Name: Japan's Takaichi rides youth-led craze into election
Uploaded: 2026-02-05T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 2 min 52 s
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Japan's 64-year-old Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has become an unlikely pop culture phenomenon.

And the craze surrounding her could help deliver a decisive election win this Sunday.

What fans are calling Sanakatsu or Sanamania has taken off among young voters.

Everything the conservative leader touches seems to sell out,

including the $900 Hamano leather handbag she carries.

Well, she's the first female prime minister,

so a lot of young people like myself are curious about what kind of apparel she uses.

And I saw a lot of posts going viral about it.

So, you know, I think it would be nice if I could use the same things as her.

So I was curious about it and looked it up.

Polls suggest that momentum could translate into political power.

Surveys this week show Takaichi's ruling coalition could capture as many as 300 seats in the 465-seat lower house,

a sharp reversal after her predecessor lost control of both chambers over the past 15 months.

What's more surprising is who's driving the support.

Among voters under 30, Takaichi's approval has topped 90% in at least one recent poll,

far above her already strong overall rating of around 60%.

Part of that appeal is her social media presence.

Takaichi has amassed 2.6 million followers on X, dwarfing her rivals.

Analysts say her greatest asset may be her personality,

revitalizing a ruling party whose grip on power had been slipping.

Koichi Nakano is a political science professor at Sofia University.

Well, actually, being more popular than the past leaders of the LDP is not so difficult,

given that all of them, not even most of them, but all of them,

have been middle-aged, boring men or even elderly, boring men.

And therefore, they had this very stagnant image that were not very communicative and were harder to understand.

And so in some ways, Takaichi, you know, cut a fresh image

'cause even though Takaichi and her entourage are doing their best to present this election as about her

and hoping that there's going to be some sort of eye-catching Sankatsu moment that is going to take place,

the actual votes take place on the constituency level, in the regional level,

on the basis of the candidates and the party name, rather than Takaichi herself.

And so I think, you know, for her to try to sort of make the most of her sort of personal popularity is understandable,

but how much of that is actually going to translate into the votes?