Japan's embattled ruling party now has a new leader, Sanae Takaichi, a hardline conservative, who is poised to become the country's first female prime minister.
Her victory in the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) leadership election came after she secured a majority in a runoff vote against Agriculture Minister Shinjiro Koizumi.
Takaichi’s win represents a victory for the right of the LDP, which has spent the past year licking its wounds under the more moderate Ishiba.
She has a direct ideological connection with the former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in 2022, sharing his revisionist views on Japan’s wartime conduct – a position that could cause friction with Japan’s neighbors.
Takaichi has been critical of China and makes regular pilgrimages to Yasukuni, a shrine in Tokyo that honours Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals. She has displayed similarly conservative credentials on social policy: she opposes same-sex marriage and allowing married couples to use separate surnames – a move popular with voters that she says would undermine traditional family values. She is similarly dismissive of the idea of reigning empresses.
Abe also looms large in her economic policy. Takaichi has said she supports aggressive public spending to stimulate the world’s fourth-biggest economy, and has raised the possibility of renegotiating a trade and investment deal with the US in which President Donal Trump agreed to lower tariffs on Japanese autos and other items in return for US$ 550bn in Japanese investment.
Her focus on migration – a subject that occupied the first eight minutes of a 15-minute campaign speech – is seen as an attempt to win back voters who abandoned the LDP in national elections last October and this July in favour of rightwing minor parties, including the up-and-coming Sanseito.
During her campaign Takaichi called for restrictions on non-Japanese buying property and a crackdown on illegal immigration – a view shared by her four opponents.
A fan of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team, Takaichi played drums in a heavy metal band while at university and counts scuba diving and watching martial arts among her hobbies.