While campaigning for the job, Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi said that her goal “is to become the Iron Lady.” A fan of Margaret Thatcher– and heavy metal band Iron Maiden – the hard-line conservative yesterday became the first woman to be elected as Japanese prime minister.
Her election led Tokyo stocks to jump to record levels on hopes of tax cuts and increased defence spending, music to the ears, no doubt, of US president Donald Trump whose visit next week will be her first real test on the international stage. He shares her strong aversion to immigration but has been threatening Japan with tariff hikes over the cost of maintaining the US military presence.
Takaichi won 237 votes in the 465-seat lower house following a coalition deal brokered by her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that will resume its long, largely unbroken grip on power, albeit again as a minority administration.
The 26-year coalition alliance with the Buddhist Komeito party, which broke from the LDP on her surprise election to the party leadership ten days ago, has been replaced by a coalition with the smaller, reformist Japan Innovation Party (JIP).
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Although Takaichi may find it easier now in parliament to pursue policies like rearmament and the renewal of Japan’s suspended nuclear power programme, the LDP is shaky and seen as likely to split. The new cabinet, with the country’s first female finance minister, Satsuki Katayama, is an attempt to heal internal divisions by involving three of the four politicians who ran against Takaichi in the party’s leadership race – all represent the party’s more liberal wing.
Takaichi’s election is symbolically and culturally ground-breaking in a society heavily dominated by men, though the new prime minister has no pretensions to social liberalism or feminism.
Leading a divided party and in a weak parliamentary position, she has much to do if she is to find the compromises necessary to retain her grip on power, never mind implement more radical aspects of her policy platform.
