October 8, 2025 • 21 mins
Japan is preparing for its first ever female prime minister. Sanae Takaichi, the 64-year-old hardline right-wing conservative, likens herself to Margaret Thatcher, and was a drummer in a metal band in her youth.
Today, political and international editor Peter Hartcher on whether Takaichi's ascension marks progress for Japan, and what her leadership could mean for China, Donald Trump’s impact in the Indo-Pacific, and Australia.
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S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is Morning Edition. I'm Chris Paine, filling in for
Samantha Salinger. Morris. It's Thursday, October 9th. Japan is preparing
for its first ever female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. The
64 year old conservative likens herself to Margaret Thatcher as
(00:25):
a would be Iron Lady of Japan. And if her
background is a heavy metal drummer, is anything to go by,
she'll be bringing plenty to the table. Today, political and
international editor Peter Hartcher on what Takeuchi's ascension could mean
for China, Donald Trump's impact in the Indo Pacific, and,
(00:46):
of course, Australia. Okay, Peter, so let's start with a
primer on Japanese politics as things stand at the left
or the right in power. What are the key issues
and where does the country take its place in the Indo-Pacific?
S2 (01:06):
Sure. Well, Japanese politics is a bit of a puzzle
to outsiders, and that's the reason it doesn't get a
lot of coverage in the outside world. Nowhere near as
much coverage commensurate with its weight in the world. Part
of the problem is that it seems to have had
the same party in power. Well, it has had the
(01:26):
same party in power for the entire post-war era, with
the exception of six years. So the question is, is
it really a two party system? Is it a democracy?
How does this system function? So, you know, there are
genuine reasons that people are puzzled by this system. The
short answer to your question, Chris, is that the LDP,
(01:50):
Liberal Democratic Party, as they call it, is the center
right party. One of the old gags about the Liberal
Democratic Party is that it's neither liberal nor democratic, And
it's not a party. Um, it's conservative rather than liberal.
They say it's not democratic because otherwise, how could it
hold power for the entire post-war era minus six years?
(02:11):
And it's not really a party because it's been divided
traditionally into very strong factions which compete amongst themselves for power.
And that's part of the reason it has managed to
hold power so long, because it has competing factions that
can show competing faces to the public, can appeal to
different constituencies. And it also helps explain why Japanese prime
(02:32):
ministers change more often than most light bulbs. And typically,
a year or two is more than enough for the
other factions to put up with. So that's that's the
big picture. Japan, you know, for most of the post-war period,
has not been a real two party system. It's been
a it was called a one and a half party
system with the LDP, the centre right, the current party
(02:53):
and the half party was the Socialist Party of Japan.
And that provided the main competition against the LDP for
most of that post-war era, but that's now faded away
to almost nothing. In fact, in the last elections in Japan,
the once dominant opposition party, the Japan Socialist Party, returned
only one member of parliament with 2% of the vote,
(03:15):
and there are more than 460 seats in the lower
house of the Japanese parliament and the Socialist Party, previously
the leading opposition now only has one seat. You asked
what are the current set up and current issues? The
problem that the LDP has now is that the competition
isn't so much on the left, although there is a
range of parties on the left of the LDP. The
(03:38):
recent problem it's had is on the right of the
rise of minor right wing and in the Japanese spectrum,
extremely right wing political parties. One of them, the one
that has had the most success has been in recent years,
has been modeling itself after Donald Trump's America First and
calling itself Japan First, which gives you a hint to
(03:58):
the sort of issues and questions which are on the
table in Japan today.
S1 (04:02):
Okay, so talk to me about Sanae Takaichi, who looks
set to become Japan's first female prime minister. What's happened?
S2 (04:10):
Yes. What's happened is that the ruling party, the LDP
Liberal Democratic Party, has decided it needed to do something
dramatically different in the last year or so. It's lost
its House majority. It's now ruling in a minority in
a coalition in the lower house. And then in July,
it lost its majority in the upper house as well.
