She is the first woman to lead Japan after decades of rule by older men. She is keen to revise her country’s pacifist constitution and rebuild its military. She favors big government and public spending to spur growth. She is an unabashed conservative who prefers strict immigration controls.
And now, after a record breaking election victory last week, she is stronger than ever, having called a snap election and led her party to winning 316 of the 465 seats in the lower house of Japan’s parliament—the largest seat total since the party’s inception in 1955.
Japan has been struggling with a pervasive sense of stagnation and disillusionment born of decades of deflation, wage stagnation, demographic decline and a creeping loss of confidence in the country’s place in the world.
Takaichi won by offering a message of hope and a vision for a brighter future. She rallied voters eager to believe that their hardworking leader could deliver on the promise of renewal. The landslide triumph gives Takaichi an overwhelming mandate and clears the way for her to enact a sweeping agenda of economic and security reforms that could transform Japan, the fourth largest economy in the world and the most important American ally in Asia.
It is morning again in Japan
Takaichi, a veteran conservative lawmaker, who was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and prime minister in Oct. 2025, was riding high in the polls, with approval ratings hovering around 70%, when she announced a snap election in January. But after a mere three months in office, she had little in the way of a record to brag about.
What she did have was a carefully curated, dynamic image drawing on the media management skills of her mentor: Shinzo Abe, the influential Japanese leader, who was assassinated in 2022. Her first weeks in office were a flurry of activity: attending summits overseas, hosting President Donald Trump in Japan, making policy pronouncements and managing to pass a supplemental…
