When Sanae Takaichi took over as leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last October, the party, which has dominated Japan’s postwar politics, was mired in one of its deepest crises. The LDP was riven by a major slush fund corruption scandal and facing widespread criticism of its economic policies, blamed for Japan’s decades of stagnant real wages and lacklustre growth. Sharpening this plight, the country has suffered a sustained cost-of-living crisis since 2022, as global commodity prices surged following the supply chain disruptions from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The situation was worsened by a weak yen and supply shortages at home; the price of rice nearly doubled. Successive liberal prime ministers appeared too weak to tackle these issues, and unable to fill the leadership vacuum left by Abe Shinzo’s assassination in 2022. Public disaffection led to an exodus of the LDP’s core conservative electorate to insurgent far-right challengers – the right-populist Sanseito most notably. In the 2024 Lower House and 2025 Upper House elections, the party was punished with a historic loss of majorities in both chambers.
Takaichi’s victory in the ensuing leadership contest – held under the slogan ‘#Change, LDP’ – was largely due to her reputation as a hardline conservative, which appealed to the party’s rank-and-file. It immediately prompted the exit of the centrist Komeito, the LDP’s traditional partner since 1999, from the ruling coalition, alarmed by her hawkish views and lenient stance on corruption. She held onto power through a pact with the right-leaning Japan Innovation Party (Ishin), but the LDP remained in a precarious position, requiring arduous coordination with their new partner and further deals with occasional allies such as the Democratic Party for the People (DPP). Takaichi also appeared to immediately betray the LDP’s promise of ‘change’ by appointing seven scandal-ridden politicians to the Cabinet and just two female state ministers, visibly failing to tackle graft or deliver on her campaign pledge to increase women’s representation. Likewise, her agenda appeared to offer few novelties, if anything accelerating the policy course set by her predecessors: aggressive fiscal stimulus and stronger defence.
Despite this unpropitious start, in January Takaichi made a bold gamble, springing one of the swiftest dissolutions of the National Diet in postwar history, barely three months into her tenure and during the period typically assigned to budget deliberations. For all the criticism of its inappropriate timing and lack of formal justification, the gambit paid off dramatically. On 8 February, the ‘Takaichi whirlwind’ swept across Japan, delivering the LDP a landslide victory of 316 out of 465 seats. The party now enjoys an unprecedented two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives. Buoyed by a surge in support among young and unaffiliated voters, it achieved a proportional vote share of between 30 and 40 per cent across all age groups and regions. Exceeding all projections, the LDP actually ran out of proportional representation candidates – Japan’s electoral system is mixed, with 60 per cent of deputies (289) elected via first-past-the post in single-seat constituencies, and the remaining 176 members elected proportionally – forfeiting as many as 14 potential seats. Snowstorms and irregular polling station hours did not dampen public enthusiasm, with turnout modestly increasing.
The scale of Takaichi’s triumph cannot be overstated. The LDP now unilaterally controls all House of Representatives’ committees, can override the decisions of the House of Councillors, and can initiate constitutional amendments – a long-cherished goal since the party’s foundation in 1955. Meanwhile, the decimated opposition has little means to contain the LDP’s monopoly on decision-making. The largest anti-LDP force, the Centrist Reform Alliance (Chudo) – a hasty merger of the Constitutional Democratic Party and the Komeito – failed to cohere. Organizationally fragmented, with a platform stitched together under a ‘people-first’ slogan, the alliance did not convince voters. The Democrats’ compromises to accommodate the Komeito undermined their credibility: backtracking on their opposition to nuclear power-plants and to Abe’s security reforms. The frenzied reshuffling of former rivals under the big tent of the Chudo without a clear narrative left its candidates adrift. As a result, the Chudo were reduced from 167 to just 49 seats, not only leaving the alliance with little effective check on the government but also facing questions about its continued viability. The remaining seats were split between seven parties. But the election has shifted the power dynamics, limiting the influence of even those parties close to the LDP, both within the coalition (in Ishin’s case) and outside it (as with the DPP).
A necessary condition of this decisive outcome was the structural disadvantage of Japan’s fractured opposition, which often struggles to gain basic name recognition, let alone present a credible alternative to the LDP within the compressed 12-day campaign period. The disproportionate nature of first-past-the-post, used to decide the majority of seats, poses another obstacle, magnifying electoral swings. The LDP captured 86 per cent of constituency seats (249) with just 49 per cent of constituency votes; the Chudo’s 21 per cent of the vote, meanwhile, earned them just 2 per cent of these seats, reducing their impressive 2024 yield of 108 seats to just 7.