(04:31):
It's been losing a lot of ground to minor right
wing parties. The Japanese public are frustrated with a few things,
including the apparently endless corruption in the LDP, which has
a time honoured history of corruption. And it's frustrated with inflation.
There's been an inflation uptick in Japan, even as it's
been declining elsewhere in the world. In the Western world,
(04:53):
at least, the price of rice, for example, today is
about double what it was a year ago, even after
the government opened its strategic reserve of rice. Which countries
keep which kind of reserves tells you about their real
national priorities? In Japan, they've got a strategic rice reserve.
In China, they have a strategic pork reserve. And people
are upset about the inflation, the corruption, and they're also upset.
(05:16):
There's a sense of hopelessness, economic stagnation, an increasing number
of foreigners and immigrants in Japanese terms, a large number
in our terms, barely registerable that is being blamed for that.
And so the appeal of the right wing parties that
are more sceptical and xenophobic. So the LDP decided they
(05:37):
needed to change, they needed to do something dramatic. And
that brings us to Takaichi. So Takahashi's outstanding and most
obvious feature is that she is Japan's first female prime minister.
And for a country that's, you know, pretty famously sexist
(05:57):
and chauvinist, that is a stand out all by itself
that that is a remarkable day, that it has happened.
And she was chosen in an internal party ballot. LDP members,
they had five candidates on the list. The other four
were all blokes, and they chose her.
S3 (06:13):
Former economic security minister Takaichi Sanai has become LDP's first
ever female president.
S4 (06:21):
With all of you, I will strive to fire up
the LDP and make it a positive party, which turns
people's anxieties into hope.
S5 (06:30):
But many women voters will tell you that they don't
see her as a sign of progress. Because she is
a staunch conservative. She's long opposed the legislation for women
to keep their maiden name after marriage. She says this
is against tradition.
S2 (06:48):
She is a pretty. In terms of the LDP, she
is a hardline right wing conservative. Calls herself the Japanese
Margaret Thatcher. The thinking is that she will appeal to
a lot of the voters that have deserted the LDP
to go to these more right wing, further right wing parties.
She also has expressed some reservations about the scale and
(07:09):
nature of the Immigration and Foreign Resident program. She's socially
very conservative, and she's also quite a hawk when it
comes to foreign policy. So she's a much more right wing,
hard driving, tough persona as well as a pretty conservative politics.
S1 (07:29):
We'll come back to her politics in a moment, but
Takaichi has she's had a fascinating life. I think it's
fair to say, from playing the drums to working in
American politics in the 80s. Can you just talk the
listeners through a bit more about this person's life?
S2 (07:44):
Yeah, well, she's remarkable for being coming from an unremarkable family,
just middle class factory worker and police officer parents, a
lot of the LDP and a lot of the political
class in Japan are sort of operating from a hereditary
position where they inherit their seats from almost always there. Fathers.
There's hardly any women in the LDP in parliament. A
(08:04):
second third are sometimes getting to fourth generation members of parliament.
She had none of that. She had none of that entree.
As you say, she's an adventurous spirit. In her youth,
she was the drummer in a heavy metal band in Japan.
And one detail that I noted in the piece I
wrote about her, and that's widely commented, is that whenever
(08:25):
she travelled to a gig, she would take multiple sets
of drumsticks because she routinely broke them with the ferocity
of her, of her drumming. But also, as you say,
she was a scuba diver, a car enthusiast. But perhaps
in terms of Japanese women of her generation, she's 64
today is that she was adventurous enough to go to
(08:46):
the US and get a job on Capitol Hill, working
for a Democratic congresswoman to see how the American system worked.
That is, in Japanese terms, an extremely adventurous, bold woman.
To do that, she's mastered English, which again is unusual
in the LDP. They're pretty hopeless lot when it comes
to to English, but she has it very, very soundly.
(09:07):
She's regarded as one of the very few members of
the Japanese political system who might be able to meet
Donald Trump eye to eye, because Japan and the US
have a lot to talk about.
S1 (09:16):
So, as you say, she likens herself to Margaret Thatcher.
One of her goals is to become Japan's Iron Lady,
as it were. How is it that she seeks to
model herself after Thatcher?
