couples to use separate surnames. Under current Japanese law, married couples must share a single family name, and in practice this almost always means the wife takes the husband's name. Many Japanese women, particularly professionals, have pushed for the option to keep their own names. Again, polling shows majority support for this change, and again, conservative LDP members have prevented it.

Perhaps most significantly for the institution of the monarchy, Takaichi opposes allowing female succession to the Chrysanthemum Throne. Japan's imperial line is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, but current succession law permits only male heirs. Emperor Naruhito has one daughter, Princess Aiko, but no sons, meaning the throne would pass to his nephew. Many Japanese support changing the law to allow Princess Aiko to succeed, but traditionalists insist that the male-only line must be preserved.

The irony is not lost on observers: Japan's first female Prime Minister opposes policies that would expand women's rights and options in other areas of society.

The Cabinet and the Path Forward

In forming her first cabinet, Takaichi had said she wanted to include as many women as in the Nordic countries, where female cabinet representation often exceeds forty percent. The reality fell dramatically short: only two women joined her government.

One of those two, however, represented a genuine first. Satsuki Katayama became Japan's first female Finance Minister, taking charge of one of the most powerful positions in government. The Finance Ministry controls the budget, tax policy, and regulation of financial markets. Having a woman at its head, even if appointed by a conservative government, marked a notable breach in one of Japanese bureaucracy's highest glass ceilings.

The other woman in cabinet, Kimi Onoda, took the economic security portfolio—the same position Takaichi herself had held under Kishida. During that time, Takaichi had championed legislation creating a security clearance system for classified information, addressing a gap that had prevented Japan from joining the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance that includes the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

The Fabricated Document Crisis

Before becoming Prime Minister, Takaichi had weathered a scandal that nearly ended her career. In March 2023, an opposition politician revealed a government document suggesting that the Abe government had pressured broadcasters critical of the LDP. Takaichi, who had been Internal Affairs Minister when the document was allegedly created, called it "fabricated" and vowed to resign from parliament if it proved genuine.

Days later, ministry officials confirmed they had created the document. Opposition members called for Takaichi's resignation. She held firm, insisting that the specific remarks attributed to her within the document were false, even if the document itself was real. She demanded that her accuser prove the document's complete authenticity.

The distinction was subtle—acknowledging the document's existence while disputing its accuracy about her own words—but it allowed her to survive politically. Critics saw this as hairsplitting; supporters viewed it as a legitimate defense against unfair accusations. Either way, the episode demonstrated Takaichi's tenacity when under pressure.

Global Recognition

In 2025, Forbes magazine ranked Takaichi as the third most powerful woman in the world and the most powerful Asian woman. The ranking reflected her position as leader of the world's fourth-largest economy and a key American ally in the increasingly tense Indo-Pacific region.

The recognition came despite—or perhaps partly because of—her controversial views. Takaichi represents a strand of Japanese conservatism that had long operated in the shadows, influencing policy through organizations like Nippon Kaigi but rarely achieving the highest office. Her premiership brought these views into the open, forcing both Japan and the world to grapple with what they mean for the future of East Asian security and Japan's own democracy.

A Complex Legacy in the Making

Sanae Takaichi's story encompasses striking contradictions. She overcame explicit gender discrimination from her own parents to reach the pinnacle of power, yet she opposes policies that would help other women face similar barriers. She worked for a progressive American congresswoman in her formative years, yet she promotes an ultraconservative agenda at home. She broke through Japan's highest glass ceiling while aligning with organizations that advocate for traditional gender roles.

Her rise also reflects deeper currents in Japanese society. Decades of economic stagnation, demographic decline, and anxiety about China's growing power have fueled nationalist sentiment. The postwar consensus—pacifism, apology for wartime conduct, reliance on American protection—has eroded. Takaichi represents those who believe Japan must become a "normal" country again, able to defend itself and take pride in its history.

Whether this vision serves Japan's long-term interests remains to be seen. Her premiership will be tested by relations with China, by the needs of an aging society, and by a public that, according to polls, often disagrees with her most conservative positions. The drummer from Nara has reached the stage she long sought. Now the world watches to see what music she will play.