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Japanese business leaders complain of markedly less access to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi as she breaks with tradition by distancing herself from corporate elites accustomed to privileged ties with government.
Takaichi, who won a landslide victory in a snap general election in February, rarely holds one-on-one meetings with chief executives, and formulates policy with less input from industry lobby groups including Keidanren, the country’s largest and most influential business association.
This has not gone down well with Japan’s business establishment. More than half a dozen senior executives expressed frustration with Takaichi’s leadership style to the FT, despite her pro-investment, business-friendly policies.
“It’s important to listen to a variety of opinions, even if she doesn’t have to follow them,” said Yoshinori Isozaki, chief executive of drinks giant Kirin, who likened Takaichi’s neglect of Japan’s business elite and media to US President Donald Trump’s disdain for experts and institutions.
“There’s no dialogue at all with Keidanren. She doesn’t do evening engagements and she doesn’t do lunch either,” he added, expressing his personal views rather than a company position.
Previous Japanese prime ministers filled their diaries with meetings, lunches, dinners and late-night drinks with representatives of the country’s largest companies, where they solicited input and sought to build consensus for their policies.
Takaichi’s approach stands in stark contrast. Japan’s prime minister prefers to eat alone, according to officials. She reads extensively from briefing notes that predecessors only skimmed, and shuns the sort of back room meetings with business leaders through which Japan Inc has historically exerted influence.
The growing chorus of dissatisfaction from business comes as the country grapples with a weak yen, high fiscal spending plans and what critics see as Takaichi’s flattery of Trump.
Keidanren said that it disagreed with the view that Takaichi has not listened to its opinions, citing three official meetings with her in the past year, a lunch with its chair last month and alignment on her vision for an “investment-driven economy”.
Among the wider public, Takaichi’s public approval ratings remain above 50 per cent, though they have begun to slide. Other figures described her approach as a long-overdue break with the past cosy relationship between top political and business figures.
Tobias Harris, a political analyst at Japan Foresight, said that Takaichi had made a point of avoiding top business figures and not consulting deeply with veteran bureaucrats because she was not convinced of the value of the establishment’s advice.
“Her thinking is, ‘If you were all so smart, Japan wouldn’t be in this position’,” he said, referring to three decades of stagnant economic growth following the asset bubble collapse. “She’s basically saying, ‘You have had many opportunities and the country is still in trouble’.”
One senior executive of a large Japanese company said Takaichi’s tactics reflected a shift in the country’s wider business culture, which had been dominated by night-time drinking sessions in which information was shared and relationships were developed.
“The same thing is probably happening in Japan as a whole,” the person said. “Japan’s political world is probably the oldest example of that culture, but she may be changing it.”
One senior ex-bureaucrat who has worked with Takaichi noted that the prime minister also increasingly spurned mainstream domestic media, preferring to engage with the public directly on social media platform X.
Mieko Nakabayashi, a political scientist at Waseda University, said Takaichi’s distancing of herself from business was an important part of her appeal to voters.
“Japanese people don’t like elites and they don’t like leaders who play in old-style Japanese politics,” said Nakabayashi. “Takaichi is very different from the old ways.
“From the point of view of Japan’s national interest, there is a risk in not communicating with all the top business people, but it is good for her popularity,” she added.
Another senior executive said that ultimately, the prime minister should be judged on her performance. “The real importance is not the way they communicate,” the person said. “They have to deliver results.”
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