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JAPAN | Election of Right-Populist Takaichi Sanae as Leader of Liberal Democratic Party Precipitates Government Crisis

LDP leader, Takaichi Sanae (Wikimedia Commons)
Karl Simmons (CWI Japan Japan) 14 October 2025

A week is a long time in politics. The global headlines about Japan having its first woman prime minister, who happened to have played drums in a heavy metal band, to like pork buns, and had Margaret Thatcher as a role model, had hardly sunk in before reality started to bite. Soon the election of Takaichi Sanae to leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) precipitated a major government crisis, and even her election as the next Japanese Prime Minister was no longer guaranteed.

If elected though, a government with Takaichi’s profoundly conservative worldview would do little or nothing to raise the status of women in Japanese society. Even on the issue of allowing married couples to keep their pre-marriage names, supported by 57% of the Japanese public in a June 24 poll, Takaichi opposes this on the grounds that it would “destroy the social structure based on the family unit.” Takaichi is also opposed to gay marriage and to allowing a female emperor, both of which, in contrast to her position, have majority support amongst the Japanese public, at 73% and 70%, respectively.

More worrying for the Japanese capitalists, who feel the need to build alliances with other Asian countries, such as South Korea, given the present trade war between the US and China, Takaichi’s foreign policy is still stuck in the 1930s. She objects to school textbooks that write about the invasion of China, in which between 14 and 30 million Chinese were killed; states that Japan was forced into a war of self-defense against the US and European powers; claims that WWII Japanese war crimes were exaggerated, and continues to visit Yasukuni shrine, where “the souls of the war-dead”, including executed war criminals, are enshrined. Apparently, during her childhood in the 1960s and 1970s, her parents read to her the 1890 Imperial Rescript on Education, which was abolished by the Diet (Lower and Upper Houses of Parliament) in 1948, as incompatible with democracy and human rights.

The main reason that Takaichi was able to win the election for LDP President was the party’s disastrous election results of November 2024 and then July 2025. The LDP and its coalition partner, Komeito, lost their majority in both the Lower and Upper Houses of Parliament (the Diet), respectively. This was due to major price rises at a time of stagnant wages and more LDP money scandals. This coincided with a major campaign by the “internet right” about medical tourism by foreigners, who they said did not pay their bills, and stories about evasion of pension and social security payments. They also made allegations about Chinese businesses and individuals buying up residential property causing rising rents and property prices. Most of these were lies or gross exaggerations. However, even though the number of foreigners is small (3.8m or 3% of the population), they were able to exploit fears about the future using the boom in foreign tourists and the pressures imposed by over-tourism.

The main gainers in the Upper House election, held in July, were not the traditional left-wing and liberal parties, but new parties such as the Sanseito, a right-wing populist and nationalist party. It centers its propaganda on opposition to foreigners. Sanseito’s main slogan is “Japanese First.” The other party to make gains was the party backed by the large private sector unions, the misnamed Democratic Party for the People, that shamefully joined in attacks on foreign workers, arguing that public money should be spent on “hard working Japanese.”

The prime minister, Ishiba Shigeru, was forced to take responsibility for the losses and only announced in September that he would resign as LDP leader and thus prime minister.

In the election for LDP President, Takaichi, learning from her loss in the previous LDP election to Ishiba, put forward a slightly more ‘centrist’ position – for example, not committing to a visit to Yasukuni Shrine. However, that did not stop her from attacking foreigners for an incident in 2024, when foreigners were accused of kicking deer in Nara Park near to her local constituency. The deer are supposed to be sacred and “commune with the gods.” While the incident may have caused outrage from some animal lovers, it would have been more credible if in the same year the local LDP dominated prefectural government had not announced a deer cull in Nara outside the park, following protests by Japanese farmers claiming that the deer were causing crop damage.

Takaichi won partly because she was seen as the candidate most likely to stop the hemorrhaging of LDP votes to other right-wing parties. In the run-off, she only narrowly beat the so-called “reform” candidate, Koizumi Shiinjiro, and only won the overall race with votes from local constituency party chairs.

Another reason she succeeded was because she received backing from the faction of 85-year-old party LDP kingpin, Aso Taro. To gain this support though Takaichi was forced to promise that her cabinet would be open to Diet members who had been involved in an election expense scandal. While this clearly helped to win her the LDP election, it is an indication of her weakness within the party, and it has caused problems with her attempts to form a stable coalition government.

