The first woman to reach the top of Japanese politics is also the most nationalistic. Amid echoes of Hitler, threats to the media and tensions with China and the US, Takaichi redefines Tokyo
On 4 October 2025, Japan made history. For the first time in its 70-year existence, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the party that has ruled the archipelago almost continuously since 1955, elected a woman as its president. Sanae Takaichi, 64, a native of the ancient capital of Nara, could become the first female prime minister in Japanese history, a country that consistently ranks last among advanced economies in gender equality indices. But behind the enthusiastic headlines about breaking the glass ceiling lies a disturbing paradox. This woman who has risen to supreme power in one of the most patriarchal societies in the industrialised world is also a staunch nationalist who opposes gender equality, has publicly praised a book entitled “Hitler’s Election Strategy”, and embodies the return of an assertive conservatism that many observers believed had been buried after the assassination of her mentor, Shinzo Abe, in 2022.
Takaichi’s victory took the Japanese political establishment and international analysts by surprise. Until a few days before the vote, all polls and predictions pointed to Shinjiro Koizumi, 44, son of the famous former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, as the winner. Koizumi is a telegenic moderate who represented the ideal choice to try to revive a party in crisis after a series of electoral defeats. His CV seemed perfect for the times. He supported LGBTQ+ rights, talked about the environment, and embodied a cosmopolitan and reassuring image. But it was precisely this veneer of moderate progressivism that proved fatal. As Gerald Curtis observed, the election campaign was “the most boring” he had seen in sixty years of observing Japan, precisely because all the candidates were “on the defensive”, terrified of saying anything controversial. In this vacuum of substance, Takaichi won because she was the only one to give voice to the anger of the party’s conservative base.
The mechanism that produced this victory reveals a lot about the nature of contemporary Japanese politics. The LDP elects its leader through a two-round system that balances, or rather contrasts, the votes of national parliamentarians and those of party members in the country’s 47 prefectures. In the first round, Takaichi won about 40% of the grassroots vote, far more than any of her rivals, buoyed by support from provincial party branches where nationalist conservatism is most deeply rooted. This overwhelming advantage forced MPs to bow to the will of the grassroots in the second round. The decisive turning point came when Taro Aso, 84, former prime minister and key figure in the party, sensed the wind changing and ordered his powerful faction to support Takaichi. He did so out of cynical calculation, riding the populist wave rather than being swept away by it. As Professor Mieko Nakabayashi of Waseda University wrote, Takaichi’s election symbolises both the resilience and fragility of the Japanese political order.
What the party establishment had not anticipated, or had chosen to ignore, was how much right-wing populism had grown in strength in the country. In the July 2025 parliamentary elections, a far-right party called Sanseito, which had emerged from a YouTube channel during the COVID pandemic with conspiracy theories about vaccines and global elites, had gone from one seat to fifteen, taking votes away from the LDP conservatives with a slogan borrowed from Trump: “Japanese first”. Many party members had left the party precisely because they considered it too soft on immigration, national identity and tradition. Takaichi won because she was the only one capable of winning back those angry voters, the only one who spoke their language. She is, in essence, the Japanese version of the MAGA phenomenon. The same anger against the establishment, the same appeal to the nation’s lost greatness, the same xenophobia barely masked by rhetoric about cultural security.
The toxic legacy: from Hitler’s “Election Strategy” to the rhetoric about the deer of Nara
Sanae Takaichi’s political career has been marked by controversy: flirtations with the far right, instrumental use of xenophobia, threats to press freedom. In 1994, when she was 33 and a rising young parliamentarian, Takaichi wrote an enthusiastic review of a book entitled Hitler’s Election Strategy, which presented the Führer as a model of strong leadership and praised his ability to “wipe out enemies with emergency measures”. Her review ended with an appeal to young Japanese people to follow that path ‘with love and dreaming of a future for the nation’. When the story resurfaced years later, sparking international protests and the book’s withdrawal from the market, Takaichi simply stated that she did not remember. No apology, no consequences. In 2014, she was photographed alongside Kazunari Yamada, leader of the National Socialist Workers’ Party of Japan, an explicitly neo-Nazi group. The Simon Wiesenthal Centre protested formally. In Japan, the scandal faded within a week. On the other hand, the aforementioned Taro Aso, a leading member of the LDP and her political mentor, had made a statement in 2017 justifying Hitler’s policies (‘Hitler, who killed millions of people, was not a good person, even though his motives were right’), which led to the cancellation of an official visit to the US as deputy prime minister during Trump’s first administration.
