View / Sanae Takaichi’s tectonic victory

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s stunning victory in snap elections this weekend can be traced to a November post on X by a Chinese diplomat.

Incensed by off-the-cuff remarks she made on Taiwan soon after taking office, the consul-general in Osaka wrote that Japan’s first female prime minister deserved to have her “filthy neck” sliced off. That threat, and Chinese retribution that followed — warnings to Chinese tourists to avoid Japan, a ban on Japanese seafood imports, moves to choke off Chinese rare earth exports — triggered a nationalist rally-around-the-flag surge. Takaichi refused to apologize, and her approval ratings rocketed.

In a way, Takaichi has got her revenge, winning a supermajority in parliament — the first in Japan’s post-war history. That gives her a free hand to work on a transformative agenda: economic stimulus and “peace through strength,” by which she means revising Japan’s pacifist constitution and boosting military spending to counter China.

But as a result, geopolitical tremors are rippling across Northeast Asia — and as far afield as the US — and there doesn’t appear to be an off-ramp.

For Takaichi’s part, defiance is now part of her brand. Once an outsider in the man’s world of Japanese politics, she has turned herself into a national icon by standing firm against Chinese pressure. At the same time, she has tapped into a deep pool of resentment, particularly among the young, at Beijing’s constant reminders about Japan’s wartime atrocities and its relentless propaganda aimed at convincing the world that Japan — a model global citizen since its World War II surrender — is in fact plotting a militarist revival.

China, too, shows no signs of backing down, despite its economic coercion having spectacularly backfired: On Monday, a Chinese foreign ministry official again called on Takaichi to withdraw her Taiwan comments.

In fact, relations may get worse before they get better. Takaichi has said she wants to visit the Yasukuni Shrine where Japanese war dead — including Class A war criminals — are interred. For the Chinese Communist Party, which stakes its claim to legitimacy on defeating Japanese invaders during World War II, that would be an unforgivable outrage. Sino-Japanese relations went into a deep freeze for several years after the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — Takaichi’s mentor — visited the shrine in 2013.

This is a delicate moment, too, for US President Donald Trump.

At the very least, the prospect of a years-long rupture between Japan, Washington’s most important security ally in Asia, and China complicates Trump’s relations with Chinese leader Xi Jinping ahead of April’s high-stakes summit in Beijing. It will be the first of four potential meetings with Xi to hammer out a trade deal and, potentially, a grand bargain over the Asia-Pacific.

On the one hand, Trump has sent conciliatory signals to Beijing after a tit-for-tat trade spiral ended in a truce last year, pushing out China hawks at the Commerce Department, brokering a deal to keep TikTok in business, and approving sales of advanced Nvidia chips to China. Over the weekend, Trump said Xi would visit the White House this year.

Yet the administration has also made clear that it has no interest in withdrawing from the Asia-Pacific, leaving the region as China’s “sphere of influence.” And Trump recently approved a weapons package for Taiwan worth more than $11 billion, with more reportedly in the works.

Trump said little in support of Takaichi at the height of last year’s fracas between Japan and China over her Taiwan comments. Yet more recently, he has given the impression they’ve forged a mutual admiration society. He endorsed Takaichi’s candidacy on Truth Social last week, calling her a “strong, powerful, and wise leader,” and congratulated her after her victory, posting that her decision to call a vote had “paid off big time.”

Takaichi returned the compliment, enthusing on X that “the potential for our Alliance is LIMITLESS.”