AFP/Yonhap News
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s office-centered style of governing is drawing criticism from within and outside Japan’s political circles. Critics say her lack of on-the-ground engagement is far more passive than that of her predecessors.
According to a compilation of reports by major Japanese media outlets on the 22nd, Takaichi’s frequency of outside activity is strikingly low. A Kyodo News analysis found that in the 10 months since she took office on October 21 of last year, Takaichi made only eight site visits. The figure stands in sharp contrast to former Prime Ministers Fumio Kishida (31) and Shigeru Ishiba (22) over the same period. Even those visits consisted entirely of trips to earthquake-hit areas (three), atomic bomb memorial ceremonies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and accompanying foreign leaders.
The tendency to stay indoors was also evident in how she spent her days off. According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei), Takaichi spent 51 of the 94 days off she has had since taking office — more than half, at 54% — at the prime minister’s office or at her lawmaker’s residence in Akasaka. Even on the 43 days she did go out, most were for official duties (36 days) or political business (11 days, including overlaps), and her only purely private outing on a day off was a single dental appointment on May 30.
Within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, this has prompted calls for her to increase direct dialogue with the public. One LDP executive urged more active engagement, saying, “A head of state’s visit to the field is in itself a great encouragement to those involved, and there are things you can only see by going there.”
Takaichi’s side, on the other hand, cites “focused handling of work” and “consideration for staff” as reasons. One close aide explained to Nikkei that “it was out of consideration for the fact that when the prime minister moves, security officers and secretarial staff also have to come to work on their days off.”
Takaichi herself has also actively explained the intensity of her work at the office. On the 20th of last month, she stressed through X (formerly Twitter) that she was tending to state affairs without rest even at the office, writing that she “reviewed the final drafts of three documents awaiting Cabinet decisions until dawn and processed thousands of emails.”
AloJapan.com