Japan set to appoint first female Prime Minister | ABC NEWS
Japan is set to get its first female prime minister after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party voted Sa Takahichi as its leader. She won a party ballot in a runoff against Shinjiro Kisumi who hoped to become the youngest prime minister in postwar Japan. Our North Asia correspondent James Otin joins us now from Tokyo. Hi there James. So can you just tell us a bit about the incoming prime minister? Yeah, certainly. I mean, the the easiest way to describe who she is and her politics is that she regards the former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as a role model. That gives you a good idea of who we’re dealing with here. She is a hardline conservative and a hawk. And she’s from the Shinszo Abbe faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which is to the right, the Conservative side of this, I guess, broad church party here as well. Uh but in recent weeks she’s been softening that image talking more about collaborating because at the end of the day there are mixed views in this party about who should lead. Of course that’s why we had today’s vote and the government the Liberal Democratic Party is in a minority government. So it can’t govern in its own right. It needs to work with minor parties to get legislation through. So, she’s been working hard to, I guess, soften her image a bit, uh, and really building her social media profile as well. She now has more followers on X, the old Twitter platform, uh, than the current prime minister, Shagedu Ishiba. So, I guess it’s working on that front. Uh, today she spoke about working hard. She used that phrase multiple times, working hard hard to restore voter trust in the Liberal Democratic Party cuz it’s losing voters on the left, on the right as cost of living issues really bite hard on the people of Japan, particularly because this is a country that has had stagnant wages for decades. So that’s been a huge concern for voters. So that will be her top priority. She also talked about building a robust health care system uh as well as reviving the economy of course and having Japan as a leadership role in the Indo-Pacific region. One of the big challenges for Japan is it’s trying to lift its military spending. It was at 1% for a very long time. It’s now a bit over 1.5%. It needs to get to 2%. That’s a challenge in the current economic environment. But I imagine she’s the type of person who’ll be more able to push hard on advancing that idea that Japan needs to have a stronger presence and a stronger military in the region. And James, this isn’t Sa Taki’s first attempt to become leader. Just take us back. How do we get here? Yeah, so she actually ran for this job just a year ago when the current prime minister got the job. And the problem then was is that it came to a runoff and the party the the fellow law makers the fellow uh colleagues in parliament uh they swung behind Shagaru Ishiba uh the main reason touted is many feared that she would be too conservative for the mainstream voters here. She’d be considered too hardline. So Shagetta Ishiba got the top job a year ago. He called a snap election uh trying to put I guess his his own stamp on the party but it was a decision that backfired spectacularly and the Liberal Democratic Party were put in minority government. It lost control of the lower house and then earlier this year it lost its majority in the upper house. That’s the LDP and its coalition ally. So shaged Ishiba simply couldn’t get big policy ideas through the parliament and he just lacked I guess the charisma needed to win over voters that even if you can’t necessarily get the big ideas through parliament at least give the appearance that you’re in charge and he really lacked on both those fronts. So he decided after he secured a trade deal with the United States that it was time for him to step down and get a new leader uh as as new prime minister and new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party. And of course that is now Sane Takayichi. She still needs to be formally approved by the parliament to become prime minister but the the high expectation is that she will be the next prime minister.
Sanae Takaichi is set to become Japan’s first female prime minister after winning a party ballot in a run-off against Shinjiro Koizumi. It comes after the Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba announced his resignation, after he led the party into minority government following poor election results. Subscribe: http://ab.co/1svxLVE
Read more here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-04/japan-ldp-leadership-election-results/105852408
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