When Japan’s first female prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, was officially sworn in on October 21, she faced a daunting array of challenges, which many critics felt would be made only more difficult by her nationalistic social and historical views, hawkish security and defence policies and right-wing Thatcherite economics.

Nevertheless, the early signs are that Takaichi has also inherited the pragmatism and diplomatic skill of her mentor, the late Abe Shinzo, who succeeded in becoming Japan’s longest-serving prime minister (2006–7 and 2012–20). Whether that will translate into similar political longevity for Takaichi will depend on how well she can manage the new political party dynamics evolving both inside and outside the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

During Abe’s tenure the LDP benefited from a secure and stable coalition with the centrist and socially conservative Komeito, which is affiliated with the Soka Gakkai religious movement, a sect with strong Buddhist and pacifist roots. A week after Takaichi’s ascension to the LDP presidency, Komeito announced that it would be leaving the coalition, ostensibly because of a “party funds” scandal, but also unmistakably because of its disapproval of Takaichi as leader. On October 20, Takaichi signed a new coalition agreement  with the Osaka-based free-market Japan Innovation Party (JIP). If this new coalition proves durable, it may enable Takaichi to go where Abe longed, but feared, to tread: toward the creation of an openly patriotic and independent Japan no longer ashamed of its past and no longer shackled by the constraints of its pacifist constitution.¹

The New Japan envisaged by both Abe and Takaichi would continue to be a leader among liberal democracies and a strong advocate of the global trading regime. (Abe played this role brilliantly when he filled the vacuum caused by President Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.) But it would also have an independent military commensurate with Japan’s economic strength and geopolitical importance. Opponents of Takaichi’s rise have repeatedly warned of possibly damaging relations with China and both Koreas (where wartime grievances still fester), as well as the United States. The early signs are that each of these nations is prepared to accept an evolution of Japanese foreign policy, but that Takaichi risks being both overly provocative toward China and unduly fawning toward Trump.

Soon after her election, she hosted President Trump in Tokyo, and garnered a positive evaluation from the President using a combination of flattery (promising to nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize), golfing paraphernalia (a gold-leaf ball, a putter used by his friend Abe and a bag signed by Japanese golfing champion Matsuyama Hideki) and assurances of increased defence spending by Japan (2 per cent of Japanese GDP by March 2026). The meeting’s signal achievement was a bilateral agreement to reduce reliance on Chinese critical minerals and rare earths, including a project for “rare earth development in the waters around Minamitorishima.” Her first meetings with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and other leaders at the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and at the APEC Summit in Gyeonju, South Korea, also went smoothly.

Nevertheless, one of the keys to Takaichi’s success in the most recent leadership contest was her appeal to rising conservative nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment in Japan.  Like Abe, she is a member of Nippon Kaigi, the nationalist lobby group that explicitly aims to “change the national postwar consciousness based on the Tokyo Tribunal (the 1946–48 War Crimes Tribunal) view of history.”

While Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications in Abe’s government (in 2014–17 and again in 2019–20), she gained notoriety for being one of the first cabinet ministers to repeatedly visit the Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto memorial originally founded by Emperor Meiji in 1869 to honour all of Japan’s war dead. That includes 14 Class A war criminals from World War II, including Tojo Hideki, the wartime Prime Minister, and Matsui Iwane, the general most responsible for the Nanking Massacre. Both Beijing and Seoul have seen the shrine as a symbol of Japanese militarism and colonialism and have officially objected to the recent visits and ritual offerings made there as demonstrating insufficient remorse for Japanese atrocities.

Although Takaichi has refrained from visiting the shrine since becoming Prime Minister, she has done something evidently far worse for Sino-Japanese relations – repeating her long-held support for an independent Taiwan, and even signalling (in the heat of a parliamentary debate) Japan’s willingness to lend military support to collective defence of the island. This was a marked departure from the policy of “strategic ambiguity” toward Taiwan that Tokyo, like Washington, had followed in recent years.