S2 (09:28):
Yeah. In the West you get a certain reaction when
you say Margaret Thatcher, because she is so detested by
the people other than those on the right and the
people who happen to admire her. She was a highly
divisive right wing leader in Britain in the 80s. She
was pioneering reaganism before Reagan. She was famous for her
(09:51):
confrontation of the trade union movement. It ended in violent clashes,
huge national schism. She swung the country decisively in favor
of free market as opposed to government. She presided over
a huge wave of privatisations, and yet, under her term,
(10:12):
the debt and deficit in Britain blew out enormously. So
even saying her name evokes a pretty tough mental image.
In Japan, it's different. The Japanese impression of Thatcher is
more stylistic than policy and outcome. It's more about being
a brave, bold, outspoken woman who did not need to
(10:33):
be propped up by men and being an unapologetic right winger.
That's the mould that Takeuchi is appealing to. And in Japan,
it's pretty much unthinkable that she would bring on the
social and economic confrontations Margaret Thatcher herself actually conducted. So
that gives you an idea of the mould that she
(10:54):
wants to to be without the same outcomes, I think.
S1 (10:59):
Okay. So let's position her more in the Japanese context.
You write that she most closely resembles her center right mentor,
the late Shinzo Abe. Of course. Shockingly assassinated three years ago.
Tell me more about her politics. Relative to the former
prime minister.
S2 (11:17):
Abe, Shinzo Abe was a real standout in this sort
of long line of bland LDP prime ministers who, as
I said, might only get one year in the job. Two,
if they were lucky. Abe managed to hold power over
two terms for nine years. He was remarkably effective, one
of the only really effective prime ministers Japan has had
(11:39):
in the last 50 years or so. One reason is
that he was politically dominant. He was able to master
the faction system and keep support broadly. It was really
his policy drivers that won him respect and that long
tenure in Japanese politics of nine years. The two things
that he was noted for was reviving a long dormant
(12:02):
economy at a time when the Japanese people had pretty
much given up on any hope of economic revival, especially
after the global financial crisis. He came in with a
decisive so-called three arrows economic policy that was all about
economic stimulus, and it worked. The second big feature of
(12:23):
his was his foreign policy. He was very outspoken and
hardline in the Japanese spectrum of things, about China and
about North Korea. And he was very strongly aligned with
the US and yet didn't appear to be sycophantic to
the US at all. So this was a position that
(12:46):
a lot of Japanese people could feel pretty proud about.
And these are the two predominant positions that Takaichi, who
was one of his proteges, was a member of his group,
his faction. She has now promised that she's going to
replicate those policies and lead Japan out of its economic slowdown.
(13:06):
And in Japanese terms, recent foreign policy has been fairly
active against the Chinese and North Korean threats. But she's
promising now to take a much firmer line.
S1 (13:24):
We'll be right back. So talk to me a bit
more about that. How she is differentiating herself, if you like,
from her two predecessors, and sort of reintroducing that hardline stance.
S2 (13:38):
Yeah. The predecessors were a bit sort of amoeba ish,
sort of shapeless, formless, didn't really stand for much. They
were time servers. They were seen as being weak on
China and sycophantic to the US. Very much a contrast
to Takeuchi. And the reason that, or the main reason
the members of the LDP have chosen her to be
(14:01):
their leader, that she will take a completely different position.
So she, for example, with the US, she has said
she's prepared to deal with Donald Trump as equals. I mean,
this doesn't sound terribly drastic in the Western scheme of things,
but in the Japanese scheme of things, this is pretty big.
She said that the tariff deal that her predecessor had
(14:23):
just negotiated with Donald Trump, she would be prepared to
renegotiate if it turns out to be on unequal terms
with Japan. So this is pretty strident stuff in the
Japanese system. Remember that Japan has been certainly the most
stalwart ally of the US since World War II in
North East Asia, and one of the 2 or 3
most stalwart in the world. So for a Japanese prime
(14:46):
minister to say she's prepared to renegotiate a very fresh
trade deal with Trump is bold stuff. And at the
same time, she's taken unapologetically tough stances on China, to
the point where she has said that the Japanese should
host medium range missiles, US missiles on Japanese soil, and
(15:07):
even have a debate about whether it should be the
host nation for American nuclear missiles on Japanese soil in
the event of a crisis. So these are tough, tough
positions that the Beijing government is quite anxious about.
