Japan’s First Female PM Expected To Favor Militarization And Tighten Immigration Policy

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Takaichi openly admires and compares herself to former British PM Margaret Thatcher

Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher

Sanae Takaichi of the Liberal Democratic Party became Japan’s first female prime minister with a discourse advocating a liberal economy and criticizing immigrants, at a time when the country is seeing its population age and face serious population decline.

This historic achievement is overshadowed by uncertainty regarding the future of Japan’s political stability, which is mired in an internal crisis, partly due to public debt of around $9 trillion — the largest among major global economies, corresponding to more than double the country’s GDP, which ended 2024 at $4 trillion.

Among the main factors that led to indebtedness are public spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, aid to struggling farmers, subsidies to help the population cope with inflation, and increased defense spending under the pretext of containing alleged Chinese aggression.

Furthermore, the share of the pension system in the budget has increased amid the island country’s largest population decline in its history, driven by an aging people. According to official government data, in 2024 Japan recorded 686,061 births—the lowest number since records began in 1899—compared with 1.6 million deaths in the same period.

Takaichi, who openly admires and compares herself to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, comes from the same ideological faction as former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in a shooting in 2022. This faction is more conservative, which means greater resistance to the entry of immigrants and a preference for the militarization of the country. Remember that Japan, since World War II, has revoked its right to initiate wars against any country, so it can only defend itself.

There is a rise in ultraconservatism in Japan, and the expectation is that Takaichi’s administration will increase resistance to social and multicultural reforms and alter the current policy granting immigrants the right to remain in the country for three months without a visa. Many Japanese were disturbed by the very recent large influx of immigrants in just a matter of a few years, which has led to a rapid rise in crime, particularly by Pakistanis and Turks.

Takaichi, to be elected, formed an alliance with the Japan Innovation Party, which advocates a liberal economy, free markets, and free trade. Takaichi leans towards conservatism on security and militarization, so she found a middle ground, and the Japan Innovation Party joined the government on the condition that the new government also adopt their economic agenda.

What the election of Takaichi highlights is that militarization has never ceased being an internal issue in Japan, because the Japanese population itself has difficulty accepting the idea that their country is not a major military power. For example, the Far Right within Japan is very powerful and influential. The Far Right, including Takaichi, denies war crimes perpetrated by Japan during World War II and has the ideology of ethnic supremacy. Takaichi is known for visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, where Japanese war criminals, such as Hideki Tojo and several generals convicted at Nuremberg in the aftermath of World War II, are memorialized.

At the same time, the economic crisis affecting Japan today is still the same one that erupted in the early 1990s with the bursting of the speculative financial bubble. However, the tariff war initiated by United States President Donald Trump has worsened this scenario. As a result, Japan, which, despite the crisis, managed to maintain economic stability, has begun to deal with a problem it is not accustomed to: inflation.

Japan has spent the last 20 years in a situation of very low inflation, very near zero. On the one hand, it is good for ordinary Japanese people, who are most affected by inflation as it erodes their purchasing power. But, on the other hand, it is bad because it does not increase the value of the economy.

During the elections, Takaichi and her competitors sought to raise hot-button issues to mobilize an apathetic electorate. The most prominent issue at the time was criticism of immigrants, claiming that they were stealing jobs and spreading fake news, such as the claim that Chinese tourists were kicking people in the city of Nara, without any evidence whatsoever. This led to political mobilization among the Japanese electorate.

Regarding the militarization of Japan, advancing this agenda is a way to reactivate the Japanese military-industrial complex, turning it into a service-contracting sector to expand formal employment for state workers. Nonetheless, the need to justify increased military spending, which could boost Japanese heavy industry, or to direct capital to the technology sector to increase hiring and thus revitalize the Japanese economy, comes with the caveat of portraying China as an imminent threat. Whether Takaichi will fix the country’s economic issues remains to be seen, but what is certain is that Japan’s militarization, likely encouraged by Trump, will increase tensions in East Asia.

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