Japan's 104th prime minister, and the first woman to hold the position. The Diet voted to approve her nomination on October 21st 2025. On October 4th the Liberal Democratic Party had selected her as its leader, replacing Ishiba Shigeru. She won a run-off against Koizumi Shinjiro, carried by support from the LDP rank-and-file and key party elders. She had narrowly lost to Ishiba in the LDP's 2024 leadership contest.
The daughter of a police officer and a salaryman, she grew up in the ancient capital of Nara, in western Japan. She is no political blue-blood—unlike many LDP bigwigs. A motorcycle rider, she entered politics in 1993 after a spell in television news. She worked briefly in Washington for Patricia Schroeder, a feminist Democratic congresswoman. As a young woman she played drums in a heavy-metal band and kept drumsticks in her bag during her early political career, playing to let off steam. She turns to "Burn", by Deep Purple, to relieve stress. She cites Margaret Thatcher as a role model.
In parliament she found common cause with Abe Shinzo, the late prime minister, on the LDP's right wing. She is described as "an heir to Abe" in terms of her vision for Japan. She developed a reputation as studious, serving in several ministerial posts, and is considered a "policy wonk".
She staunchly calls for revising Japan's pacifist constitution and investing heavily in defence. While supporting the alliance with America, she has been open about the implications of its growing isolationism: "We absolutely cannot have the mindset of depending on America for everything." During the 2025 campaign she was the only candidate to suggest Japan try to renegotiate the terms of a coercive $550bn tariff and investment deal that Ishiba struck with Trump, though she later walked such talk back.
She shares Abe's controversial views on Japan's history. She is a regular visitor to the Yasukuni Shrine, home to the souls of Japan's war dead, including its imperial leaders. She sees Japan's wartime aggression as defence against Western colonialism. Such ideas risk endangering Japan's recent rapprochement with South Korea and causing friction with China.
She has signalled scepticism of the shareholder-focused corporate-governance reforms pursued by Abe Shinzo: "I think there has been a trend of too much focus on shareholders," she said in November 2025, imploring firms to consider "their contribution to the broader society". She has promised changes to Japan's corporate-governance code that would steer money towards employees.
Her economic policy owes much to Abenomics but adds a focus on "crisis management and growth investments"—amounting to new-age industrial policy—and tax cuts. She says she is following in the footsteps of Abe Shinzo, though in reality Abe proved to be much more fiscally conservative than his rhetoric suggested. On monetary policy she is doveish; in 2024 she caused a stir by saying the Bank of Japan would be "stupid" to raise rates, and she has remained an outspoken critic of the bank's modest rate increases. Her victory led the yen to slide. Japan's consumer price index has been above the Bank of Japan's 2% target for three years, and more stimulus would add inflationary pressures. In December 2025 inflation worries led the central bank to raise rates to a 30-year high. Though Ms Takaichi's rhetoric has softened in office, fiscal and monetary policy are now at odds: Japan's net debt stands at 130% of GDP, so further increases in interest rates will rapidly squeeze the government's budget. In late 2025 she announced a supplementary budget of ¥17.7trn ($113bn), which, though a small share of GDP, sent a bad signal to bond markets already fretting about fiscal discipline.
Despite her social conservatism, she promised to bring more women into her cabinet; her team includes the first-ever female minister of finance. She has spoken publicly about her own health struggles related to menopause and has pledged to expand access to women's health services.
She opposes allowing married couples to keep separate surnames, a bellwether issue for gender equality in Japan. She is also strongly opposed to allowing female emperors or changing the male-line succession rules of the imperial family. Her harsh rhetoric about foreign workers and tourists may be intended to win back voters who have recently abandoned the LDP. She launched her 2025 leadership bid with a diatribe against misbehaving foreigners that shocked many lawmakers within her own party, but won over the rank-and-file. During her LDP leadership campaign she claimed that foreign tourists had been kicking sacred deer in Nara, her home town—a claim that Nakanishi Yasuhiro, who represents a deer-preservation organisation in Nara, said was spread by a right-wing YouTuber known for posting misleading videos.
She has argued that contemporary politicians have no right to condemn wartime leaders: "Would it have been better if Japan had simply become a colony without any resistance at that time?" And: "If Japan had won the war, Japan probably wouldn't be blamed by anyone now, and those who started the war would be heroes." She was among those who urged Abe not to use terms such as "aggression" in official statements. In a recent book of interviews she expounds these views at length.
