Japan will go to the polls in February for a general election after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called a snap poll today. Takaichi is looking to make the most of her extraordinarily high approval ratings – in what has proved quite a lengthy honeymoon period – to secure a more comfortable mandate for her ambitious policy platform. It is a bold move by Japan’s first female prime minister and not without risk.
Her Liberal Democratic party (LDP), the closest thing Japan has to the UK Conservatives and long seen as the natural party of government, has a slim majority in the lower house thanks to the support of three independent lawmakers but lacks a majority in the upper chamber. This means that at present Takaichi can pass finance bills without the support of opposition parties but her room for maneuver is restricted and her position remains precarious.
Takaichi is gambling on her personal appeal – she has recorded approval rates as high as 78 percent
Takaichi is gambling on her personal appeal – she has recorded approval rates as high as 78 percent, something not seen since the days of the maverick Junichiro Koizumi back in the early 2000s. Will that be enough to override the public’s dwindling interest in her venerable but tainted party? The LDP has suffered a steady erosion in support over the last few years after a series of scandals, lackluster leaders and seeming inability to make any progress in ameliorating the faltering economy. It also faces a challenge from the right in the shape of new “internet party” Sanseito.
Takaichi seems to have done the impossible by becoming a popular LDP politician. She hit the ground running when President Trump dropped in for a successful visit in October. The two looked positively smitten on stage at Yokosuka naval base and Takaichi was credited with repairing some of the damage inflicted by the previous administration of Shigeru Ishiba, with whom Trump didn’t seem to gel.
She then courted controversy but won popular approval for talking tough on Taiwan – implying in November that Japan might intervene if China invaded. Meanwhile, her uncompromising stance on immigration and talk of clamping down on gaijin owning land seems not to have done her any harm either. And she has big plans for the economy, with a 21 trillion yen ($133 billion) stimulus package aimed at boosting growth in the works.
The Japanese seem fond of Takaichi, her pledge to “work, work, work, work and work” went down well in a nation of toilers (she sleeps between two and four hours a night like her heroine Margaret Thatcher). And she gained sympathy for still finding time to act as carer for her partially paralyzed husband. Such is her popularity that the items she uses, such as her handbag, pearls and even stationery have sold out to admirers (a phenomenon known by the portmanteau term “Sanakatsu” – Sanae buying).
She has an endearing quirkiness. Her drum duet with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung this week was entertainingly daft, and probably not entirely a stunt – Takaichi was in a heavy metal band when she was young.
But look more closely at Takaichi and her record and it all seems less impressive. Her comments on Taiwan were bullish but reckless and achieved nothing except incensing the Chinese. Even Trump mildly rebuked her. Some of her rhetoric on foreigners sails close to the wind too – she highlighted a supposed outrage when a foreign tourist kicked a deer in temple grounds, a story that turned out to be baseless.
And simply making it more difficult for foreigners to come, or stay (my work visa is mooted to go up to $270 this year, from around $40) or own property (a database of foreigners owning land is being compiled) does nothing to address the key question of why employers in Japan need to import labor in the first place: the plummeting birth rate.
As for her stimulus package, it has the same kind of wrapping as Trump’s “big beautiful bill” and has provoked the same kind of scorn from some economists and commentators. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph, who calls Takaichi the “false Thatcher,” slammed the package, which will be funded by tax rises and borrowing, as a “smorgasbord of give aways” and a “populist misadventure” with huge risks for the Japanese economy.
Japan’s Iron Lady is throwing the iron dice but the potential rewards are great and the consequences could be huge. At the moment Takaichi certainly looks like a winner though and there is a sense here that the established routine of a new PM every year has to be broken. Stability is needed and someone needs to be given a decent run at the job.
If Sanae Takaichi can pull it off it will set an arresting example of a charismatic and popular leader revitalizing a seemingly declining, perhaps even moribund legacy party, wracked by scandal and tarnished by apparent failure.
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