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Hi Blog.  I have to eat some crow.  As I state below, PoliSci is very inexact science, and when new data comes in, I have to change my assessment.  I didn’t expect a far-right troll like Takaichi Sanae to become the LDP’s next party leader and probable PM.  Now that she is, I have to follow up with a new assessment, which is that she is bad news for Japan’s diversity and democracy itself.

Again, intellectual honesty requires candor and a change of mind when necessary.  It’s necessary now.  Debito Arudou, Ph.D.

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TAKAICHI’S PM ELECTION CHANGES MY PROJECTIONS

The recent election of Sanae Takaichi as leader of the LDP probably means Japan’s first woman PM.  But this a huge step back for Japan’s democracy and diversity.

By Debito Arudou.  Shingetsu News Agency, Visible Minorities Column 70, October 5, 2025

I hate to do it, but I have to retract something I wrote earlier. 

In my previous column, “Japan’s Rightward Swing is Overblown” (SNA, August 26, 2025), I argued that an outsider “Japan First” party (Sanseito) was getting a lot of media attention for its blatant xenophobia posing as public policy.  But I argued the hype about their showing in the August Upper House Elections was undue because Sanseito remained structurally far from power.

My underlying argument was, “Don’t feed the trolls.  Sanseito thrives on this kind of attention.”  After all, no real political transition had taken place.  Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the most successful political party in history at staying in power and destroying rival parties, was still in power with Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in place.  Moreover, the LDP over decades had been doing what Sanseito was noisily advocating all along, only quieter.  Beyond the hype, Sanseito was saying nothing new.

Alas, my column has not aged well.

A MONTH IS A LONG TIME IN POLITICS

Ishiba has since resigned his post and the LDP has had new elections for party leader.  Stump speeches between successor candidates fell for the anti-foreigner hype and launched a foreigner-bashing olympics.  Eventually the extremist candidate won, despite her weird past policy positions, overtly racist statements, and lying about, of all things, foreigners assaulting deer in a park.

Say hello to Sanae Takaichi, the LDP’s new leader and likely Japan’s first female PM.  

But don’t celebrate Japan finally choosing a female.  In Japan’s long history of women vying for the PM post — from opposition party leader but panderer to the LDP Takako Doi, to outspoken reformer but alleged foreigner Renho — Takaichi has prevailed.  The problem is, her world view has been warped by Japan’s systemic sexism, and her policies ironically will only make things worse for her ilk.

Consider the Japanese metaphor (from the opening frame of “Barefoot Gen”) of how if wheat gets trampled down constantly, it eventually shoots back up with even stronger roots.  In a society where women of talent have to work twice as hard to get half of what men do, women like Takaichi emerge far more resilient and studious of the rules of engagement in male-dominated societies.  

That’s why Takaichi is particularly scary.  Not only because she clearly can play the game, but also because, in her thirst for power, she learned the authoritarian playbook better than most.

DISCRIMINATION CREATES MONSTERS

Jake Adelstein’s recent substack polemic, “The Rise of Japan’s Female Trump,” has the receipts.  Please read it for yourself, but let me crib:  

The new rules of engagement were created by the far-right Brahmin Shinzo Abe before he was assassinated.  Famously heralded as “Trump before Trump,” PM Abe captured state broadcaster NHK and cowed unfavorable media with threats of lawsuits and denied access (even getting columnists critical of Japan like me fired from the Japan Times).  He began remilitarizing Japan to aggravate the balance of power in East Asia.  He launched domestic economic policies that increased social inequality and only heightened people’s politics of grievance.  He undermined Japan’s pacifist Constitution and even the concept of human rights itself.  And he sucked up to and enabled Trump as an unconditional ally on the international stage.

Most importantly, as far as this column space goes, Abe parlayed a fear of outsiders (particularly Chinese) into policy drives while ironically opening Japan up to their tourists, which in turn fanned a xenophobia he found useful.  His ultimate goal was to return to an era when elites (like his family) ran the place like a divine, racially superior nation.  He succeeded well enough to inspire a future generation of proteges.

Hence Takaichi is Abe Redux, except as a commoner with Imposter Syndrome.  She’s more vocal about Abe’s worst ideas in order to seek the approval of the Nippon Kaigi clique.  On the kooky side, she has claimed divine inspiration for her political aspirations and sees Japanese as genetically superior life forms.  She has also openly advocated learning from Hitler (yes, by name) about how to win elections and then overturn democratic institutions through “emergency measures” against newfound enemies.  In other words, find your monsters and then go do something monstrous.  