But it is in the field of press freedom that Takaichi has left the deepest and most lasting mark. Between 2014 and 2015, as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications in Shinzo Abe’s government, she radically transformed the way Japanese political power relates to the media. Leaked documents revealed how the Abe administration, under Takaichi’s supervision, planned to redefine the concept of “political correctness” in television journalism. Previously, impartiality was assessed on a programme-by-programme basis. Takaichi changed the rules. Impartiality would be judged on the entire broadcaster. If a single programme criticised the government in a manner deemed incorrect, the entire network could be punished. During a parliamentary hearing in 2015, Takaichi explicitly hinted that a ‘broadcast suspension order’ could be issued in the event of repeated violations. When documents proving her threats emerged, she claimed they were fake and promised to resign if they were found to be authentic. They turned out to be authentic, and she did not resign. The result was a chill that swept through the entire Japanese media system. Veteran presenters such as Hiroko Kuniya and Ichirō Furutachi were removed from their programmes for asking uncomfortable questions. Japan plummeted from 11th to 72nd place in the World Press Freedom Index.
During the COVID pandemic, Takaichi further refined her xenophobic rhetoric. In February 2020, in a parliamentary speech, she stated that ‘the infection spread rapidly because of foreigners entering the country’ and that ‘the government must take much stricter measures’. There was no supporting data, no epidemiological evidence. Just the well-known technique of turning fear into politics. Five years later, during the party leadership campaign in September 2025, Takaichi perfected the method with a new twist. During a rally, she said that ‘there are outrageous people who kick the deer in Nara’ and that ‘if there are people coming from abroad trying to damage what is dear to the Japanese, it means that things are going too far.’ Nara park officials quickly denied this. No such incident had been recorded. It was pure fiction. It is the Japanese version of Donald Trump and JD Vance’s ‘they are eating cats and dogs’. A lie designed to fuel resentment against foreigners.
Behind this rhetoric is a ghostwriter little known to the international public. Tomohiko Noguchi, former speechwriter for Shinzo Abe, is the man who writes Takaichi’s texts. Like Abe, Noguchi had ties to the Unification Church, the anti-communist Korean sect that for decades financed the Japanese right wing by extracting billions of yen from its followers with the promise of spiritual salvation. Abe’s assassination in July 2022 brought this connection to light. Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who shot the former prime minister, did so because his mother had been bankrupted by the church, and Abe was her most influential political protector. Takaichi was also photographed at Unification Church events in 2019, 2020 and 2021. When journalists discovered her presence, her office admitted her participation but downplayed it. It said it did not know who organised those meetings, only that it supported family values. It is a detail that speaks volumes. Family values, in the lexicon of the Unification Church, mean patriarchal control, opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and the subordination of women. Takaichi has never publicly criticised Abe’s ties to the sect.
The geopolitical triangle: Trump, Xi and the Taiwan dilemma
This ideological continuity with Abe becomes particularly relevant in foreign policy, where Takaichi inherits the most delicate moment for Japanese diplomacy since the end of the Second World War. The archipelago finds itself caught in a geopolitical vice. On the one hand, there is its absolute dependence on the alliance with the United States for its security. On the other, it is economically interdependent with China, the country’s largest trading partner. And in the background is the Taiwan issue, which Takaichi has turned into one of the pillars of her political identity. In April 2025, when she was still only a candidate for the party leadership, Takaichi visited Taipei and met with President Lai Ching-te. During a seminar in the Taiwanese capital, she proposed the creation of a “quasi-security alliance” that would include Japan, Taiwan, Australia, India, the Philippines and even European countries. This collective security architecture would be revolutionary, considering that Tokyo officially maintains only “non-governmental” relations with the island, in accordance with Beijing’s “one China” policy.