Specifically, Takaichi was asked by an opposition politician in the lower house budget committee on November 7 what she considered a “survival-threatening situation” – one of the essential conditions for exercising the right of collective self-defence in the national security legislation passed in 2015 by Prime Minister Abe. While all previous prime ministers since 2015 (including Abe) had avoided describing an attack by China on Taiwan as a survival-threatening situation for fear of antagonizing Beijing, Takaichi grasped the nettle. She stated that a line of private ships from China surrounding Taiwan would not constitute such a situation, but that if China conducted the naval blockade while military fighting was taking place, it would meet the definition, and the Self-Defence Forces would be sent to provide support.

The Chinese foreign ministry wasted little time in demanding a retraction and accusing Japan of interfering in its internal affairs. By November 14, China’s ministry of defence had warned Japan of a “crushing defeat” if it interfered in the Taiwan issue, and by the end of the week the foreign ministry had warned China’s citizens (who comprise about a quarter of the tourists who visit Japan each year) to avoid travel to Japan. Three of China’s largest airlines subsequently posted statements to their websites offering full refunds or changes for flights to Japan from November 15 through December 31. For its part, the Japanese embassy in China warned its citizens in China to avoid crowds and not to travel alone. Meanwhile, the Japanese government dispatched an envoy to Beijing on November 18 in a bid to ease tensions.

It is difficult to imagine either side ever fully backing down. Treating Taiwan as an internal matter – as a “renegade province” of China – has long been a cornerstone of China’s policy. And not only is Takaichi averse to changing her mind (her hero and role model is Margaret Thatcher, and she admires Taiwan as a free-market democracy), but to retract her statement could reduce whatever deterrent effect the policy of strategic ambiguity currently has. Accordingly, the Japanese government has stated that Takaichi will not comment further on the specific hypothetical scenario but still defends her position.

Opinion is divided over whether Takaichi has committed a serious diplomatic blunder by needlessly answering a hypothetical question, or whether she may have ultimately strengthened her government’s position and that of Japan’s security alliances by checking China’s drift toward aggressive unilateralism. Early polls conducted in mid-November  showed an approval rate of 69.6 per cent for the new cabinet, an improvement of 5.5 per cent over the numbers when Takaichi took office. In mid-November, 53.6 per cent of Japanese people surveyed approved of the government’s fiscal and monetary policies, and fully 60.4 per cent favoured an “increase in defence spending in order to bolster Japan’s defence capabilities” – although only 48.8 per cent supported the exercise of its “right to collective self-defence in the event of a Taiwan contingency.” There was also strong support for Takaichi’s tougher stand on immigration, particularly among younger voters.

Notwithstanding the precarity of the new LDP-JIP coalition government (their combined total of 231 seats in the 2024 election is two shy of a majority in the lower house of parliament), Takaichi does not seem destined to join her predecessors Suga, Kishida and Ishiba in the revolving door of post-Abe Japanese premierships. She has charted a confident, more assertive path to the future, and for the time being Japan appears ready to follow.

Note

¹ Article 9 of the postwar Japanese Constitution states (according to the official English translation) that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” In 2014–15, the LDP government of Abe Shinzo approved a reinterpretation of Article 9 that allows Japan to exercise the right of “collective self-defence” and passed a series of laws allowing the Japan Self-Defence Forces (JDF) to “provide material support to allies” engaged in combat internationally. Growing public concern over regional security has driven a growth in support for constitutional amendment in annual surveys conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun  and Asahi Shimbun newspapers. Significantly, recent polls have shown that more than 60 per cent of the supporters of Nippon Ishin (JIP), the LDP’s new coalition partner, support changing the constitution, while only 40 per cent of Komeito supporters do. A constitutional amendment would require a two-thirds majority in parliament and a simple majority in a referendum to effect it (as per Article 96 of the Japanese Constitution).