An iron-willed woman known for her far rightist, nationalist views has emerged as Japan’s likely new prime minister after winning a runoff vote for president of the country’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Saturday.

The rise of 64-year-old Sanae Takaichi, who will become Japan’s first female leader, signals the country’s rebirth as an aggressive power that’s sure to adopt a hardline policy toward its feared Asian foes – Communist China and North Korea – as well as its ally America, which she has criticized for tariffs imposed by President Trump.

Ms. Takaichi, as president of the LDP, is certain to be elected prime minister by the lower house of the Japanese parliament or Diet this month with the support of the Buddhist-backed Komeito and other rightist parties.

Exulting in her triumph over the young agriculture minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, son of a former prime minister, Ms. Takaichi, a former minister for economic security, internal affairs and social security, pleaded for the unity of the badly fractured party.

The LDP was thrown into turmoil after losing its majority in the Diet in July elections that forced the outgoing prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, to announce his resignation effective with the election of a new LDP president and then a prime minister. The vote for party leader went to a dramatic  runoff after Ms. Takaichi ran first among five candidates but failed to win a clear majority in the first round.

Immediately after winning the runoff, Ms. Takaichi  set forth her vision for Japan’s rise as a power competing militarily and economically against China,  which poses a historic and current threat from the Korean peninsula to the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. She left no doubt of her toughness, promising to “work, work, work, work”  and beseeching fellow lawmakers “to work tirelessly for the sake of Japan and to rebuild the LDP.”

Ms. Takaichi cast herself as an ultra-conservative reformer, sure to revisit again and again the controversial Yasukuni shrine honoring Japanese who died fighting for their country, including war criminals executed after Japan’s defeat in World War II. Like the former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, assassinated in 2022, she is likely to want to shed the constraints of Japan’s “peace” constitution which bans Japanese troops from waging war for any reason other than defense of the homeland. 

That hardline position evokes unpleasant memories elsewhere in Asia of Japan’s harsh rule over large portions of China, the Korean peninsula and Southeast Asia before and during World War II.

She’s also sure to try to persuade Mr. Trump to go easy on tariffs when she sees him as he passes through Tokyo on the way to South Korea for a summit of  Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group leaders at the end of this month. Focusing on exports of high-tech items, she hopes “to revitalize the economy through targeted tax cuts and investment in semiconductors and other strategic sectors,” according to Nikkei Asia, a website of Japan’s huge financial newspaper, Nikkei Shimbun.

Besides advocating tough military and economic policies, Ms. Takaichi has criticized an influx of foreigners into Japan – an outlook that has critics calling her xenophobic and isolationist. She recently was widely quoted as saying she had seen a foreigner “kicking a deer” in a famous deer park near Kyoto.

One of Ms. Takaichi’s heroes is Margaret Thatcher, whom she admired for her nationalist brand of conservatism. Ms. Takaichi is not known, however, for advocating for women’s issues or pressing for the rights of women. Rather, said BBC, she has “long opposed legislation allowing women to keep their maiden names after marriage, saying it is against tradition.” Also, she’s “against same sex marriage.”