Japan PM Sanae Takaichi’s spouse Taku Yamamoto vows quiet support

New Japan Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Photo / Getty Images

The spouse of Japan’s first woman Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said he hoped to support his wife by being a “stealth husband”, cooking meals for her but staying out of the spotlight, reports said.

Former lawmaker Taku Yamamoto spoke a day after Takaichi, a social conservative and Margaret Thatcher admirer, was named as PM having forged a last-minute coalition deal.

“Unlike in the West, it is better for a partner to stay out of the spotlight,” Fukui Television reported Yamamoto as saying.

He said it was essential that Takaichi, who won the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership this month, is able to work with the coalition “to pursue her vision of Prime Minister”.

“I want to provide solid support as ‘a stealth husband’ to ensure that my presence does not become an obstacle to that,” he added, according to the Asahi newspaper, Fuji Television and other media.

Yamamoto, a former fellow LDP member, married Takaichi in 2004, but the couple divorced in 2017 citing “differences in political views”.

The couple re-married in 2021, after Yamamoto reportedly supported Takaichi when she ran for the LDP leadership election that year.

He lost his seat in the lower house in a snap election after the vote.

Takaichi’s views on gender place her on the right of an already conservative LDP, and she opposes revising a 19th-century law requiring married couples to share the same surname, a rule that overwhelmingly results in women taking their husband’s name.

During Takaichi and Yamamoto’s first marriage, she took his name. In the second, he took hers.

Yamamoto told media that he wanted to use his political experience to help his wife, but that he was also good at cooking, so he also wanted to support her through preparing meals.

The pair live together in a house complex for members of parliament in Tokyo, where Takaichi helps care for Yamamoto after he suffered a stroke this year and was also diagnosed with prostate cancer, reports said.

-Agence France-Presse