The idea of a quasi-alliance has obvious practical limitations and was probably aimed more at the Japanese domestic audience than at international interlocutors. However, the very fact that Takaichi proposed it and included Taiwan in the list reveals how willing she is to challenge Beijing rhetorically. During her visit, she also highlighted the unpredictability of the United States and the need for Japan and Taiwan to invest in their own autonomous defence capabilities. After her election as LDP leader, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry expressed hope that Tokyo would support Taiwan’s entry into the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the major Pacific trade agreement. Takaichi responded enthusiastically. The problem is that China is also applying to join the same agreement and has made it clear that Taiwan’s membership is unacceptable.
The paradox of Takaichi’s position is that while she presents herself as a hawk towards Beijing, she knows full well that she cannot afford a real confrontation. During the leadership campaign, in an interview with the Hudson Institute in Washington, she wrote that “peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are obviously a concern for Japan and of utmost importance to the international community”. But she also added that she wants to ‘engage in solid and frank dialogue with Chinese leaders.’ This is the squaring of the circle that Abe managed to achieve for nearly a decade thanks to his diplomatic skills. Abe knew when to make tough statements to satisfy his nationalist base and when to take pragmatic steps back to avoid real crises. Takaichi will have to prove that she possesses the same subtlety. The APEC summit to be held in Busan, South Korea, between late October and early November will likely be her first opportunity to meet with Xi Jinping. But there is a symbolic obstacle that risks poisoning that dialogue before it even begins: the Yasukuni Shrine.
Yasukuni is a Shinto shrine in the heart of Tokyo where Japanese war dead are commemorated, including fourteen Class A war criminals convicted by the Tokyo Tribunal after 1945. For China and South Korea, every visit by a Japanese prime minister to that place is perceived as an act of historical revisionism and glorification of militarism. Takaichi visited Yasukuni every year, even when she was a minister, both on 15 August, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender, and during the seasonal spring and autumn festivals. During the election campaign, she repeated that she would visit the shrine as prime minister, adding that “it should never become a diplomatic issue”. Abe himself visited Yasukuni in December 2013 when he was prime minister. The reaction was immediate and violent. Beijing launched a diplomatic campaign against Tokyo. Seoul recalled its ambassador. Even the Obama administration, a close ally of Japan, issued an official statement expressing ‘disappointment’. Since then, no Japanese prime minister in office has visited the shrine. According to sources close to Takaichi quoted by the Asahi Shimbun, the new leader is considering cancelling her visit to the autumn festival on 17-19 October, precisely to avoid diplomatic tensions ahead of crucial meetings with Trump and Xi. But how long will this tactical restraint last? Her conservative electoral base expects her to keep her promise. In 2022, during a conference, Takaichi described her political rivals as people with an “ambiguous attitude” who “do not visit Yasukuni while trying to climb the ladder”. The internal pressure to demonstrate consistency will be enormous.
And then there is Trump. The president of the USA is scheduled to visit Japan between 27 and 29 October, a visit that represents Takaichi’s first diplomatic test. Trump has always admired strong conservative leaders and had established a close personal relationship with Abe, playing golf together and exchanging constant public praise with the now-deceased Japanese leader. Takaichi explicitly presents herself as Abe’s heir and shares a strikingly similar political agenda with Trump. Both support aggressive tax cuts, strict immigration restrictions, limitations on foreign land ownership, and severe penalties for those who desecrate the national flag. Takaichi has even criticised Japan’s central bank in Trumpian tones, promising to ‘make Japan a vigorous land of the rising sun again’. But there is a problem. During the election campaign, Takaichi said she would reject the £550 billion investment agreement that Japan signed with Washington in exchange for tariff relief, calling it ‘unfair’. Trump is unlikely to appreciate his agreement being questioned by Japan’s new leader. The US administration also expects Tokyo to drastically increase military spending, possibly to 3.5% of GDP, a level that Japan’s public finances, already weighed down by huge debt and a rapidly ageing population, are unlikely to be able to sustain. Takaichi will have to decide quickly whether her economic nationalism prevails over the need to please Washington, or whether tough rhetoric will give way to the pragmatism of the alliance.
