Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s impressive victory in this month’s general election signifies a pivotal moment in the maturation of the Japanese state — a mandate to shed what Chinese scholars Zhang Yong and Meng Fanchao describe as the postwar “loser’s logic,” a psychological and legal framework that has long paralyzed Japan’s ability to act as a sovereign equal in the international arena.
Yet her mandate comes at a moment of profound geopolitical fragility. Often mischaracterized by detractors as a radical nationalist, Takaichi represents a center-right continuity of the “Abe line,” a pragmatic strategy aimed not at militarism, but at normalization.
Takaichi’s foreign-policy team finds itself wedged between a revisionist China, whose values and interests are fundamentally incompatible with Tokyo’s, and a United States under President Donald Trump’s second term that has devolved into an unpredictable and transactional partner.
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