Speaking in what was at times a loud and raucous Diet chamber on Friday, 24 October, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi delivered the first policy speech of her tenure.
Rhetorically, it was presented in her matter-of-fact style, with few if any of the flourishes that, for example, Shinzo Abe would deploy on these occasions. It was a blunt, direct address in which she outlined her government’s guiding philosophy and the ways in which she would seek to translate it into policy.
At the most basic level, she is indeed Abe’s heir, in that she is now the leading proponent of the statist tradition in Japanese conservatism, in which it is the duty of the Japanese state to defend the lives, livelihoods, and traditions of the Japanese people from all that threaten them. There are two words that ran through this speech – security (安全保障) and protect (守) – that illustrate the essence of her worldview.
She referred to “security” eighteen times, including not just in the traditional sense of “national security” but also food security, energy security, economic security, and “health and medical security.” In other places she talked about resilience in the face of natural disasters, what might be called “physical security” though she did not use the word security in that section.
Meanwhile, she used variations of the word “protect” – 守る, mamoru – in eight places, often referring to the need to protect people from economic hardship. The character for protect is also the second character in 保守, conservative.
But whereas Abe sought to balance his warnings about the dangers facing Japan with a certain innate optimism about Japan’s ability to overcome them, Takaichi is overwhelmingly focused on the dangers that Japan faces. Whereas Abe, in articulating Abenomics, was often focused on the opportunities for the Japanese people and Japanese companies, Takaichi’s program is considerably more pessimistic.
As such, she said – repeating something she argued while campaigning for the leadership last year and this year – that the focus of Japan’s growth strategy should be “crisis management investment,” essentially arguing that Japan can achieve a virtuous growth cycle through strategic investments to mitigate risks.
To be sure, it is not unreasonable that she would highlight the risks Japan faces; she is confronting a significantly more challenging global security and economic environments than her predecessors. Still, the difference is notable.
Meanwhile, despite her ambitions – including a pledge to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP before the end of the fiscal year using the forthcoming supplemental budget (she entirely sidestepped the contentious issue of how to pay for higher defense spending) – she faces two potential constraints.
First, although she stressed that she will pursue “responsible fiscal stimulus,” the policies she has outlined could be expensive and deficit-swelling, triggering adverse reactions in financial markets.
Second – and, admittedly, at odds with the first – she could run headlong into political constraints. Although she boasted that the Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) partnership with Ishin no Kai will promote political stability, the reality is that she is still at the head of a minority government that needs to work with multiple parties to manage the Diet. In this sense, the expansiveness of her ambitions could make the task of forging consensus harder.
To this end, Kōmeitō leader Tetsuo Saito, now freed from the constraints of his party’s coalition with the LDP, suggested that Takaichi’s pitch to opposition parties – “We will accept policy proposals from each party and discuss them as long as they do not contradict the government’s basic policy” – sounded “almost dictatorial.”
Other opposition party leaders were less than charitable in their initial replies, and she may have irked Ishin no Kai by excluding any mention of the plan to reduce the number of Diet members by 10%.
Waiting for Trump
With her policy speech done, Takaichi prepares for her next test, US President Donald Trump’s arrival in Japan on Monday, October 27 for a state visit. Before meeting Trump she would travel to Malaysia on Saturday to attend meetings with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), her first appearance on the world stage.
While substantively the Trump visit will focus on the next steps in implementing the US-Japan trade agreement – particularly the bilateral investment framework in which Japan will provide up to USD 550bn in some form for projects selected by the president – and Japan’s efforts to increase its own defense spending (and perhaps also its support for US forces in Japan), the new prime minister will likely try to use shared affection for the late Abe to forge a relationship with the US president.
To this end, Trump’s itinerary will be very similar to his itinerary during his last state visit to Japan in May 2019, when he met with the Emperor and visited Yokosuka naval base. He is also expected to golf – presumably not with Takaichi – and will meet with Akie Abe, Shinzo Abe’s widow.
The two governments are also expected to sign an agreement on cooperation in seven advanced technology sectors.
As part of the visit, Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama will meet with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for the first time. The two spoke on the phone for the first time on Friday. Meanwhile, Defense Minister Koizumi is looking to arrange a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth before the end of the month, perhaps as soon as 29 October.
Toward a national intelligence agency
Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said on Friday that he would lead the process of establishing a cabinet-level national intelligence agency, a long-standing priority of Prime Minister Takaichi’s and a major plank in the cooperation agreement between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Ishin no Kai.
The goal will be to elevate the existing Cabinet Information Research Office into an agency equivalent to the National Security Secretariat headed by a counterpart to the national security adviser. This plan highlights the extent to which Takaichi wants to resume the work of building out a national security establishment that was an important part of Abe’s agenda.
Other developments
For the first time since he became China’s leader in 2013, Xi Jinping did not send a public message congratulating Japan’s new prime minister after Takaichi took office this week, highlighting the challenges the bilateral relationship faces.
Takaichi joined a virtual meeting with other leaders for the first time on Friday, October 24, participating in a call with other countries supporting Ukraine.
The LDP’s tax commission, its ranks now filled with Takaichi allies, held a closed-door meeting Friday to discuss the FY2026 tax plan.
Nikkan Gendai noted that Ishin backbenchers are already grumbling about the partnership with the LDP.
Katsunobu Kato could be in line to lead an LDP political reform headquarters that would draw up plans for reducing the number of legislators.
The consumer price index (excluding fresh food) rose 2.9% year-over-year in September, the first time the figure was higher than the previous month’s in four months.
Tobias Harris, author of Shinzo Abe and the New Japan, is the founder and principal of Foresight LLC. This article, first published on his Substack newsletter Observing Japan, is republished with permission.