The crisis of governability
Fate has a cruel sense of irony. Just six days after being elected leader of the LDP, Sanae Takaichi saw the collapse of the governing coalition that had ruled Japan for 26 consecutive years. On 10 October, Komeito, the small Buddhist party that had been the LDP’s junior partner since 1999, announced its withdrawal from the alliance. For Komeito, a party that defines itself as pacifist and bases its identity on moral purity in opposition to the corruption of the establishment, remaining in coalition with an LDP led by Takaichi would have been political suicide. But there was more to it than that. Komeito views Takaichi’s aggressive nationalism, her visits to Yasukuni, and her support for a constitutional revision that would make Japan a normal military power with deep suspicion. These positions contradict the party’s pacifist identity and risk alienating its electoral base, which is largely composed of members of the Soka Gakkai Buddhist sect.
The collapse of the coalition transforms Takaichi from a symbol of historic renewal to potentially the weakest prime minister in post-war Japan. The parliamentary maths is clear. The LDP controls only 196 seats out of 480 in the lower house, which is what really matters, and 100 out of 242 in the upper house. Komeito has 24 and 21 respectively. Even together, the old coalition was already in the minority after the election defeats of 2024 and July 2025. Now, without Komeito, Takaichi needs the support of at least two opposition parties to govern. The options are limited and all problematic. The Japan Innovation Party, which is particularly strong in the Osaka region, could be a natural ally due to ideological affinities, but it is demanding the transformation of Osaka into the country’s second capital as a political price, a request that no Tokyo government can accept without provoking furious reactions. The smaller but strategically positioned Democratic Party for the People has indicated that it would only consider an alliance if the LDP agreed to drastically increase income tax exemption thresholds and abolish the petrol tax. These are popular measures that would cost several trillion yen and further aggravate Japan’s public debt, already among the highest in the world in relation to GDP. And then there is Sanseito, the far-right xenophobic party that would ideologically be the perfect ally for Takaichi, but at the same time is unthinkable. Formally entering into a coalition with Sanseito would mean legitimising a movement that spreads conspiracy theories, antisemitic propaganda disguised as criticism of “international Jewish financial capital”, and openly racist rhetoric. Even for Takaichi’s LDP, it would be too radical a step.
Gerald Curtis, a US American scholar who has been observing Japanese politics since the 1960s, summed up the situation succinctly. The decline and eventual collapse of the LDP is no longer a question of “if” but “when”. It could happen relatively soon. The party and its leadership are incapable of providing what the population actually needs. The election campaign was the most empty of content that Curtis has ever seen. The LDP’s model of power has expired, and Takaichi now finds herself trapped in a dead end. She won the party leadership by riding the wave of anger among the conservative base, promising firmness and national sovereignty. But to govern, she must make constant compromises with opposition parties whose agendas are incompatible with hers. Every law, every reform, every important decision will have to go through gruelling negotiations with political opponents who have every interest in making Takaichi appear weak and ineffective. The latest news even speaks of an attempt by the numerous and highly fragmented centre and centre-left opposition forces to unite to create a government that excludes the LDP, a seemingly impossible mission that Takaichi, with all her negative points, could paradoxically make possible.
Conservative populism as a global phenomenon
Sanseito’s explosive growth is perhaps the most significant phenomenon in recent Japanese politics, one that best explains Takaichi’s election and the country’s likely future. In the July 2025 elections, it went from just one seat to fifteen in the upper house, snatching votes from the LDP’s conservative base. In a country with 3.77 million foreign residents out of a population of 125 million, just 3%, Sanseito built its electoral fortune by raising the spectre of a “silent invasion”. The tactic worked particularly well in a difficult economic context. Real wages in Japan have been stagnant for thirty years and have even been falling in recent months. Inflation has returned after decades of deflation, but without being accompanied by proportional wage increases. Middle-class workers are seeing their taxes rise to finance a pension and healthcare system under increasing pressure due to the ageing population.
