The true believer
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Takaichi Sanae entered the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) leadership on Monday, 9 September seeking to claim the mantle of the late Abe Shinzō as the foremost advocate of a muscular “national greatness” conservatism in the LDP.
She spent the much of her press conference on Monday articulating her vision of national greatness conservatism – her prepared remarks continued, seemingly without a pause for breath, for more than sixty minutes before she took questions from the press – arguing both for the protection of Japan’s vital interests and for policies to maximize Japan’s comprehensive national power. “I want to push Japan to the top of the world once again,” she said in regard to her plans for boosting Japan’s economy. Takaichi is an uncompromising believer in this vision for Japan, perhaps to an even greater extent than Abe, who throughout his career sought to leaven his ideological commitments with an awareness of political possibilities.
In economic policy, she expressed her confidence that Japan can grow its way to fiscal health without raising taxes or curbing spending; advocated the use of “strategic stimulus” to boost employment and incomes; and preserved Abe’s neo-statist commitments, denying that Japan needed to pursue labor market reforms and regulatory reforms in order to grow. Indeed, she is confident that Japan can achieve prosperity and economic strength through managing and reducing risks, such as by investing in cybersecurity, supply chain resilience, and energy independence. She also expressed the view that Japan’s underlying core-core inflation, excluding food and energy, remains weak, implying the need for continuing to follow Abe’s reflationary policy line.
On national security, she highlighted the need for Japan to strengthen its defense capabilities, including – in another argument picked up from Abe – that Japan should debate revising its three non-nuclear principles and consider allowing the introduction of US nuclear weapons into Japan, perhaps through a nuclear sharing arrangement. She also stressed, continuing themes from her 2021 candidacy, that Japan needs to invest more in new domains of war, including the space, cyber, and electromagnetic domains, and deploy more drones, hypersonic weapons, and AI to ensure the defense of Japan. She also proposed her own additions to Japan’s national security establishment – which was built out during the second Abe administration – by calling for the creation of a cabinet intelligence bureau and cabinet intelligence council to oversee Japan’s intelligence-gathering and a Japanese-equivalent to the US government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review investments in Japan.
Finally, she provided her right-wing supporters with stalwart positions on culture war issues. While she is hardly alone in desiring constitutional revision, she pledged to pursue it with greater vigor. She said she would defend the traditional male-line inheritance for the Imperial household. She expressed her determination to continue worshipping at Yasukuni Shrine as prime minister, which Abe did once as prime minister, in 2013. And she pushed back against Koizumi Shinjirō’s proposal to move quickly to pass legislation allowing spouses to have separate surnames, insisting that her own compromise proposal, which she had unsuccessfully submitted to the party in the past, would remove many of the inconveniences.
In short, with Takaichi, there are no surprises and little subtlety. She is open about wanting to be Japan’s answer to Margaret Thatcher.
But can she win the premiership?
Perhaps the main challenge she faces is to build support without Abe to help. The sixty-three-year-old Takaichi, who has won nine elections to the House of Representatives since 1993, did not join the LDP until November 1996, shortly after she won for the second time, running as a candidate of Ozawa Ichirō’s New Frontier Party. She joined what would soon become the Mori faction, making her one of several rising young conservatives in the faction along with Abe.
Her relationship with Abe smoothed her path to the highest levels of the LDP. She received her first ministerial post in Abe’s first government in 2006, as a minister of state with a portfolio including Okinawa and the Northern Territories, science and technology, gender equality, food security, and other issues. She left what had become the Machimura faction in 2011, when the faction was determined to run its leader, the late Machimura Nobutaka, instead of Abe in 2012 LDP leadership election.1 She was one of Abe’s endorsers in that leadership election, and, for her loyalty, she became the LDP’s first-ever female policy affairs chief after Abe became prime minister again, later going on to serve as minister of internal affairs and communications from 2014-2017 and then as a minister of state responsible for the My Number program from 2019-2020. Then, when she ran for the LDP leadership in 2021, Abe effectively reentered politics to serve as her campaign manager, working the phones to drum up support from right-wing lawmakers. Whether Abe genuinely expected Takaichi to win, her candidacy ensured that his ideas were represented in the campaign, she was able to hamper Kōno Tarō’s chances, and Abe and Takaichi were able to parlay her surprisingly strong campaign into influence under the Kishida government, with Takaichi serving first as the LDP’s policy chief again and then as economic security minister, controlling a portfolio important to both her and the government as a whole.
With Abe gone, her path is harder, but not impossibly so. Of course, she does not have the LDP’s right wing to herself. Kobayashi Takayuki – one of the Abe children of 2012 who preceded Takaichi as economic security minister – is no less determined than Takaichi to claim the mantle of Abe’s intellectual successor, while also arguing that he represents the passing of the torch to a new generation, as he is only forty-nine and began his political career nineteen years after Takaichi (and Abe).2 Katō Katsunobu, who supported Abe during his time in the political wilderness and then was closely involved in policymaking as both deputy chief cabinet secretary and minister of health, labor, and welfare during the second Abe administration, will enter the race on 10 September and has a robust claim of his own to Abe’s mantle. Takaichi may have the advantage of seniority and public opinion – she has ranked third consistently, behind Ishiba Shigeru and Koizumi but ahead of Kobayashi and well ahead of Katō, who is polling barely above zero – but she will not be able to rely on the solid support of right-wing lawmakers as she did in 2021, with Kobayashi having an edge with his fellow Abe children and Katō competing with her from some of the older veterans of Abe’s government as well as his former colleagues in the Motegi faction. The fact is that Abe helped served as a bridge to members of his own faction, who still resented Takaichi’s decision to leave the faction in 2011. Without Abe to help – and with other options in the field – Takaichi may not be able to bring members of the former Abe faction into her camp.
But even with the divided right wing, however, she still has a chance to make it to the second round, since she has the advantage in name recognition and popularity, which has room to grow with the launch of her campaign. Her popularity is not just the residue of Abe’s backing; she is a capable campaigner in her own right and has attracted fervent support from a portion of LDP rank-and-file supporters. Perhaps no less important, the right wing media is strongly backing her candidacy. Even if the conservative lawmakers split their votes between Takaichi, Katō, and Kobayashi, she might prevail by virtue of attracting more rank-and-file supporters than her rivals. Could she then win in a runoff? Her stridency, on full display Monday, would seemingly make her a longshot who would struggle to appeal to more mainstream parts of the party in the second round, particularly against the more popular Ishiba or Koizumi. But both men have flaws – and enemies – and Ishiba knows all too well that popularity with the rank-and-file is no guarantee of success against a more conservative opponent in a runoff. She could make a strong case against either, arguing that she is more experienced than Koizumi and a better representative of the post-Abe LDP than the unorthodox Ishiba, both of which might land with, say, Asō Tarō in the second round.
Takaichi may not enter the race as the favorite, but there is ample reason not to underrate her chances. The right wing, unsettled by Abe’s death and the scandals that have followed, is still a potent force in the LDP and it may yet have a champion who can contend for the leadership.