How Sana-mania swept Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) achieved a stunning victory in the country’s lower house election on 8 February 2026. The LDP won 316 of 465 contested seats — a gain of 118 seats and the highest total ever won by a single party in postwar Japan.

Remarkably, the LDP forfeited 14 proportional representation (PR) seats it was entitled to because so many of its dual-listed candidates won single-member district (SMD) seats that too few remained on its PR lists. The main opposition, the Centrist Reform Alliance (CRA), won just 49 seats — a loss of 123 from its pre-election total.

Despite the big win, Takaichi’s decision to call a snap election just four months into her tenure while leading a minority government in both houses was a real gamble. The LDP faced three major crises that plunged it into minority government status: the cost-of-living crisis, the political slush fund scandal and the Unification Church scandal. While the party sought to address the latter by revoking the church's tax-exempt status and cutting formal LDP–church ties, the first two crises remain unresolved.

Compounding this, the LDP’s former junior coalition partner of 26 years, Komeito, withdrew from the government in late 2025 over Takaichi’s refusal to enact stricter political finance measures. This severed the LDP's access to Komeito's powerful organisational base, the Buddhist lay organisation Soka Gakkai, whose members provided disciplined voter mobilisation. The LDP–Komeito electoral cooperation agreement was estimated to have brought an average of 20,000 votes per LDP candidate in SMDs.

The LDP’s new coalition agreement with the Japan Innovation Party failed to include any electoral coordination, meaning candidates of the two parties competed against each other. This disadvantage seemed to be compounded by the merger of the Constitutional Democratic Party and Komeito into a united centrist party, the CRA.

Yet Takaichi was able to make the most of her weak hand by leveraging her personal popularity in spite of the LDP. A Mainichi Shimbun opinion poll from 24–25 January showed that while the LDP’s support rate was just 27 per cent, Takaichi’s cabinet approval rating stood at 57 per cent. The most common reason for supporting the cabinet was respondents’ expectations of Takaichi’s leadership.

Takaichi’s popularity with younger voters also defied traditional liberal–conservative ideological divides. The LDP was the most popular choice among Japanese voters aged 18–39 who identified as left-leaning — a remarkable result given Takaichi’s position in the LDP’s conservative-nationalist wing.

Three factors proved crucial in her immense popularity.

Takaichi deployed an action-oriented narrative focused on national strength and resilience that effectively displaced concerns about inflation and the slush fund scandal. She promised to tackle inflation and restore growth through targeted investment in strategic sectors including AI, semiconductors, shipbuilding, port logistics and national defence. And she pre-emptively disarmed criticism that her economic policies offered no real solution to inflation with a strategically timed announcement the same night she called the election. Takaichi promised to suspend the 8 per cent consumption tax on food for two years, a move that appropriated and neutralised a key opposition proposal before the campaign had even begun.

Takaichi’s emphasis on strength crystallised when she refused to retract her statement that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could constitute a ‘survival crisis’ permitting collective self-defence, despite China’s retaliatory restrictions on rare earth exports and tourist travel. This defiance ultimately strengthened her public support and shifted electoral focus from past failures to future prospects.

Beyond her policy narrative, Takaichi has also cultivated a relatable persona that defies traditional LDP stereotypes. As Japan’s first female prime minister, Takaichi represents a historic break from the party’s male-dominated leadership. Her background — lacking the dynastic political lineage, family wealth or elite university networks typical of LDP leaders — further enhanced her popular appeal.

This relatability sparked a social phenomenon dubbed ‘Sanakatsu’, where young supporters flocked to buy the same handbag and ballpen used by Takaichi. The LDP was thus successfully rebranded from an awkward, old, ‘uncle-like’ establishment institution into the ‘Takaichi LDP’ — approachable, tough and modern.

Takaichi also amplified her narrative and persona through an aggressive digital strategy. A video message from Takaichi posted on the LDP’s official YouTube channel garnered over 100 million views in 10 days — a figure that prompted questions about the party’s promotional spending on X (formerly Twitter) and other platforms. Takaichi’s average of 5200 reposts per post on X vastly outperformed rivals, including Sanseito leader Sohei Kamiya — whose average reposts declined from 3100 to just 1600 despite his conspiracist, anti-establishment far-right party brand being built on social media appeal.

By leveraging social media platforms typically associated with smaller anti-establishment parties, Takaichi successfully reached younger voters who have increasingly abandoned traditional media sources. Remarkably, this image transformation proved so effective that it seemed to obscure Takaichi’s substantive policy positions. Japanese youth are often surprised to hear that Takaichi opposes same-sex marriage — a sentiment that extends to her opposition to separate surnames for married couples and a female emperor. Young voters, it seemed, were voting for an image of change rather than a detailed policy platform.

But Takaichi’s real test begins now. Having successfully campaigned on an aspirational vision of national strength and strategic investment, her government must now reconcile lofty promises with fiscal and strategic reality. The narrative that propelled the LDP to its largest post-war majority demands detailed explanations of how investments in semiconductors, AI and defence will be financed without exacerbating Japan’s fiscal position.

Equally pressing is whether Takaichi’s narrative of national strength can navigate the treacherous terrain of great power competition in a world drifting towards a ‘might-makes-right’ international order. The image-driven campaign that allowed Takaichi to transcend policy scrutiny now creates heightened expectations that tough policy choices cannot be indefinitely deferred.

Whether ‘Sana-mania’ can survive the transition from aspirational narrative to budgetary arithmetic will define not only Takaichi’s tenure, but the viability of personality-driven politics in managing Japan’s structural economic and security challenges.

Ben Ascione is Lecturer at the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies, Waseda University.