On November 7th 2025, in the Diet, Ms Takaichi was asked what might prompt Japan to exercise "collective self-defence"—the proclaimed right to use military force to defend an ally when deemed necessary for Japan's own survival. Her answer: if force is used against Taiwan. China was furious. Xue Jian, China's consul-general in Osaka, wrote on X: "If you stick that filthy neck where it doesn't belong, it's going to get sliced off." Beijing warned that Japan would face "crushing defeat" were it to intervene. The People's Daily said her remarks posed a "grave challenge" to the post-1945 order.
China retaliated by advising its citizens to avoid travel to Japan, citing safety concerns—about a fifth of foreign tourists in Japan are Chinese—and advising students to reconsider studying there. A report by Kiuchi Takahide of the Nomura Research Institute estimated such warnings could cost Japan ¥2.2trn ($14.2bn) in lost business. China also appeared to be stopping imports of Japanese seafood again and suspending new releases of Japanese films.
Ms Takaichi said she would avoid talking about specific Taiwan scenarios in future but refused to retract her words, as China demanded. The stand-off recalled 2021, when Aso Taro, then the deputy prime minister, said a major problem in Taiwan could "relate to a survival-threatening situation" for Japan.
Xi Jinping did not send Ms Takaichi a congratulatory message when she took office, breaking with diplomatic precedent. Her warm relations with Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party run deep: after she took office, Lai Ching-te, Taiwan's president, posted a congratulatory message calling her a "steadfast friend of Taiwan". At the Munich Security Conference in February 2026, China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, warned that Japan is haunted by the "ghosts of militarism". On February 24th 2026 China announced new curbs on rare-earth exports to at least 20 Japanese firms, mostly involved in the defence industry, with another 20—including carmakers—put on a watch list. Japan still relies on China for some 70% of its rare-earth imports. The head of Japan's trading-house association called the curbs "a challenge to the global supply chain as a whole". China's trade curbs have been restrained so far: it has refrained from encouraging broad boycotts of Japanese goods. Flight traffic between China and Japan during the lunar new-year holiday in February 2026 fell by half compared with the same period the previous year.
Her refusal to cave to Chinese pressure reinforced her image domestically and contributed to her historic LDP victory on February 8th. Both sides have sought to contain the risk of escalation: in February 2026 Japan detained a Chinese fishing captain who refused inspections inside its exclusive economic zone, releasing him the next day. But Chinese coastguard vessels patrolled near the disputed Senkaku islands for a record 356 days in 2025. Japan announced plans to deploy missiles on Yonaguni, its island closest to Taiwan, for the first time.
Ms Takaichi wants to create a stand-alone national intelligence agency, consolidating intelligence-gathering currently dispersed among several government ministries. On November 14th 2025 a new LDP council met to discuss the design of the new outfit. She also wants to remove restrictions on arms exports entirely—existing rules required clunky legal workarounds for Japan's joint fighter-jet programme with Britain and Italy and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' frigate contract with Australia. In late February 2026 the LDP finalised a proposal to lift a longstanding ban on the export of lethal weapons, hoping to jump-start the defence industry. On April 21st 2026 she announced the formal loosening, scrapping rules that had limited exports to five non-lethal categories. Lethal arms may now be sold to 17 countries with defence-technology agreements. She hopes the change will spur a defence industrial renaissance, pushing contractors to boost production, expand capacity and bring down costs. In November 2025 she hinted that the three non-nuclear principles—the pledge made in 1967 that Japan would not possess, produce or host nuclear weapons—might be up for review.
On October 10th 2025 Komeito told the LDP it had finally had enough. During her first days as party leader, she chose to butt heads rather than build bridges. Behind Komeito's back, she began courting Tamaki Yuichiro, the head of the Democratic Party for the People. She filled her leadership team with party elders on bad terms with Komeito and elevated a lawmaker who had been at the heart of fundraising scandals. Komeito also recoiled at her revisionist wartime views. Without Komeito's 24 seats, the LDP's 196 are insufficient for a majority in the 465-seat lower house, and an opposition coalition of the CDP, Ishin and DPP could outvote the party.
After losing Komeito, Ms Takaichi formed a new partnership with the Japan Innovation Party (Ishin), a centre-right outfit based in Osaka. In many ways Ishin is a more natural partner: both parties share a vision of a prouder, more muscular Japan, whereas Komeito often acted as a brake on the LDP's hawkish plans. The new coalition aims to loosen restrictions on Japan's arms exports and expand its intelligence-gathering apparatus, and may push to raise defence spending beyond the 2% of GDP that the country plans to reach by 2027. As conditions for its support, Ishin demanded that the LDP come up with a plan for cutting the number of seats in the Diet and establish a "government efficiency bureau" focused on trimming fat from the public sector. Yet the LDP and Ishin still hold only a minority of seats in both houses.
