SEOUL, South Korea — Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party President Sanae Takaichi, 64, looks set – finally – to be voted in as the country’s first-ever female prime minister Tuesday after securing a last-minute partnership with an opposition party.
The deal was welcomed by markets: Tokyo’s benchmark index, the Nikkei 225 closed on a record high Monday, hitting 49,185.5 — a surge of 3.37% over the previous close.
Tomorrow’s vote will cap weeks of uncertainty — uncertainty highly unusual for Tokyo’s customarily sedate tradition of politics — after the LDP’s previous coalition partner of 26 years exited the alliance.
That party set to join the LDP in a brand-new coalition is Nippon Ishin No Kai, or Japan Innovation Party (sometimes translated as Japan Reform Party). Like the LDP, Ishin is a center-right machine and holds the third largest bloc of seats in the Diet.
The partnership was thrashed out over the weekend and announced officially on Monday.
“This is a big step forward,” Ms. Takaichi said, per Japanese media. “We’ll work tirelessly to push Japan forward.”
“We share fundamental values,” Ishin’s leader, Hirofumi Yoshimura. said. “We want our kids to think ‘I’m happy to have been born in Japan.’”
According to a seven-page document, the LDP and Ishin have agreed to shared stances on defense, energy and diplomacy.
The LDP’s debt to its new partner will be repaid with promises of cabinet posts, and by the establishment of a body to decide on Japan’s second capital — widely expected to be Ishin’s political base of Osaka, of which Mr. Yoshimura is the governor.
The new alliance plants Ms. Takaichi in a better position — in terms of both political alignments, and seat numbers in the Diet — than she would have been in if she had remained allied with the LDP’s former coalition partner, Buddhist party Komeito.
The Diet’s more powerful lower house is comprised of 465 seats. Of those, 196 are occupied by the LDP and 148 by the main opposition, the center-left Constitutional Democratic Party.
Ishin has 35, while the Democratic Party for the People, a populist machine, has 27 and Komeito has 24.
Monday’s developments would give the new coalition 231 seats, leaving it just short of a majority, or 233 seats.
Even if the CDP, DPP and Komeito jointly voted for a unified candidate, they would hold a maximum of 175 seats.
In her third attempt at the top job, Ms. Takaichi won the leadership of the long-ruling LDP on Oct. 4, generating a plethora of headlines about Japan’s first-ever female leader.
However, coalition partner Komeito unilaterally withdrew from the coalition on Oct 10, plunging her candidacy into uncertainty.
Ms. Takaichi hails from her party’s most conservative wing, far distant from the middle-of-the-road Komeito.
She also refused to accede to Komeito’s demands that she take a harder line against LDP politicians implicated in a 2024 slush-fund scandal — some of whom are her factional allies.
Komeito’s “sayonara” added to the already steep challenges she faced. Recent elections for the prime ministerial position were formalities, given that the ruling coalition held a majority in the Diet’s more powerful lower house.
Ms. Takaichi enjoyed no such cushion.
Under sitting Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who will exit the premiership office on Tuesday, the coalition had lost its majorities in elections for both houses of the Diet.
Those results led to a collapse of confidence in his leadership among LDP power brokers, resulting in the intra-party election which chose Ms. Takaichi.
Now, after two weeks of intensive politicking in which various parties jockeyed for new partnerships — raising the real possibility of an opposition premier — Ms. Takaichi’s successful wooing of Ishin looks set to restore normalcy.
Known for being a rock drummer and motorcyclist, the mother of three is a former legislative aide and journalist. Her LDP political portfolio includes stints as minister of Economic Security and minister of Internal Affairs.
Politically, she is a hawk on defense, a stance that may help her overcome simmering ill feeling in Japan, Inc, over Washington’s tariffs and its demand that Tokyo more than double defense spending.
She may get off to a chummy start with U.S. President Trump, given that she is the leading protege of late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was admired by Mr. Trump.
However, she is a member of the nationwide nationalist club Nippon Kagi, which plays down Japan’s war guilt and promotes traditional values — such as married women being required to ditch their maiden names, a position Ms. Takaichi supports.
She is also a prominent member of those lawmakers who regularly visit Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s war dead, including war criminals are enshrined. The visits predictably anger Beijing and Seoul.
Ms. Takaichi will expect to see out the remaining term of Mr. Ishiba, which runs through to late 2027. When it comes to international diplomacy, she will need to get her game on, fast.
Imminent engagements awaiting her are the Association of Southeast Asia Leaders’ Meeting in Malaysia on Oct. 26-28, an anticipated visit to Tokyo by Mr. Trump after that, then the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in South Korea on Oct. 31-Nov.1.
