By Tim Kelly, John Geddie and Satoshi Sugiyama
Tokyo (Reuters) -Japan's ruling party chose conservative nationalist Sanae Takaichi on Saturday, as a result of which she was set to become the first female prime minister of the country in a movement set for investors and neighbors.
The Liberal Democratic Party, who has ruled Japan for almost the entire post -war era, chosen Takaichi, 64, to regain trust from an audience angry by rising prices and attracted to opposition groups that promise stimulus and cuts on migrants.
A vote in parliament to opt for a replacement for outgoing Shigeru Ishiba is expected to be held on October 15. Takaichi is favored because the ruling coalition has the largest number of seats.
Inherits party in crisis
Takaichi, the only woman under the five LDP candidates, defeated a challenge of the more moderate Shinjiro Koizumi, 44, who offered to become the youngest modern leader.
A former Minister of Economic Security and Internal Affairs with an expansive tax agenda for the fourth largest economy in the world, Takaichi takes over a party in crisis.
Various other parties, including the expansionist Democratic Party for the people and the anti-immigration Sanseito, have voters, especially younger, steadily, away from the LDP.
The LDP and his coalition partner lost their majorities in both houses under Ishiba in the past year and caused his resignation.
“I recently heard hard voices from all over the country that we no longer know what the LDP stands for,” Takaichi said in a speech for the second round mood. “That feeling of urgency drove me. I wanted to change the worries of people about their daily lives and the future into hope.”
Takaichi, who says that her hero Margaret Thatcher, is the first female prime minister of Great -Britain, offers a grim vision for change than Koizumi and is potentially disturbing.
A proponent of late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's “Abenomics” strategy to stimulate the economy with aggressive expenditures and an easy monetary policy, she has previously criticized the interest rates of the Bank of Japan.
Such a shift of expenditure would be able to worry about one of the world's largest guilt taxes.
Naoya Hasegawa, main union strategist at Okasan Securities in Tokyo, said that the election of Takaichi had weakened the chances of the Boj -raised rates this month, those markets had priced around 60% before the vote.
Discussed to re -create Trump Trade Deal
Takaichi has also increased the possibility of re -making an investment agreement with US President Donald Trump, who reduced his punishing rates in exchange for investments supported by Japanese taxpayers.
The American ambassador in Japan, George Glass, congratulated Takaichi and posted on X that he was looking forward to strengthening the Japanese partnership “on every front”.
But her nationalist positions – such as her regular visits to the Yasukuni sanctuary to the war deaths of Japan, seen by some Asian countries as a symbol of former militarism – can neighbors such as South Korea and China.
She is in favor of revising the pacifist post-war constitution of Japan and this year suggested that Japan could form a “quasi security alliance” with Taiwan, the democratically controlled island that China claimed.
Taiwan president Lai Ching-Te welcomed her election and said she was a “steadfast friend of Taiwan”.
“It is hoped that under the leadership of the new (LDP) President Takaichi, Taiwan and Japan, their partnership can delve into areas such as economic trade, safety and technological cooperation,” he said in a statement.
If the chosen prime minister, Takaichi said she would regularly travel abroad than her predecessor to spread the word that “Japan is back!”
“I have thrown away my own balance between work and private life and I will work, work, work,” Takaichi said in her victory speech.
She is expected to hold a press conference around 0900 GMT.
(Raporing by Tim Kelly, John Geddie, Chang-Ran Kim, Satoshi Sugiyama, Makiko Yamazaki and Joseph Campbell; Edit by William Mallard)
