In a leadership vote on Saturday, Sanae Takaichi is tipped to become Japan’s first female prime minister. Takaichi offers a powerful demonstration of progress and gender visibility on the global stage. Yet the substance of her politics—a rigidly ultraconservative ideology molded by her mentor, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe—actively serves to reinforce, rather than dismantle, the entrenched conservative and patriarchal structures of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). In this way, Takaichi’s premiership will not be a progressive breakthrough so much as a critical test of whether a woman can only achieve real power in Japan by demonstrating an “over-loyalty” to the LDP’s deepest, most traditional impulses.
Globally, Japan remains an outlier on gender equality: The 2025 Global Gender Gap Index ranks the nation a concerning 118th out of 148 countries, placing it last among the G-7 nations. This disparity is predominantly attributable to the severe political underrepresentation of women. The cabinet of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba says it all: In October 2024, the new administration appointed only two women to the cabinet, a significant drop from five in the preceding lineup. Takaichi’s personal success constitutes a rare and spectacular exception and raises the question of whether her personal ascent will translate into genuine, substantive gender reforms—or whether she is primarily a symbol of cosmetic progress.
This dynamic seems to align closely with the concept of the “glass cliff,” the phenomenon where women (and other marginalized groups) are elevated to high-stakes, precarious leadership positions during periods of organizational crisis or decline, making them highly visible but vulnerable to inevitable failure. For instance, in Australia, Sussan Ley was appointed leader of the conservative Liberal Party in May 2025 at its lowest ebb ever. This move was seen by political commentators as a glass-cliff scenario as she inherited a broken party with severely diminished electoral prospects, setting her up to fail or simply stabilize the party for a future male successor.
In the same manner, Takaichi’s rise occurs precisely in the wake of the LDP’s prolonged period of public distrust. It follows two election flops that have left the party struggling to hold onto power without a parliamentary majority, ensuring the next leader will inherit a fractured legislature as well as the high-stakes challenge of negotiating with opposition parties to pass critical legislation including the national budget and economic packages. Promoting an “atypical” candidate like a hard-line woman serves the LDP’s immediate need to project an image of change and ideological steadfastness simultaneously. If Takaichi ultimately fails to stabilize the party or the economy—and there is a high probability of this, given the current minority government and inherited economic headwinds—the LDP’s conservative, male-dominated establishment could use her downfall to reinforce prevailing stereotypes about women’s unsuitability for top leadership roles, effectively insulating the entrenched male hierarchy from collective blame.
The historical precedent of South Korea’s first female president, Park Geun-hye, is compelling. Park’s conservative, dynastic leadership largely failed to translate into a progressive policy mandate or a sustained commitment to closing South Korea’s own gender gap. Indeed, her turbulent term was characterized by political scandals that ultimately reinforced the fragility of female leadership in deeply patriarchal political systems. For Takaichi, a nearly non-negotiable ideological commitment to the LDP’s historical revisionism and traditionalism have proved indispensable prerequisites for her success, rendering her gender identity a tactical asset rather than a reform mandate. Her success should be interpreted as a triumph of conservative assimilation, not a breakthrough for gender equality; much less, feminism. In fact, she has been seen as an anti-feminist politician due to her conservative backing and platform.
The core of the Takaichi paradox lies in the fundamental contradiction between her political ascendancy as a woman and her fierce opposition to legal changes that would tangibly benefit women’s equality and autonomy in Japan. Takaichi is a staunch defender of the male-only royal succession law and a leading opponent of legal changes to allow married couples the option to retain separate surnames.
Takaichi’s opposition to the optional dual-surname law (fūfubessei) is rooted in the belief that such reforms would irreparably undermine traditional family values. She has long argued that the current naming system should remain in place to preserve family unity and prevent confusion for future offspring. Since the 1980s, the fūfubessei movement pressing for reform of the Civil Code has gained growing support among the Japanese public. Yet despite this momentum, the current system continues to force over 95 percent of married women to abandon their professional and personal identities upon marriage. Takaichi’s stance, therefore, does not merely reflect personal conviction but demonstrates the LDP’s expectation that women seeking power must defend precisely those structures that most constrain women’s equality.
The irony inherent in Takaichi’s position is glaring: She herself enjoys the professional autonomy of utilizing her maiden name in her public career. She argues that the optional dual-surname law is a direct threat to the family registry system and national unity—a prevailing conservative talking point that privileges institutional and demographic rigidity over personal liberty and gender equity.
This ideological adherence places Japan and Takaichi’s administration in direct, immediate conflict with international human rights commitments. The United Nations’ top gender body, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), has repeatedly and explicitly denounced Japan’s mandatory single-surname law and the male-only Imperial House Law as discriminatory, urging the government to amend them to align with international gender norms. CEDAW’s concluding observations repeatedly stress that these laws perpetuate systemic gender inequality. Takaichi’s political platform virtually ensures a sustained tension with CEDAW, guaranteeing that her administration’s policies on family and gender will continue to face intense international scrutiny and breach CEDAW’s spirit of gender equality.
