Sanae Takaichi is set to secure a supermajority in Japan's parliament after a landslide victory. Photo / Getty Images
Sanae Takaichi, the first female Prime Minister of Japan, is poised to secure a supermajority in Parliament after exit polls predicted her party winning a landslide victory in Sunday’s election.
Takaichi’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is on track to win 316 seats out of 465 in Japan’s lower house, dramatically strengthening its power at a crucial time for the country.
Despite only coming into power in October, she called a snap election two weeks ago in order to capitalise on her popularity and give her more room to enact ambitious economic reforms and bolster the country’s security.
With its anticipated landslide, the LDP would no longer need a coalition partner in the lower house, which should allow it to push through most of its policy agenda, including the budget.
Record snowfall hit the country on Sunday and turnout was expected to be about 56%.
In her first comments since polls closed, Takaichi thanked Donald Trump for his endorsement and invitation to the White House next month.
“The potential of our alliance is limitless,” she said.
Takaichi has already impressed a string of world leaders, including UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung.
Now, with the backing of the Japanese public, her most pressing issues are tackling the cost-of-living crisis and strengthening national defence in the face of regional security concerns from China and North Korea.
The Telegraph visited Takaichi’s hometown, Nara, and travelled across the country speaking to friends and colleagues to chart the remarkable rise of its first female prime minister, from a teenage motorbike-riding rebel who defied her parents’ wishes to go to university, to a world leader who survives on just three hours of sleep a night and often eats one meal a day.
Nara is a city popular among tourists for the deer that roam its park and the dozens of ancient shrines dotted around the Nishinokyo area.
It has also become a political epicentre in Japan, as the hometown of Takaichi, but also as the place where her mentor, Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister, was assassinated in 2022.
Before the election, the shelves of souvenir shops were lined with cookies featuring Takaichi’s face, a local museum held an exhibit with her 22-year-old Toyota Supra and the Nara Royal Hotel hosted a set lunch filled with her favourite dishes.
Takaichi, who has pitched herself as a conservative nationalist who will uphold traditional Japanese values, probably drew inspiration from Nara growing up, said Kadota Ryusho, a well-known Japanese writer who has known and supported Takaichi for years.
“Nara is one of Japan’s most ancient towns so she grew up embedded in such deep history, surrounded by traditions,” he explained.
Several of her friends and supporters also described the 64-year-old to The Telegraph as a “Kansai Obasan” – a term used in the south-central Kansai region of Japan to describe older, wise women.
“We consider Kansai women to be the strongest kind of people and because she comes from Nara, her character is informed by this, where she can be warm and funny, but also straightforward and blunt,” said Kadota.
Takaichi’s upbringing in Nara has also endeared her to voters as a more relatable leader and “less arrogant”, said Noriaki Ando, the president of Nara’s prefectural medical association, who has known her for 10 years.
“She started from scratch. Her parents and her family had nothing to do with politics, she didn’t go to a fancy private school but an ordinary public school,” said Ando.
Her mother, a police officer, and her father, a car salesman, were very strict, according to Mamoru Kinoshita, a secretary at Takaichi’s constituency office in Nara, who has worked for the prime minister on and off since her first campaign when she was 31.
Her parents would read to the young girl The Imperial Rescript on Education, a document pledging loyalty to Japan’s imperial government, which was banned in schools after Japan lost World War II for its pro-military rhetoric.
These lessons seemed to have left their mark on Takaichi, who, as prime minister, has moved Japan’s militarisation to the top of her agenda and has pushed for an increase in defence spending amid rising tensions with nearby China.
Her parents were also conservative in their views on gender roles. While Takaichi was top of her class and admitted to Japan’s best universities in Tokyo – a six-hour drive from Nara – neither of her parents wanted her to travel that far.
Her father didn’t believe that women needed to go to university at all, said Jeffrey Hall, a lecturer at Kanda University of International Studies in Tokyo.
Instead, Takaichi went to Kobe University, only an hour or so drive from her home, but she was still able to break free from some of the constraints and find her own footing.
It was at university that she started playing the drums, a hobby which she has put front and centre since she became prime minister, and riding a motorcycle, which she would drive to commute between Nara and Kobe.
“Her parents were so strict that when she went to university, she went in the opposite direction,” said Kinoshita.
Takaichi, an avid fan of heavy metal music, still has an electric drum kit in her home and has said that she will play whenever she is feeling stressed – even now as prime minister.
However, she joked she only plays after her husband, who suffered a stroke last February, goes to sleep.
Photos of her playing the drums alongside the South Korean president went viral earlier this year as the two jammed out to popular K-pop songs.
Despite her adventurous spirit, Takaichi’s friends say that she has always been a hard worker.
Yukiyoshi Arai, her old hairdresser from Nara, first met her in 1996 at a dinner with mutual friends, soon after her first election to the house of representatives.
