Issue:
November 2025
Sanae Takaichi owes her status as Japan’s first female prime minister to a vengeful Taro Aso
In early October the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) elected Sanae Takaichi as the party’s first female president. And after several weeks of drama and coalition talks with opposition parties, she is now Japan’s first female prime minister.
Aside from diehard fans of Takaichi and her right-wing views, media pundits gave a muted reaction to her historic appointment, although she enjoyed high public approval ratings in Kyodo News and Yomiuri Shimbun polls conducted straight after she formed her cabinet.
Takaichi, a protege of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is a controversial and divisive figure. She is deeply connected to Japan’s right-wing media and organizations such as Nippon Kaigi that more moderate elements of the LDP avoid. Now that she is prime minister,
Takaichi the divider must quickly become Takaichi the uniter if she is to accomplish anything during the autumn session of parliament.
Her first challenge may be to figure out how to handle the man who got her elected: Taro Aso, a former prime minister who acts as the party’s senior adviser. His decision to back Takaichi was made for several reasons. Ideologically, the two have much in common. But the wily 85-year-old also recognized that Takaichi’s inexperience in senior government posts and her lack of popularity with many LDP lawmakers gave him a golden opportunity to become the power behind the throne.
The two also share an intense dislike of her immediate predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba. Aso supported Takaichi against Ishiba in last year’s LDP presidential race for that reason. Ishiba’s victory and his yearlong premiership cast the pair into political wilderness for a year, prompting Aso to encourage Takaichi to travel around the country and raise her profile among rank-and-file party members.
Takaichi, who had been co-leader of a group of Diet members connected to Nippon Kaigi, used the group’s influence to help build support. She wrote several books and appeared in conservative media consumed by her core supporters – right-wing and conservative members of the LDP. She devoted time to improving her social media presence this past year, and amplified her message via her increasingly popular YouTube channel.
But it was Aso’s influence in the October 4 party election that put her where she is now. Worried about being unable to control the more politically experienced and more moderate candidate Yoshimasa Hayashi, and determined not to back arch-rival Yoshihide Suga’s friend Shinjiro Koizumi, Aso, head of the last remaining LDP faction, lobbied hard for Takaichi.
While Takaichi now owes Aso, she faces questions about how she will respond if he starts to throw his weight around behind the scenes. Her current popularity with the public could nosedive, while the voices of her opponents in the LDP could become much louder. Takaichi could find her administration’s polling numbers rival those of another former prime minister just before he resigned: Yoshiro Mori, who had a 7% approval rating just before he left office in 2000.
Takaichi’s coalition deal with Nippon Ishin no Kai (the Japan Innovation Party) could also come back to bite her. She allowed long-term LDP coalition partner Komeito, whose more pacifist and socially progressive policies Takaichi, Aso, and their friends disliked, to leave the coalition, preferring to pair up with the more conservative, but politically inexperienced, Ishin. Journalists and historians will come to see the agreement either as a master stroke that brought political stability and enhanced her power, or a dreadful miscalculation that sunk her administration.
A promise she made at Ishin’s insistence to get legislation passed reducing the number of lower house members by 10% will not be accepted by any party, including her own, without a fight, and has been decried as unrealistic even by members of her own party. In addition, just days into her premiership, some in Ishin’s Osaka base were grumbling because the coalition agreement Osaka governor and Ishin co-leaser Hirofumi Yoshimura reached with Takaichi did not include cabinet posts for Ishin lawmakers. That could create friction between the two parties in the coming weeks, as cabinet ministers meet to decide policy.
It is, of course, too early to issue a verdict on Takaichi’s partnership with Yoshimura’s mavericks from Osaka. But unlike the other two main opposition parties, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Democratic Party for the People, Ishin could create problems for her.
Ishin has tried and repeatedly failed to greatly expand its influence beyond its Osaka base. It has long been dismissed as the “Osaka branch” of the LDP, given the two parties' negligible policy differences. Ishin supports a merger between Osaka city and prefecture – a local vote winner – but voters in other parts of the country will understandably wonder what they will get in return for backing an Ishin candidate as opposed to one from the LDP. Not much, is the answer, as clearly demonstrated in poll results for Ishin outside of Osaka.
The second pitfall of Takaichi’s alliance with Ishin is the lack of veterans she can call on to help govern. With the notable exception of Seiji Maehara, a former foreign minister, few Ishin members can offer advice based on cabinet experience. The party’s cumbersome organizational structure, with Yoshimura and lower house member Fumitake Fujita acting as co-leaders, has also resulted in well-documented governance problems and a string of scandals, defections, and election losses. Dealing with Ishin’s two leaders, especially if they are at odds with each other or can’t quickly agree, could prove trying for Takaichi and her cabinet.
Even before Nippon Ishin agreed to support Takaichi, opposition parties and the media speculated that her time in office would be short. She appealed to LDP party members nostalgic for the Shinzo Abe years. But it’s 2025, not 2015, and much has changed since Abe was at the height of his power and influence.
Takaichi, however, continues to invoke her mentor’s legacy and rhetoric, deploying the English phrase Abe used at a Washington D.C. thinktank after returning to office in 2012: "Japan is back.” That was interpreted by some as a rebuke to her enemies in the moderate faction of the LDP. But Takaichi wrongly assumes that the majority of voters – as opposed to most LDP members – shares her nostalgia for the kind of Japan Abe once dreamed of.
While older party supporters, especially those in rural areas, embrace that ideology, Takaichi will only be able to govern if she meets the needs of other people, especially younger floating voters in major urban centers. They are becoming an increasingly powerful constituency in Japanese politics, and will only elect politicians they believe are capable of compromising to offer solutions to the country’s most pressing social and economic problems. They are much less interested in the ideological issues that have long been Takaichi’s obsession.
Eric Johnston is the Senior National Correspondent for the Japan Times. The views expressed within are his own and do not represent those of the Japan Times.
