Takaichi’s New Superpowers

I’ve written about Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s still new-ish prime minister, before. She was a big story when she was first elected last fall and became the first woman in Japan to occupy the office of prime minister (she is also, as it happens, an amateur heavy-metal drummer).

But she’s an even bigger story now. Takaichi — a hard-line conservative nationalist who has made a point of taking a tough stance against China — just won the mother of all mandates in a snap election. She has a supermajority in Parliament that is unprecedented in modern Japanese history, which gives her the power to potentially transform Japan and bury its postwar pacifist identity. I spoke to my colleague Javier Hernández, our Tokyo bureau chief, about what that means for her country and the world.

Takaichi’s big majority, and big plans

So Javier, how much of Sanae Takaichi’s election victory was about her, and how much of it was her policy agenda?

It’s definitely mostly her. She’s been a lawmaker for decades, but has never really had the spotlight on her before. Now that she does, she’s managed to connect with people in a deep way.

She’s got a lot of personality. She plays the drums, she loves motorcycles and baseball, and she’s a constant presence on social media.

She also comes across as authentic. Ahead of the G20, a lawmaker commented on her wardrobe, saying that she should dress better and wear Japan’s finest fabrics. As the first female prime minister, she could have used that moment to, say, denounce the sexism in the question. Instead, she said on social media, You know what, I’m going to these international meetings and I am going to try to start wearing the best clothes so that people don’t look down on me. She seized the moment to signal that she wanted to represent Japan in all of its glory and in all its beauty.

She just has a political instinct that Japan hasn’t really seen in a leader in a long time, and she’s getting a lot of love for that. (Read Javier’s analysis here.)

So she’s clearly a different kind of politician, maybe a politician who meets this moment. But she’s also said she sees herself as a transformative politician. What is her policy agenda?

Her two most immediate priorities are the economy and immigration. She was able to convey to everyday working families that she knows electric bills are too high, that a bowl of rice is too expensive. And she’s very attuned to a general feeling here that Japan has become too open, that foreigners — immigrants and even tourists — bring trouble.

But potentially the most transformative part of her agenda is her ambition to strengthen Japan’s military in ways that we haven’t seen in decades.

How easy will it be for her to do that?

Not easy.

Japan, because of its role in World War II and the trauma of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has had pacifism enshrined in its Constitution, which explicitly calls for the renunciation of war. There is a military, the Self-Defense Forces, but there are restrictions on what it can do.

Takaichi wants the Japanese military to be a normal military. She represents this faction of Japanese politicians who believe that for too long Japan has been apologizing for what happened during World War II at the cost of building up its armed forces.

And she has not shied away from saying it should revise the Constitution to achieve this. But that’s a complicated process, and she’ll have to bring the public along — the country is still split on this.

How do China and the United States feel about a more muscular Japan?

Donald Trump wants Japan to increase military spending. And Takaichi has been eager to show Trump that she’s doing that. She is accelerating military spending to 2 percent of G.D.P. this spring, two years ahead of schedule.

But China is very concerned about the return of a more muscular Japan. There was an explosion of anger in China when Takaichi was first elected. She’s one of the leading China critics in Japan’s government, a staunch ally of Taiwan, and she now has huge popular backing. That combination is frightening for them.

Concretely, China and Japan have been locked in a dispute over comments Takaichi made about Taiwan. She said in November that Japan could get involved militarily if China were to attack Taiwan.

What does all this mean for regional stability?

There is a real risk that tensions will rise. I was formerly a China correspondent in Beijing and I’ve seen firsthand China’s efforts to expand its presence in the South China Sea and in the area around Japan. I think everyone worries about the chance of a mistake because every day there are so many planes and so many ships out there. The possibility of something inadvertently going wrong is still a top concern in Beijing and Tokyo.

Takaichi and her administration have tried to be cautious, even as Beijing has been fuming. They’ve tried not to aggravate the situation. But when I went to the westernmost point of Japan, Yonaguni Island, in December and talked to residents there, the fear of a conflict breaking out was on everybody’s minds.

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