Takaichi’s commitment to traditional, conservative values is probably not a simple preference, but the non-negotiable foundation of her political credibility and power within the LDP. Her power base is primarily defined by the patronage and ideological legacy of Abe, who championed her career, and the political mobilization of the LDP’s ultraconservative core. This core is heavily influenced by the powerful ultranationalist pressure group Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), which was largely unnoticed by mainstream media prior to its increased scrutiny in the mid-2010s.
Nippon Kaigi aggressively advocates for a comprehensive, revisionist agenda that includes the restoration of traditional family values, the normalization of historical revisionism—seeking to applaud Japan’s wartime “liberation” of East Asia and revere the emperor as he was worshipped prewar—and the constitutional revision of Article 9 to rebuild the military. Takaichi’s past and present policy positions—advocating the strategic strengthening of “history diplomacy” to counter foreign narratives on “comfort women” and wartime forced labor, for instance, as well as her opposition to dual surnames and regular visits to Yasukuni Shrine—are the litmus tests for allegiance within this organization’s sphere of influence.
Her hard-line ideological commitment may extend critically to Japan’s security posture. She was a leading advocate for substantial increases in military spending during her last bid for the premiership in 2021. This time she is advocating the strengthening of national defense and the amendment of the constitution to fully legitimize the Self-Defense Forces. These positions align closely with the “Abe Doctrine” and inevitably project a strong, assertive, masculine image of the Japanese state globally, focusing on national assertion and defense expansion.
In the same way Abe, under international scrutiny for promoting ultranationalism, championed “pro-gender diplomacy” through his Women Shine initiative, Takaichi has similarly adopted the language of gender empowerment, particularly during her leadership bids. This includes pragmatic proposals for tax cuts with cash benefits and a notable pledge to “surprise (odoroite)” the country with a “Nordic” gender balance in her cabinet appointments. Importantly, even the modern “Nordic standard” for cabinet balance—often represented by countries like Sweden, where the current Kristersson cabinet initially appointed 11 women ministers out of a total of 24 (around 45.8 percent women, which is close to parity)—remains highly aspirational. This calculated policy shift is likely a strategic deployment of soft-power rhetoric designed to shield the hard-line policy content.
The core tenets of Takaichi’s nationalism—constitutional revision, robust defense programs, and historical revisionism—will likely guarantee immediate diplomatic friction. Takaichi has shown signs of toning down her rhetoric on some controversial topics in recent days, such as her view that Japan should maintain good ties with “important neighbor” China, but she is already widely seen as an ultranationalist figure and the female Abe in both China and South Korea.
Her regular visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine are particularly inflammatory. The shrine honors more than 2.4 million Japanese war dead, including individuals charged with Class A war crimes from World War II. Such actions are interpreted by Beijing and Seoul as an official endorsement of Japan’s historical revisionism, undermining postwar settlements. Asked recently on Fuji TV whether she would visit the shrine as prime minister, Takaichi avoided an explicit commitment, stating that the war criminals’ sentences were “carried out” and they were “no longer criminals” and that she “still want[s] to put my hands together in prayer … from wherever I am.” Her remarks are widely seen as emphasizing her continuing desire to pay respects to the war dead while strategically avoiding a diplomatic flash point. A Takaichi administration would therefore likely signal that Japan is led by a figure who prioritizes nationalist memory over regional reconciliation.
Furthermore, Takaichi’s recent rhetoric on the contentious Dokdo/Takeshima islands, including publicly claiming ownership and advocating for ministerial attendance at the controversial “Takeshima Day” events, has stirred South Korean sentiment and would invite immediate, severe diplomatic confrontation with South Korea if she puts the words into practice when elected.
Beyond this specific island dispute, Takaichi’s aggressive foreign-policy posture—driven by her alignment with Abe’s declaration that “a Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan”—is already seen by Beijing as deliberately provocative and a direct threat to stability. China views this stance as directly infringing upon its core interest of territorial integrity and a political signal that Japan is abandoning its postwar pacifism to assert itself aggressively in a regional flash point. However, Takaichi’s foreign-policy and security agendas are likely to be constrained by the current minority government of the LDP and its coalition with the “pacifist” Komeito party.
For all these reasons, Takaichi’s potential premiership is less a landmark victory for substantive gender equality in Japan and more an indication of the LDP’s political resilience and its conservative core. Her ascent probably best demonstrates that the most plausible path to power for a woman in the LDP’s rigid hierarchy is through a complete, unwavering embrace of the most patriarchal and nationalist elements of the party’s platform. If successful, Takaichi’s leadership will represent a triumph of ideological assimilation over gender-based reform.