S1 (15:22):
Well, the timing is interesting here because Donald Trump, of course,
is due to visit Tokyo in just a couple of weeks. Uh,
tell us a bit more about where Japan is with
the tariffs at the moment and what we might expect
to see between the two of them during that meeting.
S2 (15:38):
The tariff story with Japan is that Trump has given
Japan what he considers to be a very concessional, uh
rate tariff rate of 15%, in return for which Japan
promised to invest more than 800 billion USD in the
US economy. Um, that's that's the bare bones. And given
(15:59):
that Japan has had an enormous trade surplus with the
US for almost the entire postwar era, it is actually
a fairly concessional arrangement in Trump's worldview. And that's where
things stand. So they've got a lot of brownie points,
in other words, for being an important ally. And if
the US is ever going to be serious about confronting China,
(16:22):
Japan is at its very front row. It is the
tip of the spear. If there is a war against China,
whether it's over Taiwan or something else. So for those reasons,
it seems that Trump has cut a relatively straightforward deal
with Japan. On an aside historical note, the very first
political or economic statement Trump ever made was in the 1980s,
(16:45):
when he took out full page ads in the New
York Times about Japan, about Japan's trade surplus, and to
complain how unfair Japan was in trade. So now here
he is as president, imposing tariffs. How they go with
each other is, of course, an open question because they've
not met. Trump put out a very gracious congratulatory note,
(17:08):
calling her an impressive and strong woman. But they've got
a few things to talk about. The tariff deal is one.
China is another. And the personal chemistry between Trump and
a strong woman. Well, we'll see how that goes.
S1 (17:27):
Okay, so we have takaichi positioning or repositioning Japan politically.
Some pretty important alliances you discussed with the US. Her
position on China. How about Australia? How might a takaichi
prime ministership affect Australia's interests in the region?
S2 (17:47):
A guidepost here would be, uh, Abe Shinzo Abe, her
former mentor, now assassinated, as you said in his worldview, uh,
the response to the rise of an assertive China was
very much about drawing closer to all like minded countries.
He pioneered the policy of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
(18:10):
That was his term, which has since been embraced by
Australia and everybody else. And part of that was working
much more closely with Australia. Australia, as a valued part
of the coalition of countries that were prepared to stand
with the US and against China. So Abe thought Australia
(18:31):
was very valuable. I spoke to a Japanese commentator, a
career diplomat, who's now a conservative commentator in the Japanese media,
Shingo Yamagami, and he told me that he has been
advising Takaichi on foreign policy. One of many advisers. And
he said that she puts a very high priority on
(18:53):
Australia's strategic value. And that's to do with Australia's closely
interlocked defence and national security cooperation with the US. It's
got to do with Australia's membership of the quad, which
was another Abe innovation to bring the leaders of those
four countries the US, Japan, India, Australia together. That was
(19:13):
an Abe initiative, which is in a little bit of
trouble at the moment because of tensions with Donald Trump
continuously punishing India and the Indians not loving it. So
Takaichi has vowed to re-energize the quad. All of these
are policies which would suit and fit the Albanese government
pretty well. And according to Yamagami, the former Japanese ambassador
(19:35):
to Australia, now commentator, he says that she does indeed,
in his conversations with her place, a strong emphasis on
an ever closer relationship with Australia.
S1 (19:46):
Well, Peter, it'll be fascinating to see how her prime
ministership unfolds. Plenty to talk about in future, no doubt.
Perhaps over an okonomiyaki. Thank you for joining us in
the meantime.
S2 (19:56):
Okonomiyaki pancake. Always welcome in my book. Thanks, Chris.
