The first president in the history of the Asian country will seek to revalidate her first three months at the head of the Japanese government. We review the story of Sanae Takaichi, the political leader who clings to conservatism and confrontation with China to revitalize the power of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (PRD).
First modification: 02/07/2026 - 20:17
Sanae Takaichi enters a room in her traditional blue blazer and, before a shower of camera flashes, stretches out her arm to show the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, his rightful place in a formal photo. The first female president in the history of Japan shakes hands with her European counterpart and, with the flags of both countries behind her, smiles.
That bodily security, evident in the gesture of marking positions and leading the scene, is not just a diplomatic postcard. It also works as a reading guide to your political present. At 64 years old, and after just three months in power, Takaichi seems to have consolidated a position of strength. Leveraged by this impulse, she dissolved the Japanese Lower House and called early general elections for next February 8.
Read alsoPrime Minister of Japan dissolves the Lower House and calls for early elections
Conservatism as the key to success
The shortest Japanese election campaign since the end of World War II began on Tuesday, January 27. “I want to protect the life and fortune of the Japanese people,” Takaichi said to hundreds of people listening to her in Akihabara, a technological neighborhood in Tokyo.
"I come from an ordinary family whose parents both worked in a rural place," she described in a quest to empathize with the electorate, which ends with an explanation of her decision to dye her hair herself: "it is very expensive to go to the hairdresser."
In statements to France 24 in Spanish, the master in International Relations Studies from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Genaro Beristain Aguilar, linked this narrative to the tradition of the Asian country: "One can be in a bar, on the street, in a street stall in Japan, the person next to you can be a multimillionaire and you never find out. They do not display wealth, they are not very given to riding in super-luxury cars or carrying diamond earrings and that kind of thing.”
His decision to call elections seems to be paying off. The most recent survey by the economic newspaper Nikkei indicates that his popularity exceeds 70% and his political formation, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), would prevail in almost 40% of the 289 electoral districts. With this performance he would win 233 of the 465 seats, an absolute majority that would significantly improve the result of his predecessor, Shigeru Ishiba, in the 2024 elections.
Beristain Aguilar connected his success to two factors. On the one hand, his reference to the figure of the former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, assassinated in July 2022: “The Liberal Democratic Party is a simile of what was once the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in Mexico, which won elections and governed the country for 70 years.”
Read alsoTakaichi dissolves Parliament and calls early elections in Japan
The second factor is linked to its ideological positioning. Although she made unusual statements for a Japanese leader, such as when in 2007 she stated: "I want society to welcome infertile women," and publicly renounced the idea of having children after surgery for a gynecological disease, the first woman to achieve power in Japan does not identify with feminist positions.
On the contrary, the specialist maintains that the growth of its popularity is located in the construction of a conservative discourse: "It comes to highlight Japanese tradition a little more, to put down some discussions about the idea that women keep their surname after marriage, to promote restrictions regarding migration issues."
The academic highlighted the aging of the Japanese population and the fact that "the elderly are still quite traditional and, therefore, Sanae Takaichi's approach is going down well with those sectors, which are the main voters."
Read alsoThe keys to the rise of Sanae Takaichi, the first female minister in Japan
A state woman
The Japanese business perspective is part of the prime minister's ideological DNA. From his studies at Senior High School in Nara Prefecture, his place of origin, he went on to study Business Administration at Kobe University, to make his first connection with politics at the Matsushita Institute of Government and Administration, promoted by the founder of Panasonic, Konosuke Matsushita, with the aim of "training the leaders of the future." Then, his two years of work with the Democratic Party in the United States helped him consolidate his skills in public management.
After a brief stint in media management, in 1993 she was the candidate with the most votes for the Nara district and entered the House of Representatives as an independent, although she soon joined a faction of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Since then, his rise in the official formation has not stopped. She led the portfolios of Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs, Science and Technology Policy, Innovation, Youth Affairs and Gender Equality, Food Security and Communications and Home Affairs. In September 2025 she reached the top of her party, by winning an internal election in the second round, and on October 21, 2025 she was appointed prime minister by both houses of parliament.
However, his public figure was not built solely in the corridors of power. Takaichi has also been consolidating an image that combines tradition, popular culture and explicit nationalism.
Sports, rock and ultranationalism
Horse racing fans say Japan has the best animals in the world for the discipline organized by the Japan Racing Association (JRA). The president exhibits her fanaticism for this tradition, as well as her sympathy for the Gamba Osaka soccer club and the Hanshin Tigers baseball club.
Added to his passion for sports is a rock sensibility that translates into praise for artists Demon Kakka, B'z and X Japan. A complete cultural palate that allows him to qualify his controversial ultranationalist positions, if necessary.
Although her political aspirations for prime minister led her to moderate her positions, Takaichi defends the review of pacifism, embodied in the Japanese Constitution. Furthermore, he relativizes the crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II and it is difficult to find a year in which he has not visited the Yasukuni Shrine, a place considered by Asian nations as a symbol of Japan's militaristic past, where war criminals are also honored.
Read alsoJapan marks a milestone with Sanae Takaichi as prime minister
The Taiwanese turn
It's November 7 in Tokyo. Takaichi enters parliament amidst thunderous applause that puts a smile on his face, a gesture that already functions as an identity mark. As time goes by in his speech, the tone becomes more serious.
If an emergency in Taiwan involves "battleships and the use of force, then that could constitute a situation that threatens (Japan's) survival, from any point of view," the prime minister warns parliamentarians, adding: "The so-called Taiwan contingency has become so serious that we must anticipate the worst possible scenario."
His statements gave rise to a diplomatic conflict with China, which could have unpredictable consequences. The tension resonates in the next elections since they could give rise to a constitutional reform that, in the light of Beristain Aguilar, "is going to generate many problems for its immediate neighbors." The possibility of converting self-defense troops into a professional army through the modification of article 9 of the Magna Carta, "is something that is followed very closely in China and North Korea, but also in Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines."
Read alsoTaiwan, the center of the dispute between China and Japan
A combination of cunning, sense of opportunity and audacity seems to guide the political sense of a woman who knows how to interpret the preferences of her electorate. Praised by Donald Trump, her almost three months in office are enough to understand that, like her reference, Margaret Thatcher, the Japanese “iron lady” seems ready to go down in history.
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