Takaichi Wins Big With Japan’s Calibrated Conservatism (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: One of the world's most powerful conservative leaders just won again. Millions of Japanese voters braved snowstorms and freezing temperatures to cast their ballots for Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party, delivering a historic victory. It now has more lower house seats than any party has won in post-war Japan. A big reason why is Takaichi herself. Her approval ratings are the highest in years, and clearly that star power translated at the polls. But experts tell me that it also signals that voters who were frustrated with recent, more center-leaning leadership are pleased with an unapologetic conservative like her taking the helm. Now, Takaichi is a conservative leader. But what does that mean? Because it's not in the way we see in the U.S. Socially, yes, she opposes same-sex marriage and supports Japan's single-surname system, which makes it harder for women to keep their maiden names. But economically, she backs big government and just passed a record-breaking spending budget. She's also not anti-globalist, as we've seen increasingly in the U.S. In recent weeks, she's reaffirmed ties with the U.S., the U.K., Italy, even South Korea, despite decades of tension rooted in Japan's former occupation of the Korean Peninsula. And Japan can't afford to be anti-globalist. Its birth rate hits record lows, and its workforce continues to shrink. So she's conservative, but calibrated for Japan's reality.