S1 (20:02):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Kai
Wong with technical assistance from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer
is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
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(20:22):
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(20:42):
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the show. Notes. I'm Chris Payne. This is Morning edition.
Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is Morning Edition. I'm Chris Paine, filling in for
Samantha Salinger. Morris. It's Thursday, October 9th. Japan is preparing
for its first ever female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. The
64 year old conservative likens herself to Margaret Thatcher as
(00:25):
a would be Iron Lady of Japan. And if her
background is a heavy metal drummer, is anything to go by,
she'll be bringing plenty to the table. Today, political and
international editor Peter Hartcher on what Takeuchi's ascension could mean
for China, Donald Trump's impact in the Indo Pacific, and,
(00:46):
of course, Australia. Okay, Peter, so let's start with a
primer on Japanese politics as things stand at the left
or the right in power. What are the key issues
and where does the country take its place in the Indo-Pacific?
S2 (01:06):
Sure. Well, Japanese politics is a bit of a puzzle
to outsiders, and that's the reason it doesn't get a
lot of coverage in the outside world. Nowhere near as
much coverage commensurate with its weight in the world. Part
of the problem is that it seems to have had
the same party in power. Well, it has had the
(01:26):
same party in power for the entire post-war era, with
the exception of six years. So the question is, is
it really a two party system? Is it a democracy?
How does this system function? So, you know, there are
genuine reasons that people are puzzled by this system. The
short answer to your question, Chris, is that the LDP,
(01:50):
Liberal Democratic Party, as they call it, is the center
right party. One of the old gags about the Liberal
Democratic Party is that it's neither liberal nor democratic, And
it's not a party. Um, it's conservative rather than liberal.
They say it's not democratic because otherwise, how could it
hold power for the entire post-war era minus six years?
(02:11):
And it's not really a party because it's been divided
traditionally into very strong factions which compete amongst themselves for power.
And that's part of the reason it has managed to
hold power so long, because it has competing factions that
can show competing faces to the public, can appeal to
different constituencies. And it also helps explain why Japanese prime
(02:32):
ministers change more often than most light bulbs. And typically,
a year or two is more than enough for the
other factions to put up with. So that's that's the
big picture. Japan, you know, for most of the post-war period,
has not been a real two party system. It's been
a it was called a one and a half party
system with the LDP, the centre right, the current party
(02:53):
and the half party was the Socialist Party of Japan.
And that provided the main competition against the LDP for
most of that post-war era, but that's now faded away
to almost nothing. In fact, in the last elections in Japan,
the once dominant opposition party, the Japan Socialist Party, returned
only one member of parliament with 2% of the vote,
(03:15):
and there are more than 460 seats in the lower
house of the Japanese parliament and the Socialist Party, previously
the leading opposition now only has one seat. You asked
what are the current set up and current issues? The
problem that the LDP has now is that the competition
isn't so much on the left, although there is a
range of parties on the left of the LDP. The
(03:38):
recent problem it's had is on the right of the
rise of minor right wing and in the Japanese spectrum,
extremely right wing political parties. One of them, the one
that has had the most success has been in recent years,
has been modeling itself after Donald Trump's America First and
calling itself Japan First, which gives you a hint to
(03:58):
the sort of issues and questions which are on the
table in Japan today.
S1 (04:02):
Okay, so talk to me about Sanae Takaichi, who looks
set to become Japan's first female prime minister. What's happened?
S2 (04:10):
Yes. What's happened is that the ruling party, the LDP
Liberal Democratic Party, has decided it needed to do something
dramatically different in the last year or so. It's lost
its House majority. It's now ruling in a minority in
a coalition in the lower house. And then in July,
it lost its majority in the upper house as well.
(04:31):
It's been losing a lot of ground to minor right
wing parties. The Japanese public are frustrated with a few things,
including the apparently endless corruption in the LDP, which has
a time honoured history of corruption. And it's frustrated with inflation.
There's been an inflation uptick in Japan, even as it's
been declining elsewhere in the world. In the Western world,
(04:53):
at least, the price of rice, for example, today is
about double what it was a year ago, even after
the government opened its strategic reserve of rice. Which countries
keep which kind of reserves tells you about their real
national priorities? In Japan, they've got a strategic rice reserve.