She’s already found boogeymen in the oddest corners — for example, foreign deer kickers in Nara, or foreigners escaping criminal charges due to a lack of police interpreters — stories that turned out to be as fictitious as Trump’s “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs” lie.  

Yet these easily certifiable lies didn’t disqualify him, or her.  In the old days, Prime Ministers got in international trouble for saying things like “blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans make the average IQ score in America exceedingly low” (Yasuhiro Nakasone).  Not anymore, and not just because of Trump.  In an information economy where fear and rumor spread far faster than the fact-checker, stoking xenophobia remains an effective strategy.  

And with the number of foreign tourists and residents at record levels, we get a perpetual positive feedback loop — especially if you don’t distinguish between tourist and resident.  Just focus on any real or perceived slight from by a Visible Minority in your neighborhood or local convenience store, claim they’re part of an invading horde here to destabilize our society, and you can simultaneously claim victim and savior status for yourself.  

What’s next?  Emergency edicts to save Japan from being undermined by rapacious outsiders?  As I mentioned earlier, this has been a mantra for Japan’s far-right for decades, only quieter.  This time we have loud and clear policy drives not only to curtail tourism, but also to end immigration (such as it is?) and international exchange programs.  That’s just for starters.  Trickle-down effects are stories about people being targeted on the street and afraid to go outside for fear of actual violence from angry strangers.

But these xenophobic slogans aren’t simply to garner votes in the short term.  They are part of a fascist playbook they know will work in the long term, because they have in other countries.  The politics of grievance here have firm and specific targets.

But back to Takaichi in particular.  Having clawed her way to the top and bested all her detractors, she will probably be as ruthless towards her targets as Japanese society has been towards her.  She’s not going to empathize with fellow women and minorities and try to make things better for them.  She will lord it over them with particular vim as a victorious survivor.  

That’s why I’m going to have to recant my previous column.  I was probably blinded by how comparatively bad it’s getting in America (my current focus of teaching) and how fast it’s going down the authoritarian slope.  I guess I saw Japan as a milder example that hadn’t tipped yet.  No longer.

Of course, if I try hard enough, I can come up with “calm-down caveats” like last column.  For example, Takaichi’s election as LDP leader was not at all a slam-dunk; she was nowhere near a majority in the first round of party ballots, and she only narrowly beat off her rival in a second runoff election.  And as of this writing, she’s still not PM, because other members of the ruling coalition haven’t voted her in yet.  It’s still unclear whether the more moderate alliance party Komeito will stomach her.

But either way, with the power she now has over the LDP, I can very easily see Takaichi making a new political alliance with Sanseito and taking things down an even darker path.  

POLI SCI AS AN INEXACT SCIENCE

This is one of the issues Political Scientists have with parliamentary systems like Japan’s.  A country’s leader is not voted in by the population in general (like presidents), but rather by a local constituency, and the rest of the party later remotely chooses their leader who goes on to be PM.  Fringe candidates and firebrands do sometimes go all the way to Wembley.  That’s what happened with Takaichi.

And this firebrand will just keep pointing to any handy foreigner infraction (ignoring the iconoclastic Japanese doing the same), loudly foreigner-bash to drown out any economic bad news, and channel the results into policies to enforce conformity and tamp down on dissent.  Put “Japan First” to “save the country” from conditions that the LDP, the party in charge for most of Japan’s Postwar Era, are in fact responsible for.  The templates are all there — even something as extreme as sealing Japan off from foreign entry (as the government did during Covid) has precedent!

And if she fails?  She won’t disappear.  Ruthless politicians clawing their way to power will do anything to preserve it.  No doubt she’ll dedicate the rest of her life to making things as miserable as possible for foreigners and “anti-Japanese” minority voices.  It’s now her brand.  And there are other proteges to take up the mantle.

So how much damage to Japan’s democracy can Takaichi do?  Quite a lot if she adopts that well-tested modern authoritarian playbook.  Yes, parliamentary governments can collapse with a single scandal, and Takaichi may just be a flash in the pan.  But at this point, my making an assessment like this feels Pollyannish.  

Japan has always been susceptible to the fear of foreigners coming in and destroying its essence.  That’s the very reason Japan became a country in the first place!

Last word:  Let me say oops.  A month in politics is a long time and Political Science is an inexact science.  In the spirit of intellectual honesty and candor, I have no problem changing my mind once new data comes in.  Takaichi’s election changes my assessments significantly.

Something wicked for the world’s democracies still this way comes.  This time it’s Japan’s turn.

ENDS

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