Takaichi Sanae votes at the election site

If nothing goes wrong, Japan will produce the first female prime minister in history, Takashi Saami.

According to the results of the Japanese self-government party election on October 4, the 64-year-old former economic security minister, CaoÊÐÔçÃç, defeated the former prime minister, Xiao Jing, and became a new president of the self-government party.

In the past, after sitting on the brown ¡°president¡± desk in the office of the self-government party headquarters, Qing was a middle-aged man. They often ended up becoming the prime minister of Japan, which is known as ¡°the prime minister of the cabinet¡± of the Japanese government.

Nowadays, the elected president and the prime minister are no longer born out of that bunch of old men. The upcoming 103rd prime minister of the cabinet will be an anti-normal woman, indicating that Japanese politics has entered an unprecedented phase.

On October 4, 2025, in Tokyo, Japan, the self-government party headquarters, the former Japanese economic security minister, CaoÊÐÔçÃç, won the final vote with Japan's agriculture and forestry aquaculture minister,СȪ½ø´ÎÀÉ.

This year, the self-government party just 70 years, at this time to promote a woman as president, is also quite meaningful. high-market earlyÃç replaced due to two election losses retiredʯÆÆï, is taken over by a crisis, low-rated self-government party.

According to American scholar Jonathan H Westover, many formerly male-dominated political parties or organizations prefer to suddenly choose a female leader in times of adversity or crisis.There is a psychology behind this: if things get better, it¡¯s even a ¡°iron lady,¡± but when things get harder and worse, female leaders are often the best ¡°backyardmen.¡±

While they break through the "glass ceiling" to gain power, they often reach the edge of the "glass cliff".

Japan is also facing a historic turning point in the great era of globalization and U.S. strategic shrinkage. What variables will this dangerous woman, who has taken a near-right position in the past, bring to the situation in Japan and East Asia?

The Eastern Mrs. Thatcher

A deep blue business suit, wearing a string of white pearl necklaces on the neck, in this year's election of the self-government party chairman's political conference, the high market morning is such a dress.

This dress reminds people of Margaret Thatcher, Britain's first female prime minister. Indeed, Takashi Saami has always wanted to portray herself as Japan's Margaret Thatcher. On his personal website, there is a photo taken in 2006: on the left is the elderly Margaret Thatcher, and on the right is the fledgling young junior minister Takashi Saami.

Mrs. Thatcher and the High Market.

That was when Mrs. Thatcher had been out for years, wearing the dark blue business suit symbolizing conservationism, and the pearl necklace symbolizing motherhood.

From Makiko Tanaka to Renho, Japan's female prime minister has been unable to achieve this for many years, but now Takashi has made a breakthrough. But like Mrs. Thatcher, Takashi Saami's core proposition in a dress that emphasizes motherhood and conservative politics has few demands for women's rights. On the contrary, it is more nationalism, conservative family values and aggressive security demands.

On October 4, 2025, Takashi Saami delivered a speech during the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election held at the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. Xinhua Agency said

As a woman, HighSize also opposes the reform of the controversial "matrimony" system in Japan: when a woman marries, she follows her husband's surname. As the number of Japanese women entering the workplace gradually increases, the "matrimony" system is considered to be an old custom that is detrimental to female workplace people. After all, women's names have changed after marriage, many legal contracts and documents have been changed, and even visits have to be printed again.

In comparison to the relatively moderate opponent, the Minister of Agriculture, Xiao Jinglong, the high-market early Shui can be said to be the headline of the right-wing faction within the Democratic Party. For a long time, the flagship of the right-wing faction has been Abe Jinglong. The right-wing appeal of the Democratic Party, represented by Abe Jinglong, has always advocated Japan's "going out of the shadow after the war", changing the self-defense force to the right-wing army, "going the path of the normal country"; to the inside, advocate conservative social and family values, with national pride as the focus of education, and re-form the respect for the Emperor.

In February 2020, the then Japanese general affairs minister, High City Morning Sun (left) and the then Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe (right).