In China, they have a strategic pork reserve. And people
are upset about the inflation, the corruption, and they're also upset.
(05:16):
There's a sense of hopelessness, economic stagnation, an increasing number
of foreigners and immigrants in Japanese terms, a large number
in our terms, barely registerable that is being blamed for that.
And so the appeal of the right wing parties that
are more sceptical and xenophobic. So the LDP decided they
(05:37):
needed to change, they needed to do something dramatic. And
that brings us to Takaichi. So Takahashi's outstanding and most
obvious feature is that she is Japan's first female prime minister.
And for a country that's, you know, pretty famously sexist
(05:57):
and chauvinist, that is a stand out all by itself
that that is a remarkable day, that it has happened.
And she was chosen in an internal party ballot. LDP members,
they had five candidates on the list. The other four
were all blokes, and they chose her.
S3 (06:13):
Former economic security minister Takaichi Sanai has become LDP's first
ever female president.
S4 (06:21):
With all of you, I will strive to fire up
the LDP and make it a positive party, which turns
people's anxieties into hope.
S5 (06:30):
But many women voters will tell you that they don't
see her as a sign of progress. Because she is
a staunch conservative. She's long opposed the legislation for women
to keep their maiden name after marriage. She says this
is against tradition.
S2 (06:48):
She is a pretty. In terms of the LDP, she
is a hardline right wing conservative. Calls herself the Japanese
Margaret Thatcher. The thinking is that she will appeal to
a lot of the voters that have deserted the LDP
to go to these more right wing, further right wing parties.
She also has expressed some reservations about the scale and
(07:09):
nature of the Immigration and Foreign Resident program. She's socially
very conservative, and she's also quite a hawk when it
comes to foreign policy. So she's a much more right wing,
hard driving, tough persona as well as a pretty conservative politics.
S1 (07:29):
We'll come back to her politics in a moment, but
Takaichi has she's had a fascinating life. I think it's
fair to say, from playing the drums to working in
American politics in the 80s. Can you just talk the
listeners through a bit more about this person's life?
S2 (07:44):
Yeah, well, she's remarkable for being coming from an unremarkable family,
just middle class factory worker and police officer parents, a
lot of the LDP and a lot of the political
class in Japan are sort of operating from a hereditary
position where they inherit their seats from almost always there. Fathers.
There's hardly any women in the LDP in parliament. A
(08:04):
second third are sometimes getting to fourth generation members of parliament.
She had none of that. She had none of that entree.
As you say, she's an adventurous spirit. In her youth,
she was the drummer in a heavy metal band in Japan.
And one detail that I noted in the piece I
wrote about her, and that's widely commented, is that whenever
(08:25):
she travelled to a gig, she would take multiple sets
of drumsticks because she routinely broke them with the ferocity
of her, of her drumming. But also, as you say,
she was a scuba diver, a car enthusiast. But perhaps
in terms of Japanese women of her generation, she's 64
today is that she was adventurous enough to go to
(08:46):
the US and get a job on Capitol Hill, working
for a Democratic congresswoman to see how the American system worked.
That is, in Japanese terms, an extremely adventurous, bold woman.
To do that, she's mastered English, which again is unusual
in the LDP. They're pretty hopeless lot when it comes
to to English, but she has it very, very soundly.
(09:07):
She's regarded as one of the very few members of
the Japanese political system who might be able to meet
Donald Trump eye to eye, because Japan and the US
have a lot to talk about.
S1 (09:16):
So, as you say, she likens herself to Margaret Thatcher.
One of her goals is to become Japan's Iron Lady,
as it were. How is it that she seeks to
model herself after Thatcher?
