The country’s first female PM is the object of a personality cult revolving around everything from her outfits and snacks to her favourite pink pen
When the LDP’s conservative wing forced a leadership election to replace the embattled Ishiba in October last year, many expected his ally Shinjiro Koizumi – the young, telegenic son of a previous prime minister – to win.
Instead, Japan’s party of government for most of the past seven decades took a gamble on his ultra-conservative rival, Sanae Takaichi, installing her as the country’s first female prime minister. If opinion polls are correct, that gamble is about to pay off in ways even her strongest allies could not have imagined.
In an eventful four months, Takaichi has met Donald Trump – who this week offered an endorsement and an invitation to the White House in March – as well as Xi Jinping and South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung. She sparked an unresolved row with Beijing over the future of Taiwan, spooked bond markets with promises of sweeping tax cuts, and faced fresh scrutiny over her links with the disgraced Unification church.
Despite the ups and downs, she has emerged as the LDP’s most effective weapon, the object of a personality cult revolving around everything from her choice of outfits and train journey snacks to the pink pen she uses to take notes in parliament.
God, this is so depressing. People are falling for the “girlboss” aesthetic while she is actively gutting progress. It is the same old LDP rot, just wrapped in a more marketable package. Seeing people obsess over her snacks and her pink pen while she opposes something as basic as women keeping their own surnames is honestly pathetic.
Being the first female PM does not mean anything if you are just a Thatcher clone who wants to keep the patriarchy on life support. The Trump endorsement and the Unification Church links should be disqualifying, but instead we get “Sana-mania.” It is just proof that if you are charismatic enough and have a good social media team, you can sell people the same old right-wing garbage and they will thank you for it. Japan deserves better than a personality cult built on a leather handbag.