Sanae Takaichi

Sanae Takaichi (高市 早苗, Takaichi Sanae; born 7 March 1961) is a Japanese politician who has been Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since October 2025. She is the first woman to hold either of these positions in Japanese history. A member of the House of Representatives from 1993 to 2003 and since 2005, she also held ministerial posts during the premierships of Shinzo Abe and Fumio Kishida.

Born and raised in Tenri, Nara Prefecture, Takaichi graduated from Kobe University and worked as an author, legislative aide, and broadcaster before beginning her political career. Elected as an independent to the House of Representatives in the 1993 general election, she joined the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1996. A protégé of Prime Minister Abe, she held various positions during Abe's premiership, most notably as Minister for Internal Affairs and Communications. She was a candidate in the 2021 LDP leadership election, but was eliminated before the runoff, achieving third place. From 2022 to 2024, during Kishida's premiership, she served as the Minister of State for Economic Security.

Takaichi made her second run for the party leadership in the 2024 leadership election, where she came in first in the first round but narrowly lost in a runoff to her predecessor Shigeru Ishiba. She ran for the third time in the 2025 leadership election and placed first in both rounds of voting, defeating Shinjirō Koizumi, and becoming the party's first female president. Following the end of the LDP–Komeito coalition, Takaichi secured a coalition agreement with the Japan Innovation Party, and was elected prime minister by the National Diet on 21 October. Early in her premiership, Takaichi faced a diplomatic crisis with China after a statement she made regarding Japan's involvement regarding a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan and subsequent threatening remarks by a Chinese diplomat. In 2026, she called a snap general election, which resulted in a historic landslide victory for the LDP, securing a two-thirds supermajority and the largest number of seats ever won in postwar Japanese electoral history. During her tenure, Takaichi has overseen amendments to the Imperial Household Law which kept the prohibition on female successors to the emperor, passing of a law that prohibits the desecration of the Japanese flag, lifting the Japanese arms-export ban, as well as the creation of the National Intelligence Bureau.