Sanaetakachi, the newly elected ruling Japanese party leader, will attend a press conference after the LDP presidential election in Tokyo on Saturday, October 4, 2025.
Yamazaki Yuichi | Pool photos via AP
Japan’s ruling party chose Hardline conservative Sanaetakachi as its head on Saturday, putting her on the course and becoming the country’s first female prime minister in a move to investors and neighbors.
The liberal Democrats, who have ruled Japan for almost all of the postwar years, elected 64-year-old Takaichi, who has been angered by rising prices and regained trust from the public, attracted by opposition groups who promised to stimulate and tighten immigrants.
A vote in Congress to choose an alternative to the resigned Isgaba is expected on October 15th. The deflection is supported because the ruling coalition holds the largest seat.
I will inherit the party of crisis
The only woman out of five LDP candidates, Kochi won in a leak against the more moderate Kishi Onojima, 44-year-old nighiro, who had bid to become the youngest modern leader in Japan.
Kochi, a former Minister of Economic Security and Home Affairs, with the world’s fourth largest economy, will take over the party in crisis.
Various other political parties, including the Expansive Democrats for People and the Anti-Immigrant Sansate, have steadily seduced voters, especially young people, away from the LDP.
The LDP and its coalition partners have lost a majority in both houses under Isba for the past year, causing his resignation.
“Recently, I’ve heard harsh voices from all over the country saying I don’t know what the LDP is representing anymore,” Kochi said in a speech before the leaked vote. “That sense of urgency drove me. I wanted to turn people’s anxiety about their daily lives and their future into hope.”
Her hero is Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of the UK.
Prime Minister Abe’s “Abenomics” strategy, his strategy to boost the economy with aggressive spending and simple monetary policy, has previously criticised the Bank of Japan’s rising interest rates.
Such a spending shift could scare investors on Japanese bonds, worry about one of the world’s biggest debt loads, and put downward pressure on the yen.
Naoya Hasegawa, chief bond strategist at Okasan Securities in Tokyo, said Takada’s election weakened the BOJ’s rate of hikes this month.
At a press conference after her victory, Kochi made various plans to cut taxes and increase subsidies, but she said she understands “the importance of financial prudence.” BOJ’s monetary policy must explain economic vulnerability and wage growth, she said.
Stick to Trump’s trade deal
Kochi said he had planned to honor the investment contract with President Donald Trump, which reduced tariffs he punished in exchange for investments supported by Japanese taxpayers.
Japan’s US ambassador George Glass congratulated Takachi and posted to X that he looks forward to strengthening its partnership with Japan “in all aspects.”
However, her nationalist position may regularly visit the Yaskuni Temple to visit the war dead in Japan, and rile neighbors like South Korea and China, as some Asian countries consider to be symbols of militarism in the past.
South Korea will “work together to maintain positive momentum in South Korea and Japan relations,” President Lee Jae Myung’s office said in a statement.
Kochi also supported a revision of Japan’s pacifist postwar constitution, suggesting that this year Japan could form a “quasi-security alliance” with Taiwan, the democratically governed island that China advocated.
Taiwanese President Lai Qingte welcomed the election, saying that she was “a steady friend of Taiwan.”
“Under the leadership of the new (LDP) President, it is hoped that Taiwan and the Japanese President will be able to deepen partnerships in areas such as economic and trade, security and technical cooperation,” he said in a statement.
If elected prime minister, Kochi said, “Japan is back!”
“I will abandon my work-life balance and do my job, work, work,” Takato said in his victory speech.
Warnings for foreigners
Some of her supporters saw her choice as a turning point in politics dominated by Japanese men. Kochi made a bold pledge to lift the number of women in the cabinet on par with the Nordic countries.
“The fact that women have been chosen may be positive. I think it shows that Japan is really beginning to change and that message is being conveyed.”
However, her other socially conservative positions are more popular among men than women, including the opposite changes that allow married couples to have separate surnames, polls show.
But her conservative appeal may help blunt the rise of Sansate, which invaded the political mainstream in the July election.
Reflecting the warning about foreigners in Sansate, she launched her first official campaign speech with an anecdote about tourists reportedly kicking sacred deer in her hometown of Nara.
Takae, whose mother was a police officer, has promised to close the rules-breaking visitors and immigrants who have come to Japan in record numbers in recent years.
“We hope that she will steer Japanese politics in the direction of “anti-globalism” to protect the national interests and help people to regain prosperity and hope,” Sanceite said in a statement.
