Japan’s ruling party has chosen Sanae Takaichi as its new leader
TOKYO — Japan’s embattled governing party now has its new leader, former Economic Security Minister Sanae Takaichi , a hard-line conservative who is poised to become the country’s first female prime minister.
Takaichi, 64, immediately needs to seek ways to get her long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party to stay in power and regain public support by delivering measures to address inflation and diplomatic challenges such as U.S. President Donald Trump .
A staunch supporter of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ’s conservative vision, Takaichi is on the verge of losing her party’s long-time coalition partner, the Buddhist-backed dovish centrist Komeito, because of her ultra-conservative politics. Those include a revisionism of wartime history and regular visits to the Yasukuni Shrine , seen as a symbol of militarism.
She faces the dilemma of sticking to her ideology and losing the coalition partner or shifting to the center, which would lose her fans of her hawkish politics.