“The first time we met, we drank sake and went to karaoke and actually sang a duet together. My first impression was that she was this cool, awesome woman who was extremely brilliant,” remembered Arai.
“Afterwards, the group wanted to go to another party but she said no because she needed to go home and study for a speech she had to give. She has always had this determined attitude from the beginning,” he said.
But Takaichi didn’t grow up wanting to be a politician.
She studied economics at university and her “number one priority has always been finance”, said Yoshihumi Shinzawa, who works as an adviser to Nara’s municipal government and has known Takaichi for several years.
Takaichi would later teach economics at Kinki (now Kindai) University in Osaka and serve as the minister in charge of Japan’s economic security.
It wasn’t until she attended a specialised government and management institution in 1984, started by Konosuke Matsushita, the founder of Panasonic, that she wanted to enter politics, said Mr Kinoshita.
Economic policy was a key concern for voters in the election, many citing Japan’s rising cost of living, because of high taxes and inflation, as the most important issue on their minds.
Many voters told The Telegraph that they believed Takaichi was the best-suited candidate to help bring prices down. Japan is suffering from persistent inflation, exceeding 3%, a weak yen and rising import costs for food and energy. Wages have not kept pace. Rice prices have risen by 60%.
“She brought down the cost of petrol, which showed that she will follow through on her promises. I could not support her more,” said Nijiho Hirose, a 25-year-old cosmetic saleswoman who lives in the southern city of Kumamoto.
Before the elections, her favourability rating was 58%, the highest for any prime minister in decades.
One of her earliest moves as prime minister was to stand up to China. In November, Takaichi provoked fury in Beijing after telling Parliament that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a response from Tokyo.
Shortly after, a Chinese diplomat in Japan intimated that she should be decapitated. Relations plunged to their worst in more than a decade, and even in the face of Chinese threats and an economic hit of as much as £10 billion (NZ$22b), Takaichi held her position.
Part of her appeal is her ability to cultivate a public persona, especially through the use of social media, where she boasts more than one million followers. Selfies with Meloni and smiles from Sir Keir have helped.
“Many are comparing her public persona to that of a pop idol or anime character. Some of her younger supporters don’t know much about the ideology or policies she stands for, but they have become fans of the prime minister,” said Hall.
Takaichi lists Margaret Thatcher as a “political ambition” on her website and her friends and supporters told The Telegraph that having a conservative woman break the highest glass ceiling in the UK was hugely inspiring for the young Takaichi.
“There is so much misogyny, especially in politics, and despite that she was able to rise to the highest level. She is so inspiring,” said Mika Shimu, a secretary at her constituency office in Nara who has supported Takaichi for 10 years.
At her former secondary school, an hour south of Nara, two female students told The Telegraph that they took pride in knowing they were going to the same school as Japan’s first female prime minister.
“Even though we don’t want to go into politics, she inspires us to be strong women. I even started drumming because of her,” said 16-year-old student Nao Minamikawa.
But despite her pioneering role as Japan’s first female prime minister, Takaichi has been criticised for not doing enough to help empower other women.
“Takaichi is not popular among feminist voters, people who don’t see her as standing up for women’s representation and issues that concern women,” said Kenneth McElwain, a politics professor at the University of Tokyo.
“She’s very conservative on socio-cultural issues, whether that’s gay marriage, having a woman emperor or allowing couples to have different surnames,” he added, referring to the law that requires couples to share a surname.
Thatcher faced many of the same criticisms when she was prime minister, choosing not to focus on structural gender inequalities in equal pay or childcare.
As was the case with Thatcher, Takaichi’s friends and supporters have said the biggest criticism they can think of is that she “works too hard”.
She sleeps only three hours a night, according to her friends, and often eats only one meal a day because she is so busy.
She hardly ever eats out at restaurants – especially now that she’s prime minister, given her significant security detail – but when she does, she loves McDonald’s and Yakiniku, a type of Japanese barbecue, said her friends.
Most of the time, her husband, a former member of the house of representatives, will cook.
The last time Shinzawa saw her was out for a group dinner at a Yakiniku restaurant in Nara where she ordered her Oolong tea in a pint glass because she doesn’t drink beer any more.
“Some politicians have criticised her for never taking time off. They say that she never goes out for a drink or to a party, all she does is work,” said Shinzawa.
However, Takaichi will now have the space to roll out her ambitions for the country.
“Sanaenomics” envisions strategic investment in critical sectors, including AI and semiconductors, all while keeping taxes low. It will aim for a nominal GDP growth rate of 3.4%, and a 1.3% real wage increase.
Defence spending has already risen to 2% of GDP, but there could be more to come and she will oversee Japan’s new five-year national security strategy.
What is certain is that Takaichi will try hard.
Japan’s 2025 catchphrase of the year was taken from her: “I will work, work, work, work and work.”
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