Takaichi has made Japan impossible to ignore

• By Gearoid Reidy / Bloomberg Opinion

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For a leader often accused of dodging the press, there is one ironic thing about Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi: She is front-page material.

Since becoming Japan’s first female prime minister a year ago, she has divided opinion in a way few of her often-staid predecessors have. Critics and backers cannot even seem to agree on the fundamentals: She has been labeled a radical, a reflationist, a neo-militarist, a female prime minister who is holding women back. Most of these labels range from inaccurate to nonsensical. The true Takaichi remains elusive.

What is undeniable is that she has made the prime minister’s office feel relevant to a degree it has not for years. Whether the increased attention, from Washington to Beijing, is welcome or not, few are ignoring Japan anymore.

She has seen threats to decapitate her, a landslide election victory, the “Takaichi Trade,” a historic joint yen intervention with the US, multiple “Liz Truss moments” in the bond markets that refuse to materialize and fictional stories about her befriending a cockroach. In the years since the late Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe left office, few of Japan’s prime ministers have had such an enduring impact.

However, headlines are not accomplishments. Her mentor Abe’s significance came from converting his personal popularity and political durability into long-lasting policy change. Next September, Takaichi must persuade ruling party lawmakers that she deserves another three-year term as party head. She needs more than media presence to do that.

The prime minister deserves credit for long-term thinking. Her growth strategy has set out a bold new industrial policy vision. Her budget system overhaul would benefit any successor. The biggest national foreign-intelligence reorganization in decades and a revamp of a creaky immigration system have already put in place institutional change that will outlive her.

Predictions of an easy-money policy that would require massive spending have failed to materialize. Japan’s yields are, for once, rising in line with the rest of the world, part of a process of normalizing monetary policy after decades of rates at zero or lower.

Real wages have risen for eight months in a row, while the Bank of Japan is poised to declare that underlying inflation has finally met its 2 percent target, almost 14 years after the goal was set. Takaichi can claim little credit for either, but neither has she got in the way, despite concerns she would interfere.

Getting the US on board to stabilize the yen has been something of a double-edged sword, with US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent an occasional backseat driver, whose comments can cause more harm than good. However, the yen’s weakening trend has been halted, although not reversed (predictions of ￥200 were not uncommon earlier this year).

She has navigated geopolitical waters, too: Neither Beijing’s economic boycott in the wake of her comments on Taiwan nor the war in Iran has so far derailed the domestic recovery.

One quality she shares with Abe is the ability to drive her opponents crazy, something I have dubbed Takaichi Derangement Syndrome. Both the domestic and foreign media are obsessed with how she goes about things — the number of meetings she has, the dinners she attends and what she does in her own time — rather than what she actually gets done.

Part of this is old-fashioned misogyny; after decades of calls for a Japanese prime minister who does things differently, she is hounded for not having enough smoke-filled backroom meetings with old men.

She has also made missteps. I have highlighted the recklessness with which she speaks. Her woe-is-me lines on how much sleep she gets, housework and time she needs to put on her makeup are grating, but largely inconsequential. Of greater concern is how she communicates on the yen and her fiscal policy, particularly as her administration finally seeks to engage better with overseas investors.

Her real achievements are still limited. She has squandered political capital on largely unimportant bills; the current Diet session would spend much time debating the forthcoming cut in a sales tax for food, a distraction whose benefits for the poorest households are modest.

The resignation of Japanese Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Kazuo Yana last week is the first serious wobble for her administration, with voters criticizing her slow decisionmaking. Her popularity has fallen from its sky-high peak in February, although polling at this stage of her administration is comparable only to Abe and former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, another long-lasting leader. It is far too early to say if Takaichi can join that pantheon.

One concern is that her administration sometimes resembles Abe’s — his disastrous and short-lived first period in power starting in 2006, characterized by strategic legislative mistakes, too much focus on a long-term vision, and an economy that was seemingly normalizing and improving, but ultimately was not to last.

After five years in the wilderness, Abe got a second chance, one he wielded adeptly. Takaichi probably should not hope for something similar. She has to make this time count. The prime minister has shown she can command attention. Now she must prove she can command outcomes.

Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Japan. He previously led the breaking news team in North Asia, and was the Tokyo deputy bureau chief. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.