Takashi Saami is also a frequent visitor to the Yasukuni Shrine. From 2014 to 2025, she visited the shrine 11 times, while denying the historical facts of Japan's war of aggression.

It is precisely because of these political positions similar to Shinzo Abe that Japanese media call him a female version of Abe.

As early as the life of Shinzo Abe, Takashi Haraimu was already a rising star in the right-wing camp. That is, at Abe's behest, Takashi Saami made her first attempt to participate in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election in August 2021, but she was easily defeated by Fumio Kishida at that time. In October 2024, the Liberal Democratic Party held another presidential election. Takashi Saami, as a right-wing representative within the party, was defeated by Shigeru Ishiba with a slight advantage.

After two defeats in the elections, the high-market early sunset is increasingly high in the self-government party. Japanese political observation scholar Prof. 후ÌÙÇ«´Î believes that this self-government party election is more like an internal referendum on the right-wing line represented by high-market early sunset.

A running prime minister

CaoÊÐÔçÃç was elected president of the self-government party to serve as the prime minister's power base, or the self-government party vessel that has just passed the age of 70 and has become more damaged in the last two years.

In the short term of more than a year, the Democratic Party lost in the House of Representatives and the Senate elections and gradually lost the majority of seats in Congress. In the days when the Democratic Party took over the absolute seat in Congress, being elected President of the Democratic Party also meant automatically being elected Prime Minister of Japan.

In 17 years, he attacked the throne of president and prime minister of the Liberal Democratic Party five times. Shigeru Ishiba's dream of prime minister, which he had longed for for many years, ran aground in less than a year. What he left to his successor was a more divided Congress and a ruling seat with no advantages at all.

On October 4, 2025, at the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, Takashi Saami (right) paid tribute to Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (left) and former President of the Liberal Democratic Party after winning the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election. Source: Xinhua Agency

Like Shigeru Ishiba, almost every Japanese politician has a dream of being a prime minister, and almost every prime minister wants to become a "great prime minister". But most prime ministers end up stepping down hastily.

The so-called "great prime minister" in Japan's post-war politics refers to the kind of prime minister who has been in power for a long time, has a solid foundation of seats in Congress, and left an important legacy in the critical period of Japanese history. Yoshida Shigeru, who laid the internal and external pattern of Japan after the war, Ikeda Yuuto and tanaka kakuei, who were in power steadily during the period of rapid economic growth in Japan, and even Shinzo Abe and Junichiro Koizumi, who relied on the right for a long time in the future, can basically be called "great prime ministers".

Most of the remaining long list of prime ministers have been forgotten due to the extremely short life span of the cabinet and little influence.

On September 20, 2006, Shinzo Abe (second from right) was elected as the new president of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. Photo by former president Junichiro Koizumi, reporter Ma Ping of Xinhua Agency

At present, Japan is facing inflation and population shrinkage, and the shadow of U.S. tariffs still lingers. In this headwind period, it is almost impossible to produce a "great prime minister" relying on traditional routes.

It can be said that Japan's 103rd prime minister has to play a significant political game in order to escape the "short life" end of most prime ministers.

¡°Who is the little dwarf in the corner?¡± was what the French President de Gaulle said before a meeting with the Japanese prime minister, referring to the Japanese prime minister and the sheriffs. In the opinion of some Western politicians, the Japanese prime minister sitting on the other side of the negotiating table, an old face of an Asian man, both strange and difficult to attract, in the words of de Gaulle, more ¡°like an electronics salesman.¡±

Indeed, on the world stage, it is basically difficult for Japan's prime minister to have a long-term and stable face to the outside world. During the Cold War, as a Western camp, Japan's GDP once hit the United States, but it was difficult to produce leaders of medium-sized powers like the French President and the British Prime Minister who could play a calling force in their own camp.

On October 4, 2025, in the headquarters of the Self-Democratic Party in Tokyo, Japan, High-Stock Morning Sine received congratulations after winning the election of the President of the Self-Democratic Party.

The prime minister changes too frequently and the route wavers, which is also one of the reasons.

