No
I'm not surprised, and no, I'm not a fan.
Some friends have asked for my reaction to Sanae Takaichi’s elevation to Japan’s prime ministership. “It’s interesting that she’s a woman, right?”
During my decade in Japan, there was a brief moment when I had hoped that Takako Doi, the woman who ran the Socialist Party, would become Japan’s first woman prime minister, but her party elevated Tomi’ichi Murayama, with his fantastic eyebrows, instead. (He believed that cutting his eyebrows was bad luck, IIRC.)
Takaichi is so conservative that members of her party, the Liberal Democratic Party (an Orwellian name, much more so after the United States’ CIA indoctrinated party founders in their anti-communist dogma back in the 1950s), have nicknamed her Taliban. Although Japanese misogyny no doubt was a factor in that appelation, Takaichi herself says that she modeled her politics on Margaret Thatcher, not someone I admire. And after Takaichi’s fawning performance with the United States President this past, she is less of an Iron Lady, and more lead, a softer metal and one likely to poison us all. The Japanese press had a field day with her offer to nominate the US President for a Nobel Prize.
I woke up this morning to an Instagram account, Gay Life Japan or something similar, purporting to be shocked that Takaichi is opposed to marriage equality. No one who’s been watching Japanese politics is shocked. She’s NEVER had a progressive opinion.
My husband hopes that the opinions from other members of the G7 (excluding the United States at this horrific moment in history) will exert some marriage equality pressure on her, but I consider that wishful thinking. Will the Japanese Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality next year (which court watchers anticipate as favorable to our cause) persuade her? Maybe, but I’m not holding my breath.
And, sad to say, I don’t think there is a better candidate for Prime Minister in any of Japan’s political parties. Every last one of them is odious, whether as a result of rampant corruption (looking at you, Liberal Democratic Party), xenophobic populism, religious collusion, or reactionary policy proposals. (The one good thing I can say about the Japanese government is that there has never been a shutdown during the post-war era.)
Hiro’s views are more sardonic. He agrees there was no good option for the prime ministership, but he thinks Takaichi will be a good counter to potential Chinese aggression. (Never mind that Chinese aggression is, in part, a response to American imperialism in the Pacific, but we also agree on that.)