S2 (09:28):
Yeah. In the West you get a certain reaction when
you say Margaret Thatcher, because she is so detested by
the people other than those on the right and the
people who happen to admire her. She was a highly
divisive right wing leader in Britain in the 80s. She
was pioneering reaganism before Reagan. She was famous for her
(09:51):
confrontation of the trade union movement. It ended in violent clashes,
huge national schism. She swung the country decisively in favor
of free market as opposed to government. She presided over
a huge wave of privatisations, and yet, under her term,
(10:12):
the debt and deficit in Britain blew out enormously. So
even saying her name evokes a pretty tough mental image.
In Japan, it's different. The Japanese impression of Thatcher is
more stylistic than policy and outcome. It's more about being
a brave, bold, outspoken woman who did not need to
(10:33):
be propped up by men and being an unapologetic right winger.
That's the mould that Takeuchi is appealing to. And in Japan,
it's pretty much unthinkable that she would bring on the
social and economic confrontations Margaret Thatcher herself actually conducted. So
that gives you an idea of the mould that she
(10:54):
wants to to be without the same outcomes, I think.
S1 (10:59):
Okay. So let's position her more in the Japanese context.
You write that she most closely resembles her center right mentor,
the late Shinzo Abe. Of course. Shockingly assassinated three years ago.
Tell me more about her politics. Relative to the former
prime minister.
S2 (11:17):
Abe, Shinzo Abe was a real standout in this sort
of long line of bland LDP prime ministers who, as
I said, might only get one year in the job. Two,
if they were lucky. Abe managed to hold power over
two terms for nine years. He was remarkably effective, one
of the only really effective prime ministers Japan has had
(11:39):
in the last 50 years or so. One reason is
that he was politically dominant. He was able to master
the faction system and keep support broadly. It was really
his policy drivers that won him respect and that long
tenure in Japanese politics of nine years. The two things
that he was noted for was reviving a long dormant
(12:02):
economy at a time when the Japanese people had pretty
much given up on any hope of economic revival, especially
after the global financial crisis. He came in with a
decisive so-called three arrows economic policy that was all about
economic stimulus, and it worked. The second big feature of
(12:23):
his was his foreign policy. He was very outspoken and
hardline in the Japanese spectrum of things, about China and
about North Korea. And he was very strongly aligned with
the US and yet didn't appear to be sycophantic to
the US at all. So this was a position that
(12:46):
a lot of Japanese people could feel pretty proud about.
And these are the two predominant positions that Takaichi, who
was one of his proteges, was a member of his group,
his faction. She has now promised that she's going to
replicate those policies and lead Japan out of its economic slowdown.
(13:06):
And in Japanese terms, recent foreign policy has been fairly
active against the Chinese and North Korean threats. But she's
promising now to take a much firmer line.
S1 (13:24):
We'll be right back. So talk to me a bit
more about that. How she is differentiating herself, if you like,
from her two predecessors, and sort of reintroducing that hardline stance.
S2 (13:38):
Yeah. The predecessors were a bit sort of amoeba ish,
sort of shapeless, formless, didn't really stand for much. They
were time servers. They were seen as being weak on
China and sycophantic to the US. Very much a contrast
to Takeuchi. And the reason that, or the main reason
the members of the LDP have chosen her to be
(14:01):
their leader, that she will take a completely different position.
So she, for example, with the US, she has said
she's prepared to deal with Donald Trump as equals. I mean,
this doesn't sound terribly drastic in the Western scheme of things,
but in the Japanese scheme of things, this is pretty big.
She said that the tariff deal that her predecessor had
(14:23):
just negotiated with Donald Trump, she would be prepared to
renegotiate if it turns out to be on unequal terms
with Japan. So this is pretty strident stuff in the
Japanese system. Remember that Japan has been certainly the most
stalwart ally of the US since World War II in
North East Asia, and one of the 2 or 3
most stalwart in the world. So for a Japanese prime
(14:46):
minister to say she's prepared to renegotiate a very fresh
trade deal with Trump is bold stuff. And at the
same time, she's taken unapologetically tough stances on China, to
the point where she has said that the Japanese should
host medium range missiles, US missiles on Japanese soil, and
(15:07):
even have a debate about whether it should be the
host nation for American nuclear missiles on Japanese soil in
the event of a crisis. So these are tough, tough
positions that the Beijing government is quite anxious about.
