Takaichi Sanae is who she is

What matters is, as always, how she navigates between ideals and reality

Thank you for reading Observing Japan. This post is available to all readers.

If you are looking for timely, forward-looking analysis of the stories in Japans’s politics and policymaking that move markets, I have launched a service through my business, Japan Foresight LLC. For 2026, I am preparing a new pricing tier for public institutions. For more information about Japan Foresight’s services or for information on how to sign up for a trial or schedule a briefing, please visit our website or reach out to me.

I joined Jacob Shapiro to discuss the implications of the general election.

---

Takaichi Sanae poses with members of the Conservative Unity Association after worshipping at Yasukuni Shrine in August 2024. Source: @takaichi_sanae on X

In her short term as prime minister, Takaichi Sanae has shown that she has the same kind of reality distortion field that other singular political talents have. Her status as Japan’s first female prime minister, her middle-class (read: non-hereditary) background, and her blunt, earnest manner have inspired a well-documented frenzy, Sanakatsu, akin to the parasocial attachment fans feel about celebrities. Her leading the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to the largest majority any party has won in the postwar era has only intensified the frenzy and with it, the air of surreality that surrounds her.

At Bloomberg, Gearoid Reidy notes this tendency, writing how both conservatives and liberals – he is referring mostly to people outside of Japan – are “leading some to project their beliefs onto that soon-to-be-iconic blue suit.” He argues that on some key issues, migration and China policy, she is well within the mainstream of public opinion.

However, I think it is a mistake to dismiss the reality that Takaichi has been firmly situated in a new conservative movement that has a sweeping vision for social transformation, one that has often been out of step with many Japanese people.

Takaichi’s popularity with the broader public, particularly with younger voters who have different or hazy understandings of what “conservative” and “liberal” or “left” and “right” mean, should not obscure that for most of her career Takaichi has been a foot solider in the project of what Abe Shinzō summarized when he became prime minister in 2006 as “overcoming [or breaking free of] the postwar regime.” She has now inherited the mantle of the movement’s leadership.

This new conservative movement, as I describe at length in The Iconoclast, has wanted to cast off postwar reforms – there is a particular enmity towards anything associated with the US occupation, which in its early stages was determined to “democratize” and “demilitarize” Japan – and build a strong, proud country that can contend for world power. This movement has sought to revise textbooks, opposing the “masochistic” view of Japan’s wartime past that saps pride in Japan and therefore weakens the country. It has sought to revise the Constitution – not least because they reject a document drafted by “foreign hands” – and because they want to dismantle the constitution’s limitations on military powers, limitations they have sought to erode when constitution revision proved beyond their strength. They oppose social changes that weaken traditional family structures and gender roles or undermine the role of the imperial household as the embodiment of the essence of the nation. Takaichi’s career developed in this milieu, many of her closest supporters and endorsers were members of parliamentary groups like Sōsei Nippon (originally called the True Conservative Policy Study Group); the Conservative Unity Association; and the Conference to Protect Japan’s Dignity and National Interest, to which she has also belonged. This movement, as part of its ambition to change Japan, has sought to make the LDP a more ideologically coherent vehicle for realizing this agenda, marginalizing or driving “moderates” and “liberals” whose commitment to these goals has been lukewarm at best. Naturally, her ideological allies are celebrating this electoral victory as an ideological victory, both in that it makes the LDP a more conservative party and positions the Takaichi government to achieve some long-standing goals of the new conservatives. Here, for example, is what Nishida Shōji said about her victory¹:

There are fruitful discussions to be had over how much the Takaichi government’s agenda will be guided by the new conservatives; how much the public has embraced the new conservative program not only on national security but on the broader “cultural” agenda; and how Takaichi has added her own priorities to the new conservative movement. For example, her commitment to economic security and fiscal expansion have to a certain extent rounded out an agenda that has often focused on cultural issues over more practical concerns.²

I agree with Reidy that fixation on labels can be thought stopping; calling Takaichi conservative or new conservative or right wing should not be the end of discussion or analysis but the beginning. What is interesting is what happens when her ideological commitments collide with competing pressures – domestic coalition management, public opinion, the international environment, financial market movements – and how these tensions are resolved. In other words, the old Weberian tension between the ethic of responsibility and the ethic of conviction. But to deny that she belongs to an intellectual tradition that has a coherent vision for Japan and that has often been outside the mainstream even within the LDP does a disservice to the work of understanding the prime minister and what she and her closest political allies want, which could have implications for Japan’s democracy, society, and place in the world.

1. It bears noting just how frequently Nishida discusses the “Tokyo tribunal” and “Occupation,” deep signifiers of meaning for the new conservatives. Of course, he also discusses “breaking free of the postwar regime.”

2. Stay tuned for more on this soon.