But the scale of the swing cannot be explained by this alone. The LDP’s emphatic win reflects the extent of Takaichi’s personal appeal and highly effective image-crafting. First elected in 1993, Takaichi ranks among Japan’s most experienced politicians, in office eleven times with a resumé of Cabinet and party executive positions. She is also a prominent representative of the LDP’s ultra-conservative wing, regarded as an unapologetic nationalist, a security hawk and a proponent of traditional gender roles, vocal in her opposition to female succession to the throne, same-sex marriage and separate spousal surnames, currently prohibited in Japan. Her political career had not been without controversies. Before taking office, Takaichi had drawn the ire of Japan’s neighbours with denials of Japan’s wartime aggression and atrocities and repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, which memorializes convicted war criminals. Calls to revise the 1995 Murayama Statement – which acknowledges Japan’s historic responsibility for war crimes and offers reconciliation through an apology to its colonial victims – had sparked criticism even within the LDP. She has also in the past expressed a willingness to restrict individual rights in emergencies for the sake of ‘public interest and order’ and to suspend broadcasters that lack ‘political fairness’, raising broader concerns about encroaching on constitutional principles.
These past controversies receded into the background amid the media fervour she generated after taking office. Takaichi presented herself as a mould-breaker, playing up her novelty: Japan’s first female prime minister, an amateur drummer, a motorbike enthusiast. In contrast to her mentor Abe, who came from a line of prominent politicians, she hails from an ordinary middle-class background without a political pedigree, claims no affiliation with the much-maligned LDP factions and bears little resemblance to the party old guard. She projects a fresh, relatable image, which not only distracted from the LDP’s unresolved scandals, but fuelled pop-fandom – dubbed ‘Sanaemania’: her signature black handbag rapidly sold out and her favourite pen went viral. Her approachable communication style and effective use of social media sharply differentiated her from rivals (‘When it comes to elections, Japan is a really analogue place’, one historian noted recently). Already the Japanese party leader with the largest online audience, her following surged during the campaign; the number of LDP voters who primarily used online sources to make their pick at the ballot box grew accordingly.
These tactics, though updated for the digital age, are reminiscent of the dashing, personalized, media-savvy political style deployed by Junichiro Koizumi, who led the ruling LDP in the early 2000s. One could discern faint echoes of Koizumi’s 2006 air guitar performance before President Bush in Takaichi’s ‘drumbeat diplomacy’ with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. Fashioning himself as an ‘outsider’ and framing elections as referenda on his charismatic leadership, Koizumi swayed unaffiliated voters, who have come to define electoral outcomes in Japan’s volatile and de-aligned political system. The LDP captured about a quarter of independents’ votes this time, outpacing all rivals.
Takaichi also projects an assertiveness calculated to win back the conservative vote lost to right-wing populists in the 2025 Upper House contest. Her promotion of stronger defence and a harsh stance on China reflected this most vividly. By declaring a potential attack on Taiwan an ‘existential threat’ to Japan, she broached the possibility of the limited use of military force abroad – normally constrained by Article 9 of the pacifist constitution, which Takaichi wishes to revise. Her rhetoric, departing from the strategic ambiguity long upheld by the US and its allies, and her refusal to moderate it after Beijing’s reprisals, resonated with public demand for a decisive leader and met with broad approval. In the same vein, her Cabinet’s accelerated debates on tougher immigration measures, aimed at cracking down on violations, tightening foreign land ownership and residency requirements, and curbing overtourism, appealed to the growing public unease over the influx of foreigners.
The third pillar of Takaichi’s brand – along with relatability and resolve – is competent leadership, designed to soothe public anxieties about Japan’s future. On this point, she drew on her connection to Abe and borrowed from his tactical playbook. Her campaign presented a disciplined message emphasizing bread-and-butter issues, by far the public’s major concern – economic policy accounted for about 70 per cent of her stump speeches – while downplaying more divisive issues, an echo of Abe’s ‘switch-and-bait’ strategy of running on uncontroversial themes to win strong mandates, before moving onto more contentious proposals. By promising to suspend the consumption tax on food, a longstanding opposition plank, she neutralized rivals’ attacks while side-stepping deeper policy debate. Early in her tenure she unveiled ‘Sanaenomics’ – a clear continuation of ‘Abenomics’, pledging to stimulate growth through expansionary monetary and fiscal policies, with the added twist of investment in high-tech sectors such as semiconductors and AI. The passage of a record post-pandemic supplementary budget of 18.3 trillion yen ($117 billion) bolstered her credibility as a champion of economic recovery, as did cost-of-living relief, including cash handouts and subsidies for utility charges and local governments. Her international engagements added further lustre to her profile, most importantly her rapport with President Trump.
