Japan’s first female Prime Minister is apparently also its eepiest.
Things had been going well for Takaichi Sanae up until now. Her cabinet’s approval sat somewhere in the 50% to 70% range. Her tactic of blaming foreigners for everything wrong with Japan seemed to be working. At least for a while.
Then the bottom fell out. Across the board, every media poll shows the PM’s soft support collapsing. Mainichi led the way, showing her approval collapse 10 points from 51% to 41%. For the first time, her disapproval rating (44%) outpaced her approval. Other polls from major news outlets showed that Mainichi’s number wasn’t an outlier, either.
What caused the dip? It’s hard to say, as Japanese approval polls only ask for general reasons a voter does or doesn’t support a candidate. Analysts say a series of scandals has steadily eroded her soft support: questions around a controversial “Sanae Token” cryptocurrency that traded on her name, and testimony tying her office to a wave of AI-generated smear videos aimed at her rivals in the LDP leadership race, an allegation Takaichi denies.
Then there’s her tendency to ram through legislation without caring what her political opponents or even the Japanese public thinks. A vivid example is her opposition to allowing Japan to have empresses again. While a majority of the Japanese public would welcome an Empress Aiko, Takaichi’s plan for the Imperial Household Law makes that impossible.
A leader running on 0-3 hours of sleep
Whatever the reason for the drop, Takaichi’s reaction was…well, weird. Like Tim Walz “these guys are weird” level weird.
Takaichi’s X account posted a long rant, in her voice, about how thankful she was for the recent holiday (Ocean Day, Umi no Hi). “I got five hours sleep, the first in a long time (since becoming PM, sleeping 0 to 3 hours has become the norm).”
It’s not clear if the post was a reaction to the Mainichi poll, which dropped the previous day. Most people, however, read it as a defensive boast meant to shore up the flagging number.
It didn’t work.
Takaichi could have been normal about her poll drop. Indeed, there’s no real reason for her to panic. Despite the large drop, she’s still well outside the so-called “Aoki Law,” the rule of thumb set by former Liberal Democratic Party kingmaker Aoki Mikio. A PM’s Aoki number is the combined support for their cabinet and their party. When it falls below 50, a PM’s job is on the line.
But Takaichi’s Aoki Number sits at 70. She’s fine (for now). Which makes the defensive post all the more strange, especially since it blew up in her face. Of almost 400 comments analyzed on her X post, only a little over 11% came to her defense. Almost half criticized her post as performative. 17.1% said she was rendering herself unfit to perform her duties, as the lack of sleep would impinge on her judgment.
“Worked to death like a packhorse”
Japan already suffers from sleep issues. The nation has ranked lowest worldwide in sleep quality since 2017.
As commenters noted, bragging about being Sleepless in Japan isn’t a harmless boast. In a country that has a word for “death by overwork” (過労死; karōshi), it can cause real damage. It can get people killed.
Indeed, Takaichi has made this boast before. And advocates for victims of karōshi have called her out on it.
