As Japan prepares to swear in its first female prime minister, old ghosts of the past are threatening to haunt her leadership.
Sanae Takaichi’s hard-edged views on history and national identity have stirred anxieties from Seoul to Beijing, even though analysts believe the former security minister’s stance may be tempered by the realities of fragile coalitions in a volatile region.
Once a protégé of the late Shinzo Abe, she has championed a muscular foreign policy and advocated revising Japan’s pacifist constitution, particularly Article 9 that renounces the right to wage war.
Her conservative credentials, burnished by past visits to the contentious Yasukuni Shrine – where Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals, are commemorated – have drawn ire from both South Korea and China, who see the site as a potent symbol of Japan’s unresolved wartime legacy.