Takaichi’s skilful publicity management thus prepared the public mood for the snap election, savvily called during her ‘honeymoon’ period, when her Cabinet was enjoying remarkably high ratings of 60–70 per cent. The political stability and transformative potential portended by her victory delighted investors and international allies. Yet this excitement obscures the challenges ahead and the internal contradictions of Takaichi’s agenda. Can she deliver on her slogan of a ‘stronger and more prosperous Japan’ while navigating mounting geopolitical and economic pressures?
In foreign and security policy, she will continue to prioritize Japan’s alliance with the US, while strengthening multilateral arrangements and beefing up the country’s military forces amid declining confidence in American leadership and dependability. This hard-line agenda aligns with White House ambitions for Japan to assume more responsibility for regional security. Already committed to boosting defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP this financial year, Takaichi also plans to establish an intelligence agency and pass an anti-espionage law, heightening concerns over public surveillance. In a more controversial move threatening Japan’s pacifist credentials and longstanding limits on its military capabilities, her Cabinet has also initiated a review of key security documents. This could pave the way for loosening restrictions on military exports, including lethal weapons, and reconsidering the Three Non-Nuclear Principles introduced by Prime Minister Sato in 1967, which earned him the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the prospect of Takaichi moving beyond her predecessors’ rhetoric to pursue a constitutional amendment and thereby fundamentally reconfiguring Japan’s postwar identity seems remote. Structural constraints remain, namely the LDP’s lack of a majority in the House of Councillors as well as divided public opinion; a regional backlash, meanwhile, would be guaranteed.
The militaristic course envisaged by Takaichi places Japan in a vulnerable position between faltering US commitment and a hostile China. Whether she can maintain Trump’s goodwill in the short term depends on Japan’s delivery of the $550 billion investment pledge made as part of their trade deal, with progress – scant so far – expected when the two leaders convene in the White House in March. Meanwhile, the effects of Takaichi’s rhetoric against Japan’s towering neighbour are already palpable. Maritime frictions have increased and Beijing has limited Japanese seafood imports and moved to restrict rare earth exports, while visitors from China have plunged by 61 per cent since the previous year, hitting the tourist industry. In a context where none of Japan’s allies is ready to antagonize China overtly, and even Washington is softening its trade war stance, Takaichi’s aggressive disposition, which may have proved prudent in the election, is at odds with economic reason and regional security. An overriding focus on security likewise risks wasting her political capital on issues of secondary public concern.
The home front is also not without dilemmas. The viability of fiscal expansion as a means of stimulating growth, devised under Abe for an era of deflation, is in question in an age of rising prices, mounting bond yields and sovereign debt already surpassing 230 per cent of GDP. Despite the immediate political windfall, the long-term effects of stimulus may be equivocal, especially in the absence of structural reforms enhancing productivity and addressing Japan’s demographic decline. Even the pledged reduction in the consumption tax, used to fund social security obligations – swelling in a hyper-aged society – left many within the LDP and bureaucracy ambivalent. Takaichi’s anti-immigration stance also bodes poorly given these demographic realities.
The tension between successful electoral tactics and sustainable governance is hardly new to politics. Even a figure as powerful as Abe struggled to deliver on his programme. His economic agenda went largely unrealised; the main reason his approval remained high was the absence of credible alternatives. Abe had a robust team of party allies and policy experts. He governed with a loyal coalition partner and factional backing that both insulated him in moments of crisis and served as a brake on executive overreach. Takaichi, by contrast, has thinner organizational capital, and her leadership style is more unilateral. Her wide personal mandate, resting on charisma and floating voter support, may prove to be thin, if not backed by concrete accomplishments. Whether she can deliver without overstepping the government’s authority, deepening societal rifts and stoking regional tensions will determine whether the ‘Takaichi whirlwind’ turns out to be more than a mere interlude in Japan’s age of drift.
Read on: R. Taggart Murphy, ‘Legacies of Abe Shinzo’, NLR 137.