A first in 140 years: Takaichi Sanae becomes Japan's prime minister
On 21 October 2025 Takaichi Sanae was elected Japan’s 104th prime minister, the first woman to hold the office in the country’s 140-year cabinet system. What her victory means, and what it does not.
Japan has a female prime minister for the first time. On 21 October, Takaichi Sanae, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, was chosen by both houses of the Diet and became the country’s 104th prime minister, the first woman to hold the office in the 140 years since the cabinet system was established. In the lower house she won in the first round with 237 of 465 valid votes; in the upper house she fell one vote short of a majority and prevailed in a second round. A few hours later her cabinet was sworn in at the imperial palace.
The milestone had been a long time coming. Japan has had female speakers, ministers and party leaders, but the top office always remained out of reach. Takaichi’s own path to it was not straightforward: she lost the party’s leadership race in 2021, lost again in 2024, and only won this month after a two-round contest in which she defeated five candidates, beating Shinjiro Koizumi, the early favourite, by 185 votes to 156 in the runoff. At sixty-four, she is now the leader of a party that has governed Japan for most of the post-war era.
Her record explains both the enthusiasm and the unease. Takaichi is known as a policy specialist and is widely seen as the most direct heir of the Abe line: revisionist on the constitution, hawkish on security, and committed to a stronger military and tighter control of economic supply chains. She has spoken for years about amending the constitution’s pacifist article and about building up the country’s deterrent capacity. Her supporters call this clarity. Her critics call it a dangerous agenda, wrapped in a historic breakthrough.
It is worth being honest about both sides of that coin. The significance of a first female prime minister should not be diminished, and it should not be exaggerated either. A ‘first’ changes who can be imagined in the office; it does not change what the office does. Takaichi campaigned as a conservative on matters that have little to do with gender, and she will be judged on those policies, not on her gender. The milestone is real, and so is the distance between a symbol and a record.
What to watch in the coming weeks is less her history than her arithmetic. The LDP needs a working majority, and Takaichi’s party has promised a snap election. Her cabinet will be tested on the economy, prices and wages, issues that voters say matter more than any constitutional amendment. The first female prime minister of Japan will be measured, like every other occupant of the office, by what she does with it. The door has opened. What walks through it remains to be seen.