Japan's ruling party on Saturday elected conservative nationalist Sanae Takaichi as its leader, paving the way for her to become the country's first female prime minister, UNN reports with reference to Reuters.
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The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for almost the entire post-war period, elected 64-year-old Takaichi to restore public confidence, outraged by rising prices and inclined towards opposition groups promising incentives and increased control over migrants.
A parliamentary vote to elect a successor to the outgoing Shigeru Ishiba is expected on October 15. Takaichi has an advantage as the ruling coalition holds the most seats.
Takaichi, the only woman among the five LDP candidates, defeated the more moderate 44-year-old Shinjiro Koizumi, who was vying to become the country's youngest modern leader.
A former minister of economic security and internal affairs, who advocates an expansionary fiscal policy for the world's fourth-largest economy, Takaichi takes over the leadership of a party in crisis.
Various other parties, including the expansionist Democratic Party for the People and the anti-immigrant Sanseito party, have been steadily poaching voters, especially young ones, from the LDP. Over the past year under Ishiba, the LDP and its coalition partner lost their majority in both chambers, leading to his resignation.
Takaichi, who names Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of Great Britain, as her idol, offers a more ambitious vision for change than Koizumi, and is potentially more radical, the publication writes.
A proponent of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "Abenomics" strategy, aimed at stimulating the economy through aggressive spending and loose monetary policy, she previously criticized the Bank of Japan's interest rate hikes. Such a change in spending patterns could deter investors concerned about one of the world's largest debt burdens, the publication notes.
Takaichi also raised the possibility of reviewing an investment agreement with US President Donald Trump, which lowered his punitive tariffs in exchange for investments supported by Japanese taxpayers.
US Ambassador to Japan George Glass congratulated Takaichi, writing on social media platform X that he looks forward to strengthening the Japan-US partnership "on all fronts."
However, her nationalist views, such as regular visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in memory of Japan's war dead, which some Asian countries consider a symbol of past militarism, could provoke discontent among neighbors such as South Korea and China, the publication writes.
She advocates for a revision of Japan's pacifist post-war constitution and this year suggested that Japan could form a "quasi-security alliance" with Taiwan, a democratic island claimed by China. Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te congratulated her election, calling her a "true friend of Taiwan."
If elected prime minister, Takaichi said she would travel abroad more often than her predecessor to convey the message "Japan is back!".
"I have given up on work-life balance and will work, work, work," Takaichi said in her victory speech.
She is expected to hold a press conference around 09:00 GMT (12:00 Kyiv time).