Sanae Takaichi makes history as Japan's first female prime minister
發佈日期: 2025-10-21 22:07
TVB News
Japan made history today when its parliament elected ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi as the country's first female prime minister.
The vote came a day after her struggling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, struck a coalition deal with a new partner that would pull her governing bloc further to the right.
However, analysts do not expect her rise to immediately empower women in Japan's largely patriarchal society.
Speaker of the House Fukushiro Nukaga announces the start of voting for a new prime minister of Japan.
Sanae Takaichi takes her place in the queue, placing her vote in the ballot box like any other lawmaker.
At the end of voting, she emerged as Japan's top politician.
A round of applause from her supporters and a token nod of the head from Takaichi as she was announced as the country's new prime minister.
She is first woman to do so, ending months of uncertainty, after the resignation of Shigeru Ishiba in the wake of the LDP's disastrous election loss in the summer.
Takaichi won 237 parliamentary votes, four more than a majority, compared to 149 for Yoshikoko Noda, head of the main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan.
Her path to the top was paved with obstacles. Winning the vote to become LDP chief after Ishiba's resignation turned out to be the easy part.
It was her hawkish, right-leaning views that convinced long-standing coalition partner, the Komeito party, to cut their decades-long alliance.
Her party needed a new partner to ensure a majority vote for the prime minister's post and they found it in the Osaka-based right-wing Japan Innovation Party, or Ishin no Kai, and its leader Hirofumi Yoshimura.
Takaichi, 64, is a protege of late former leader Shinzo Abe, promoting nationalistic and anti-immigration values.
Komeito raised concerns about Takaichi's revisionist views of Japan's wartime past and her regular prayers at the Yasukuni Shrine, despite protests from Beijing and Seoul.
She is expected to appoint another women, Satsuki Katayama, as finance chief, with a priority to fix the economy and tackle rising prices.
Though many see her rise as a breakthrough for women in a patriarchal society, Takaichi is in no rush to promote gender equality or diversity.
She is known to support the imperial family's male-only succession and opposes same-sex marriage.
In addition, she is likely to follow Abe's policies of a stronger military and revising Japan's pacifist constitution.
The economy, however, is how she will be initially judged.