But Sanseito is not an isolated phenomenon. He represents the arrival in Japan of a populist wave that has already transformed politics in Europe and the United States. Giorgia Meloni in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, the AfD in Germany, Trump in the United States. All have built their consensus by mixing identity nationalism, economic protectionism and hostility towards immigration. Japan, which for decades was considered an exception to these dynamics thanks to its cultural homogeneity and insular isolation, has proved vulnerable to exactly the same mechanisms. The difference is that xenophobia has particularly fertile ground in Japan because the country has long remained closed and mass immigration is a very recent phenomenon. The foreign population has grown by 50% in the last ten years, largely to compensate for labour shortages in key sectors such as construction, healthcare, agriculture and manufacturing. Without these workers, much of the Japanese economy would simply grind to a halt. Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda noted that foreign workers accounted for more than half of the country’s workforce growth between 2023 and 2024, while making up only 3% of the total population. Yet, as Les Echos wrote in an analysis of Japan’s “schizophrenia” on immigration, the government still has no immigration policy to speak of. The country only admits temporary workers on short-term visas who have no intention of settling permanently.
Sanseito’s international strategy is equally revealing. Last month, the party organised an event in Tokyo featuring Charlie Kirk, the US American influencer who played a crucial role in mobilising the youth vote for Trump. Kirk told the Japanese audience that it was not too late to stop “the mass immigration that is ruining the West”. A week after that event, Kirk was murdered in Arizona. Sanseito sent representatives to his funeral. The party also met with representatives of Germany’s AfD in Tokyo and asked for its leader, Sohei Kamiya, to participate in podcasts hosted by Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson. Bannon and Carlson responded enthusiastically. This participation in a transnational network of right-wing populist movements is a first for Japan, a country whose politics have traditionally been insular and uninterested in international connections outside of official diplomatic channels. According to sources cited by the Japan Times, Sanseito intends to invite prominent figures from the French, German and British right to conferences to be held in Japan in 2025 and 2026. Senator Sen Yamanaka, a former banker educated in the United States who heads Sanseito’s international division, explained that international recognition helps Kamiya avoid being “crushed” by the national establishment. In a country where social conformity is still a powerful norm and where those who deviate are traditionally marginalised, having the support of figures such as Bannon or Carlson confers an alternative legitimacy.
Sanseito’s impact on Japanese politics goes far beyond its fifteen parliamentary seats. It has shifted the entire political spectrum to the right, pushing the LDP to radicalise its positions in order to avoid further electoral losses. The LDP’s internal report after its July election defeat explicitly acknowledged that a portion of conservative voters had abandoned the party because they considered it too progressive on issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, immigration and the system of separate surnames for married couples. Takaichi won the party leadership precisely because she represented the antithesis of that path. Her election is a capitulation by the LDP to populist pressure. Instead of fighting Sanseito, the party has chosen to imitate it.
Andrea Ferrario is an Italian international politics blogger with a focus on East Asia. He has collaborated with the weekly magazine Internazionale and is co-editor of the website Crisi Globale.
The Italian original of this article was first published on the author’s Substack. This English translation was first published on the Left Renewal Blog.
More content from this blog
- Left Renewal Blog Seeking Co-editors
- Where Are Iran’s Protests Going in 2026?, by Frieda Afary – 8 January 2026
- The RSF’s Capture of El Fasher, Sudan: A Roundup, by Alex Thurston – 29 October 2025
- The Incomplete End of Nepal’s Hindu Monarchy, by Amish Raj Mulmi – 5 April 2025
- The Global South’s Views on Ukraine Are More Complex Than You May Think, by Michael Karadjis – 17 August 2023
- The Palestinian Male Body Between Patriarchy and Colonialism, by Ward – 20 February 2026