Sanae Takaichi’s ascent to the prime minister’s post is more than historic. It represents a paradox that blends feminism with hard-line conservatism, according to an expert on gender issues.

Keiko Kaizuma, 57, vice president of Iwate University and a professor specializing in gender studies, has long focused on female conservative politicians in Japan.

As a woman who grew up around the same time as Takaichi, Kaizuma said she “couldn’t look away” from the rising politician.

The professor said Takaichi, 64, embodies the contradictions of the “era of women,” and her rise to the top challenges assumptions about women’s leadership in Japan.

A staunch conservative, Takaichi has opposed proposals to let married couples take separate surnames and has advocated strict immigration policies.

Essentially, Takaichi represents “a hybrid of feminism and conservatism,” Kaizuma said in a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

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INEVITABILITY OF THE TIMES

Question: What is your take on Takaichi becoming Japan’s first female prime minister?

Kaizuma: It may seem surprising that a woman has broken the “glass ceiling” within a conservative party that has been reluctant to dismantle fixed gender roles.

However, although a record number of women were elected in this summer’s Upper House election, their numbers are increasing at a glacial pace.

Meanwhile, over the past quarter-century, the ranks of “hawkish” female conservative politicians have deepened, and their presence has now become so normal that they serve as Cabinet ministers.

This was also Takaichi’s third attempt at the Liberal Democratic Party’s presidency, following her runs in 2021 and 2024. Given these circumstances, even if it hadn’t been Takaichi, a woman would likely emerge as LDP president, if not prime minister. I think it was an inevitability of the times.

In the past, women’s political participation was described as bringing “kitchen sensibilities” into politics.

In 1989, under Takako Doi’s leadership, the Japan Socialist Party fielded female candidates in the Upper House election, resulting in many women being elected.

Despite Doi herself being unmarried, she garnered a strong sense of solidarity and support from both working women and homemakers. Women who had been excluded from the “man’s world” of politics found unity across different life paths.

I remember my own mother, who gave up her career to become a housewife after giving birth to me, rejoicing in the “Otaka-san (Doi’s nickname) boom” as if her own hardships were being validated.

But today, women’s lifestyles and perspectives are too diverse to be lumped together.

CONSERVATIVE SURVIVAL STRATEGY

Q: What is the background behind the increase in conservative female politicians in recent years?

A: I believe it is a result of a combination of various overlapping factors.

Looking at the women appointed to Cabinet posts in past LDP administrations, many were either lawmakers endorsed by professional organizations with large female memberships, such as nurses, or former bureaucrats from places like the former labor ministry.

They were often selected as representatives of female-dominated professions or for their expertise in women’s policy.

Among conservative women, not a few, like Takaichi and Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, 73, emerged as fresh candidates during the political realignment and new party boom that followed the founding of the Japan New Party in 1992.

Others, like Upper House member Satsuki Katayama, 66, entered politics during the 2005 “postal election,” when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi fielded candidates to oust party rebels.

Even when fielding “female candidates” meant to project a “fresh image,” once internal party conflicts were resolved, many women lost their party endorsements and left politics, especially those lacking a strong support base within the electoral district or policy expertise.

In contrast, female conservative politicians like Takaichi and those labeled as hawks appear to have survived by developing expertise in neo-conservative policies and advancing hard-line positions based on that expertise.

This became their substitute for traditional political support structures or expertise in women’s policy.

ILLUSION OF OPPORTUNITY

Q: You have focused on and studied Takaichi and other female conservative politicians. Why is that?

A: I was born in 1968. I have lived in almost the same era as Takaichi, who was born in 1961.

I still remember when Takaichi appeared as a host on a late-night show on TV Asahi. With the arrival of the “bubble” economy and the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law in 1986, it was hailed as the “women’s era.” We were told it was OK for women to be ambitious.

But in reality, it wasn’t so.

In Takaichi’s essay titled “30-sai no Basudei” (“30th Birthday,” published in 1992), she writes about giving up on the private Tokyo university she wanted to attend to pay for her younger brother's school fees, about being slapped by her mother for having a boyfriend stay over at her apartment, and, at the same time, about feeling trapped by societal expectations that women should marry.

She also mentions the experience of being pressured by TV staff to use emotional appeals as a “female commentator” to liven up the program.

Reading it, I felt like she was describing my own life.

It was an era when we were asked in corporate interviews, “Will you quit your job if you get married?”

On one hand, we were told to aim for a career because the path for career-track positions had opened up. On the other hand, we were told to find a man with good prospects.

We were hyped by talk of the “women’s era,” and made to dance on an “otachidai” (raised disco pedestal), while at the same time being threatened that “if you miss your timing to get off, you never know what might happen.”

In graduate school, too, the atmosphere suggested that women could only become professors if they avoided marriage and childbirth and focused solely on research.

Even producing three times the results of male peers didn’t make us viable successors.

In that environment, Takaichi made the choice to never get off that “otachidai.”

How much hardship must she have endured to survive and move forward? As someone who has lived desperately while experiencing the contradictions of the era firsthand, I couldn’t look away from Takaichi.

Takaichi is sometimes mocked as “a male politician in a woman’s skin.” However, I believe she is a female politician who truly embodies the contradictions of our generation.

QUESTION FOR THE LIBERAL SIDE

Q: Having navigated the same era as Takaichi, what led you to choose gender as your research theme?

A: I sometimes wonder if I might have chosen a path similar to Takaichi’s.

Takaichi once criticized the 1995 “Murayama statement” (which officially recognized Japan’s invasion and colonial domination of Asian nations and expressed remorse and an apology).

At that time, I read a column written by a male celebrity known for his liberal views, in which he addressed her as “the once liberal and cute Sanae-chan” and proceeded to gently admonish her, explaining why she was wrong.

Though I support the Murayama statement, I was furious at the column’s condescending tone—the violence inherent in evaluating and lecturing her from a position of superiority, saying she “used to be cute.”

Unlike liberals, conservatives don’t pretend to show an understanding for women or gender equality, and because of that, they don’t take away our words more than necessary.

I came to think that by feigning compliance, there is, ironically, a way for us to protect ourselves.

I see the rise of female conservatives like Takaichi as the achievements of feminism, such as the rise in women’s educational attainment and the increase in career women—and by women themselves proactively taking advantage of the conservative parties’ strategy of appointing women.

In that sense, Takaichi is a hybrid of feminism and conservatism.

Q: How should we interpret the fact that conservatives broke the glass ceiling before liberals, who have long advocated gender equality?

A: I think it is a mistake to criticize female conservatives with the accusation that “as a woman, she is betraying other women” and to view them as an exceptional or accidental phenomenon.

We must seriously accept the fact that the hawkish side broke the glass ceiling first and examine the “structure” that allowed these women to rise.

Because, in turn, I believe that leads us to consider why such a structure has not been built on the liberal side.