This also confirms what Japanese domestic observers have often said in the past: Japan is an important giant in economic terms, but is a politician in political terms. In the context of the global retreat, Japan¡¯s ¡°political giant¡± status is more likely to become a soft rib in the United States.

Unlike the middle-aged men of the past, this time the "Japanese Iron Maiden", how to show the new leader's face to the two great countries and the whole world, how the effect, is also an unknown number.

Shadow does not go.

One of the problems faced by takaichi sanae's newly elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party is the constant loss of the ticket warehouse of right-wing supporters. Like the British Conservative Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, which belongs to the moderate right-wing, was robbed of many votes by the new right-wing party in the era of populism and xenophobia. In the last two elections, the biggest gain was the Japanese participating party that rose around 2020.

The party imitates Trump's "America Priority" and fires the "Japanese Priority", and uses the Japanese society's unfamiliarity and fear of foreign workers to fire a lot of conspiracy theories related to foreigners on the web.

On July 13, 2025, in the Japanese prefecture of Chihuahua, opponents expressed their protest against Xinhua news agency reporter Jaohua Zheng in the party's street speech.

In the UK, the Conservative Party's support rating has been greatly abandoned by the British Reform Party, which advocates mass exclusion of immigrants. In Japan, the newly emerging xenophobic party, the Participating Party, is repeating a similar script in an attempt to seize the Liberal Democratic Party's original vote position. This Liberal Democratic Party presidential election is equivalent to the Liberal Democratic Party's decision whether to return to Shinzo Abe's right-wing line or continue the moderate line of Shigeru Ishiba.

The victory of Takashi Saami demonstrated the willingness of most Liberal Democratic Party supporters to continue to move to the right. From Shinzo Abe to Takashi Hayabu, Japan's mainstream political parties have gone further and further along the right-wing line of the "post-war era."

Once upon a time, Shigeru Yoshida, the "Great Prime Minister", positioned modern Japan as a "trading country with only light armed forces", handed over all defense to the United States, and concentrated on economic development. Matching Yoshida Shigeru's line is historian Masahiro Akita's "Japan's Maritime State Theory": in his view, the tragedy of Japan's militarism from the Meiji Restoration lies in the fact that Japan should have stayed on the track of "maritime state" at that time, but it deviated from the track of "mainland state", allowing the army to sit big, surpass the navy, hijacking the whole military base camp, and finally embarking on the evil road of foreign aggression.

The picture shows Shigeru Yoshida

However, what competes with Yoshida Shigeru's concept of "a country of trade" is the line of "a strong country in the East", represented by Ichiro Hatoyama and Kishi Nobusuke, the elders of World War II, who advocate rearming. The competition between the two routes became white-hot in 1955, which was also an important incentive for the establishment of the Liberal Democratic Party.

The pre-war naval and army struggle, the post-war struggle between the concepts of "commercial countries" and "normal countries", buried the tension in the self-government party's 70 years of mutual counterbalance.

He once served as a A-class war criminal, as well as the grandfather of Abe. He left the latter to remove the "peace constitution" and re-armed into the "normal country". It can be said that as the interest of the United States in the role of world police declined, Japan relied on the United States defense to continue to follow the "only retain lightweight armed trade countries" route has been difficult.

In 2025, Takashi Saami delivered a speech at the Liberal Democratic Party's presidential election political views. Xinhua Agency said

In today's more turbulent world, Japan's positioning as a country is once again wavering. The emergence of leaders on the road to "rearming" is not expected.

However, for Takashi Saami, who relies on a weak majority of seats to establish prime minister's power, regaining the right-wing votes and the absolute majority for the Liberal Democratic Party is more like a top priority.

As the "glass cliff" curse says, in an old conservative party like the Liberal Democratic Party, which is still dominated by men, it is more or less a big gamble to suddenly throw out a female president. It is very likely that takaichi sanae will not be the "Iron Lady", but will become the "back-pot man" for this group of men to continue to sink.

The illustrations in the article are partly from visual China, partly from the network.

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