When handling domestic political affairs, it can be harder for a prime minister to govern with a large parliamentary majority than with a small one, because discipline becomes difficult to impose on one’s own party.
But when it comes to foreign affairs, there can be no doubt that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will emerge greatly strengthened by her stunning electoral victory on February 8. One of the most important factors affecting how successful a head of government can be in international negotiations is how long your counterparts expect you to stay in your job.
Japan’s quiet style of diplomacy already makes it hard to gain credibility and have an impact, but during the regular revolving-door phases of its politics, when the prime ministership is seen as being occupied by a series of dull men in grey suits, foreign policy gets even tougher.
None of the late Shinzo Abe’s three successors, Yoshihide Suga, Fumio Kishida and Shigeru Ishiba, looked to other governments as if they would stay long as prime minister, although Kishida’s three years in office turned out to surprise many.
A big part of Abe’s outsized influence in foreign affairs derived from the fact that he had eight unbroken years as prime minister from 2012 to 2020. This allowed him to build relationships as well as credibility, not just with crucial partners such as the United States but also, just as importantly, with governments in Southeast Asia and India.
Forget “Abenomics”: it is in this sense, of looking like an international star who is here to stay, that Takaichi has a real chance to emulate her mentor. Despite her big majority, Takaichi herself will understand that longevity in office can never be guaranteed.
But when other governments look at her across the summit table, they will now all have to start on the assumption that she will be there for quite a few years to come. She has already had the advantage of novelty, of being the country’s first female prime minister.
Now she will add the advantage of being clearly someone other countries’ leaders will need to build an enduring relationship with.
The question is how she will exploit this new advantage. It is already known that she will seek to accelerate further Japan’s defense build-up. If public finances permit, a now clearly strong prime minister will probably also seek to invest more money in Japan’s economic and technological security, hoping to reduce the country’s dependence on others, including the US, and to create stronger domestic producers, especially in defense technology.
The bond markets and the yen’s value will be the main potential restraints on this, rather than domestic politics.
Having profited electorally from the tensions she inadvertently caused with China over Taiwan, and from the aggressive, bullying behavior shown towards her by the Chinese government, there is no likelihood that she will tone down her approach towards China nor seek any kind of rapprochement with it. That might come in the longer term, just as it did for Abe, but only once she has displayed and exploited her newfound political strength.
Like her supposed hero, Britain’s Margaret Thatcher, she seems to revel in the idea that she is an “iron lady” and so will always wish to maintain that reputation. The danger is one of over-confidence leading her to make nationalist gestures such as visiting the Yasukuni war shrine, where Class A war criminals are enshrined along with ordinary war dead, a gesture which would risk offending South Korea as well as some countries in Southeast Asia.
A truly confident “iron lady” would know that her domestic reputation as a nationalist and defense hawk is sufficiently secure that she has no need to make divisive political gestures.
Perhaps the best aspect of this election victory from the point of view of Japan’s national interests will lie in the strength it promises to give Takaichi in her dealings not with an adversary such as China but rather with Japan’s security ally, the US.
President Donald Trump was noticeably silent during China’s tantrums over Takaichi’s remarks about Taiwan, a lack of support for America’s closest Asian ally, which will have been carefully noted both in Beijing and in Tokyo.
Moreover, Trump’s treatment of Japan last year over tariffs and demands that its companies invest billions in the US was not the behavior of a friend: it was the behavior of a gangster performing a shakedown of a weaker adversary.
Next month, when Takaichi flies to the US for a meeting with Trump, she will do so as a strong political figure in her own right. To use Trump’s favored language, she will do so as “a winner”, not a vulnerable loser like her predecessor Ishiba.
She will certainly not seek any sort of confrontation with Trump, either over Taiwan or trade. But she would be wise to let it be known, quietly but clearly, that she will now be an “iron lady” in her dealings with America, too, and does not expect to be pushed around.
In the longer term, the strength of her “iron” will depend, as for all prime ministers, on the strength and stability of Japan’s domestic economy. Her government’s top priority needs to be to get price inflation back under control, to get household incomes rising and to get the Japanese yen stronger on international currency markets. By some measures, the yen is undervalued by as much as 50% against the US dollar.
This makes Japan itself look weak, makes imported goods more expensive for Japanese consumers, attracts more of the cheapskate, badly behaved foreign tourists that seem to annoy voters and makes Japan’s international diplomacy through overseas aid and investment more costly for the taxpayer.
As a large proportion of the defense budget goes on weapons bought from abroad, especially the US, the weak yen makes that budget less effective than it needs to be.
The immediate benchmark for Takaichi in foreign affairs will be the reception she receives in Washington and in the array of international summits she will attend this year. But the more fundamental benchmark will be the exchange rate of the yen.
Currency values are not directly in the control of any government: they are outcomes of policy, not policy tools themselves. But if in one or two years’ time the Japanese yen is as badly undervalued on currency markets as it is today, it will be a clear sign that, despite her electoral triumph on February 8, Japan’s iron lady is rusting badly.
This article was originally published on Mainichi Shimbun in both Japanese and English and also featured on Bill Emmott’s Global View Substack. It is republished here with kind permission.