A New Face — Still Hearing the Same Old Voice?

This October, the political news that shocked me the most was that Sanae Takaichi had been elected president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

I honestly thought I was dreaming—well, I hoped I was—and went back to sleep. When I woke up again, it was still true.

In recent years, I’ve been traveling back and forth between Japan and the U.S. more often, and naturally, I’ve been paying closer attention to politics in my home country, Japan. Traditionally, as long as the Liberal Democratic Party holds a majority in the Lower House, its leader automatically becomes the prime minister. Major U.S. newspapers ran headlines suggesting that Japan was about to have its first female prime minister.

I, too, would love to see Japan—ranked 118th out of 148 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2025—become a country where more women can lead. But with Takaichi, I’m not optimistic.

There are plenty of political journalists who’ve analyzed who she is and what she stands for, so I’ll leave the details to them. What troubles me most is how the old power structure in Japan cleverly props itself up behind a woman’s face. It’s as if the same old men simply found a new cardboard cutout to speak through.

Strangely, her election brought back a memory from when I was in junior high in Japan.

When I joined the kendo club, I was the first and only girl. The older boys, who had never taught a girl before, were thrilled whenever I beat a male opponent, as if my victory were somehow theirs.

“Who knows, Asaka — maybe even a girl could be captain one day,” said the club captain at the time, matter-of-factly.

A year later, I became vice-captain — something I owed partly to the captain who had trained me. When I went to thank him before his graduation, he said, “Don’t study too hard, you’re a girl. Just stay cute, and don’t overdo the kendo.”

At the time, I didn’t have the words for what felt wrong. More than forty years have passed, and yet that memory echoed again the day I saw the headline about Takaichi.

Looks like our captains still haven’t changed.