COMMENTARY / Japan

Sanae Takaichi gets 'the Abe treatment'

Is Japan’s liberal mass media out to get the presumptive next prime minister?

A screen outside a Tokyo securities firm shows the Nikkei 225 Stock Average on Oct. 6. As Japan's financial markets reacted to Sanae Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party presidential win, much of the media's focus was on the falling yen, downplaying the surge in equities to record highs. | Bloomberg

By Edo Naito
Contributing writer

Oct 12, 2025

The first polls released after Sanae Takaichi's victory in the Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential election on Oct. 4 showed she had strong support. The poll by Kyodo showed over 68% of the respondents had "high hopes" for Takaichi. A Japan News Network poll returned similar results with 66% indicating "high hopes," and over 75% among those describing themselves as LDP supporters. Support for the LDP jumped 4.6 percentage points to about 28%.

In line with the other responses, 65% named Takaichi as the best candidate to be prime minister, with Yoshihiko Noda, the leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, at 11% and Yuichiro Tamaki of the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) at 7%.

Some in the media were not very happy to see those results. Last week, a photographer with the Jiji Press wire service was caught on a live mic at a Takaichi news conference boasting to his fellow media colleagues that he would "bring down public approval ratings" and only release photos that make approval ratings drop.