S1 (15:22):
Well, the timing is interesting here because Donald Trump, of course,
is due to visit Tokyo in just a couple of weeks. Uh,
tell us a bit more about where Japan is with
the tariffs at the moment and what we might expect
to see between the two of them during that meeting.
S2 (15:38):
The tariff story with Japan is that Trump has given
Japan what he considers to be a very concessional, uh
rate tariff rate of 15%, in return for which Japan
promised to invest more than 800 billion USD in the
US economy. Um, that's that's the bare bones. And given
(15:59):
that Japan has had an enormous trade surplus with the
US for almost the entire postwar era, it is actually
a fairly concessional arrangement in Trump's worldview. And that's where
things stand. So they've got a lot of brownie points,
in other words, for being an important ally. And if
the US is ever going to be serious about confronting China,
(16:22):
Japan is at its very front row. It is the
tip of the spear. If there is a war against China,
whether it's over Taiwan or something else. So for those reasons,
it seems that Trump has cut a relatively straightforward deal
with Japan. On an aside historical note, the very first
political or economic statement Trump ever made was in the 1980s,
(16:45):
when he took out full page ads in the New
York Times about Japan, about Japan's trade surplus, and to
complain how unfair Japan was in trade. So now here
he is as president, imposing tariffs. How they go with
each other is, of course, an open question because they've
not met. Trump put out a very gracious congratulatory note,
(17:08):
calling her an impressive and strong woman. But they've got
a few things to talk about. The tariff deal is one.
China is another. And the personal chemistry between Trump and
a strong woman. Well, we'll see how that goes.
S1 (17:27):
Okay, so we have takaichi positioning or repositioning Japan politically.
Some pretty important alliances you discussed with the US. Her
position on China. How about Australia? How might a takaichi
prime ministership affect Australia's interests in the region?
S2 (17:47):
A guidepost here would be, uh, Abe Shinzo Abe, her
former mentor, now assassinated, as you said in his worldview, uh,
the response to the rise of an assertive China was
very much about drawing closer to all like minded countries.
He pioneered the policy of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
(18:10):
That was his term, which has since been embraced by
Australia and everybody else. And part of that was working
much more closely with Australia. Australia, as a valued part
of the coalition of countries that were prepared to stand
with the US and against China. So Abe thought Australia
(18:31):
was very valuable. I spoke to a Japanese commentator, a
career diplomat, who's now a conservative commentator in the Japanese media,
Shingo Yamagami, and he told me that he has been
advising Takaichi on foreign policy. One of many advisers. And
he said that she puts a very high priority on
(18:53):
Australia's strategic value. And that's to do with Australia's closely
interlocked defence and national security cooperation with the US. It's
got to do with Australia's membership of the quad, which
was another Abe innovation to bring the leaders of those
four countries the US, Japan, India, Australia together. That was
(19:13):
an Abe initiative, which is in a little bit of
trouble at the moment because of tensions with Donald Trump
continuously punishing India and the Indians not loving it. So
Takaichi has vowed to re-energize the quad. All of these
are policies which would suit and fit the Albanese government
pretty well. And according to Yamagami, the former Japanese ambassador
(19:35):
to Australia, now commentator, he says that she does indeed,
in his conversations with her place, a strong emphasis on
an ever closer relationship with Australia.
S1 (19:46):
Well, Peter, it'll be fascinating to see how her prime
ministership unfolds. Plenty to talk about in future, no doubt.
Perhaps over an okonomiyaki. Thank you for joining us in
the meantime.
S2 (19:56):
Okonomiyaki pancake. Always welcome in my book. Thanks, Chris.
S1 (20:02):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Kai
Wong with technical assistance from Debbie Harrington. Our executive producer
is Tammy Mills. Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
follow the Morning Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you
(20:22):
listen to podcasts. Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so
to support independent journalism, visit the page or. Subscribe and
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(20:42):
important news in your inbox every morning. Links are in
the show. Notes. I'm Chris Payne. This is Morning edition.
Thanks for listening.
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