As reactionary as Takaichi’s personal ideas are, it is unlikely that she will be able to enjoy a period of stable right-wing government like that of former prime minister, Abe Shinzo. Within a week of Takaichi election, the Buddhist Komeito, the LDP’s coalition partner for most of the last 26 years, dropped a bombshell on her by announcing its intention to break the coalition. The ostensible reason was the LDP’s failure to deal with its “money politics” issues, which has been true for most of the time that it has been in coalition. It was more to do with Komeito also losing heavily in the recent elections and was facing intense pressure from the lay Buddhist organization, Soka Gakkai, from which it was born, to break with the government.

Without Komeito, it will be exceedingly difficult for Takaichi to form a coalition government with a majority. Her preferred partner is the Democratic Party for the People, but the Rengo, the biggest labour union federation, has come out against them joining a coalition. The Rengo sponsored Diet members in the party would split rather than join a coalition with the LDP. Although the party leader, Tamaki, is more favorable to a coalition, he said it would be several months before they would be able to get one together. Even if the LDP and DPP went into coalition, they would still need another party to have a majority in the Diet.

The only other realistic possibility for a coalition partner is the right-wing Kansai-based, Ishin no Kai (Japan Renovation Party). The problem for Takaichi is that this party is a major rival to the LDP in Kansai, which is also Takaichi’s base. Ishin no Kai is more intricately connected with Koizumi, who she beat in the leadership contest. He was likely to grant Osaka sub-capital status and support Ishin’s proposals for reorganization of Osaka Prefectural Government. Takaichi has limited personal links to this party and would find it more difficult to agree to their conditions. The other rightist party, Sanseito, only has three seats in the lower house and its leader, Kamiya Sohei, has ruled out forming a coalition, at this stage.

Trump visit
With US President Trump due to visit Japan at the end of the month and further trade negotiations on the table, and a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), there will be considerable pressure from the ruling class to form a stable government. However, at the time of writing, this appears difficult for them to achieve this. There is even a slight possibility, though not the most likely development, that if the DPP’s Tamaki received support from other opposition parties he could defeat Takaichi. This is unlikely, though, because the parties differ so much on policy and such a coalition would be an inherently unstable government.

The most likely outcome of the government crisis is that Takaichi is elected prime minister with the most votes but without the votes to form a majority coalition government. In these circumstances, it would be an extremely weak government and will probably call an election by the end of the year. Even if Takaichi were to win an election, any stability is likely to be short lived.

Like Abe, Takaichi is planning to run budget deficits to boost spending. However, former prime minister Abe’s deficit was during a period of deflation, with low to negative interest rates. Takaichi faces price inflation and possibly rising interest rates. The Abe years were in a different political climate when there was only the beginning of a battle for supremacy between the US and China. Takaichi promises to safeguard Japanese industry by keeping the Yen [Japanese currency] low, is unlikely to work faced with Trump’s ‘America First’ policy and the development of a Chinese car industry based on electric cars that is able to produce at lower prices than their competitors. The large-scale expansion of military expenditure in Japan will place a further burden on the Japanese working class.

The one thing that Takaichi does have going for her is the weakness of the opposition, in particular the Constitutional Democratic Party’s leader, Noda Yoshihiko. This follows the tactics of the leaders of the Rengo union federation, which is focused mainly on building an opposition alliance with the DPP.

The DDP, under Tamaki, would only consider an alliance with the CDP, based on its own programme of nuclear restarts and increase military and armaments spending. While Noda might be prepared to abandon his own party’s policies to form such an alliance, it would meet opposition within the party and even provoke a split. He is quoted in the media saying, “We are not in a position where we cannot change a single word (of our policies)”. Noda continued: “I want to negotiate and leave some room for compromise, so we wind up with a successful outcome.”

The main political problem facing the Japanese working class is that it has no real working-class based party with roots in the workplaces and communities, and with bold socialist policies that could act as an alternative poll of attraction to both the declining LDP and the newer right-wing populist forces, as well as the weak liberals. However, the long-term trends are clear. Japanese capitalism is entering a further period of instability. It is from the struggles that will result that a new working-class party will be forged.


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