Takaichi Hawkish Agenda Behind High Popularity

Year One of the Takaichi Administration

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Asia Policy Point
Former editorial writer for the Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
October 26, 2026

One year has passed since the Diet elected Sanae Takaichi as prime minister on October 21, 2025. Takaichi has focused on building a “strong economy” with active investment, but she has yet to produce an obvious economic achievement. On the international front, she revealed herself as a novice in diplomacy, seriously damaging relations with China. Despite all this, she continues to maintain high approval ratings.
 
In her first policy speech to the Diet in October 2025, Takaichi introduced the slogan of “responsible and proactive public finances.” She listed 17 business sectors for investment, including AI, semiconductors, and the defense industry, on the theory that investing in security will spur economic growth in Japan. In April 2026, she opened weapons exports by eliminating the so-called “five categories” of permissible sales of military equipment. She also launched in June a plan for 370 trillion yen in investments by 2040.
 
But Takaichi has not been able to reverse growing price inflation that has been caused not only by wars in Ukraine and Iran but also by the depreciation of the Japanese yen. Her economic policies, including cutting the consumption tax on food, are not fiscally strong since there is so far no other source of revenue to offset the loss of tax revenue. The markets and the media have from time to time speculated that Japan might issue more government bonds, but even this speculation has eroded confidence in the Japanese yen and caused a surge in the long-term interest rate. Takaichi has insisted that she is not implementing a reflationary policy, but the markets remain skeptical.
 
Takaichi’s inability to implement policies is obvious in diplomacy. Since she commented in November 2025 on a contingency that might be triggered by action by China in Taiwan, China has been putting pressure on Japan to retract Takaichi’s statement. China has restricted trade with and tourism in Japan. China recently stressed Japan’s “new militarism,” citing its growing defense budget and the revision of its security policies. Regrettably for Takaichi, U.S. President Donald Trump recalled with Chinese President Xi Jinping a U.S.- China alliance in World War II that fought together to win the war (against Japan).
 
While praising Trump as the “only leader to bring peace and prosperity to the world,” Takaichi’s foreign policies are not always compatible with Trump’s. For domestic political reasons, she confirmed Japan’s support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) when Trump announced sanctions on the court. She was caught between the compassion of the Japanese people and U.S. hostility toward the ICC. She has otherwise tried to find common ground with the U.S. based on an old principle of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, a term invented by Takaichi’s political mentor, Shinzo Abe.
 
Closely watching the deterioration of Japan-China relations, Russia has put stronger pressure on Japan. Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first trip to one of the islands of Japan’s Northern Territory, Iturup, in August. Takaichi protested the visit, calling it “definitely intolerable.” Russia did not stop there. It detained a Japanese journalist for the Hokkaido Shimbun Press in Sakhalin on suspicion of spying for the Japanese government – a common Russian political tactic. Takaichi has denied that the journalist was a spy, but she has not had any direct communication with Putin so far.
 
Despite all these inadequacies in economic policy and diplomacy, Takaichi has a high popularity rating in the polls. In the poll of Yomiuri Shimbun in October, her cabinet had a 57 percent approval rating with a 30 percent disapproval – a 27 percent margin that politicians in most other countries, including the U.S., would envy. Although the survey was conducted right after the resignation of Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Kazuo Yana, after the revelation of a scandal threatening local municipalities with budget cuts for roads, that fact did not affect her popularity very much.
 
While the percentage of supporters who like her policies has declined, the biggest reason for supporting her was “because there is no other appropriate person.” She maintains support from younger voters through comments on social media. She does not favor any restrictions on AI technology, hoping to “make Japan the world’s best country to develop and use AI.” But it is a reality in Japan that cyberattacks on PHP through AI have shut down websites of major corporations.
 
Enjoying high popularity, Takaichi pursued a hawkish agenda in her first year. A good example was the enactment of the National Flag Vandalism Act, which garnered right wing support. She also championed revisions to the Imperial House Law, to allow the adoption of males in the male line of former imperial families – a goal of conservative groups that have long worked for imperial succession by males only. Undeniably, voters in Japan gave her this power in the Lower House election last February when Takaichi’s LDP gained an historical victory.
 
The Takaichi administration can be defined as an economy-oriented hawkish regime, which can be likened to the administrations of Shinzo Abe and Jun-ichiro Koizumi. Abe promoted Abenomics, a driving force for a demanding agenda that included the 2015 security legislation. Koizumi pushed for fiscal decentralization in what he called “trinity-in-unity reform,” and he stood with the U.S. in the war on terror. As far as a prime minister takes care of the people’s economic welfare, they will not complain about it.
 
Though she often invokes Abe, her former boss, as a model, Takaichi in fact seems to take Koizumi’s approach, using populism to restore faith in the LDP. The common ground among Koizumi, Abe, and Takaichi is the promotion of a hawkish agenda focusing public eyes on the economy. Perhaps this strategy is a requirement for a long-lasting administration in Japan.