On January 19th 2026, less than 100 days into her term, Ms Takaichi called a snap election for Japan's lower house, to be held on February 8th—the shortest campaign in Japan's post-war history. Her approval ratings in many polls consistently exceeded 70%; among voters under 30, one poll showed approval above 90%. She promised an aggressive industrial policy, tax cuts—including a two-year suspension of the 8% consumption tax on food, costing ¥5trn ($32bn) a year, or 6% of the expected tax take—and an end to "excessive austerity". The prospect of a strong mandate for her expansionary agenda sent shock waves through bond markets, with yields on long-term bonds reaching record highs. She said she had "put my own position as prime minister on the line." Most Japanese appeared to disapprove of the decision, seeing it as a typically LDP political machination. Approval of her administration declined in many polls: Nikkei recorded a 16-percentage-point drop in net approval.
The LDP's support had risen to around 35% since she took office. But that was about the same as at the time of the previous lower-house election, in October 2024, when the LDP lost its outright majority. Her main opposition is a new Centrist Reform Alliance formed by the Constitutional Democratic Party and Komeito. The alliance has some LDP members spooked, mostly because Komeito commands support from Soka Gakkai members whose backing can be crucial in some districts. The Democratic Party for the People and the Do It Yourself Party (Sanseito) have seen their polling numbers slide since Ms Takaichi took office, though the underlying factors fuelling their rise—worries about immigration and inflation—remain potent.
The gamble paid off spectacularly. On February 8th the LDP won 316 of 465 seats—a two-thirds supermajority and the biggest election victory in Japan's post-war history. Ms Takaichi won big across every region and every age group. The party could have had 14 more seats but was forced to cede them because it had run out of names on its party lists. On the campaign trail she electrified audiences, drawing crowds of thousands to concert-like rallies and becoming a star of social media.
The opposition collapsed. The Centrist Reform Alliance—dubbed "5G" (a play on oji-san, meaning "old man") because its top officials were all older male political dinosaurs—fell from 172 seats to just 49. Its co-leader resigned after admitting "one plus one did not make two." Sanseito emerged with 15 seats and Team Mirai broke through with 11, but neither can challenge the LDP. The supermajority allows the LDP to override the upper house (where it lacks a majority), giving Ms Takaichi the ability to blow past most legislative checkpoints. She has declared a course for making Japan "stronger" and "prosperous", accelerating defence spending to 2% of GDP and calling for lifting restrictions on arms exports. She also promised to temporarily suspend the sales tax on food for two years—without issuing new debt. She is to visit Trump in Washington in March 2026.
In March 2026 Donald Trump demanded that Japan send ships to help open the Strait of Hormuz. Japan has minesweepers that could assist, but polling suggested 80% of Japanese opposed the conflict. Laws passed in 2015 by Abe Shinzo allow the government to engage in "collective self-defence" beyond its borders; minesweeping in the strait was among the scenarios debated in parliament at the time. But when asked whether Japan would aid America in the event of a pre-emptive strike leading to war, Abe had dismissed the possibility: "Japan would not support such a country." Ms Takaichi was scheduled to meet Trump at the White House as the crisis unfolded. An American Marine expeditionary unit based in Japan had already begun sailing towards the Gulf at high speed—the first time it left the Pacific since 2004, during the Iraq war—leaving Asia without an American crisis-response force.
The LDP faces challenges from upstarts on the hard right, such as Sanseito, which pushes a "Japan First" agenda. She leads a shaky minority government—the first in LDP history—and has a weaker hold on her party than Abe enjoyed. Her early appointments draw heavily on a close circle of allies, exacerbating deep rifts with the more moderate wing of the LDP.
Her cabinet includes the chief negotiator of the $550bn tariff and investment deal that Ishiba struck with America, a sign that Japan intends to see the pact through.
During Donald Trump's visit to Tokyo in late October 2025, Ms Takaichi hosted the president with an audience with the emperor and a reception in a gilded hall. She presented glittering gifts, including a gold-coated golf ball, and pledged to nominate Mr Trump for the Nobel peace prize. She also promised to raise defence spending to 2% of GDP by early next year—two years faster than originally planned. Trump told her: "Any time you have any question, any doubt, anything you want, any favours you need, anything I can do to help Japan, we will be there." She did not, however, dare ask that he lift the remaining 15% tariffs on Japanese goods, or revisit the coercive $550bn investment agreement her predecessor signed.
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.