By Tessa Nolan
Japan might be about to get a new prime minister. And the thing everyone’s talking about, the hook that’s on every news report, is that she’s a heavy metal fan.
Sanae Takaichi. Sixty-four years old. Loves Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. Used to play the drums in a student band so hard she’d break her sticks. Still keeps an electric kit at home to bash out a song when she’s stressed.
It’s a great story, isn’t it? It’s human. It’s quirky. It immediately gives you a picture of someone who isn’t just another grey politician in a grey suit.
But what are we actually looking at here? Is this just a fun piece of personal trivia? Or is it something else?
At first, you think, okay, it’s just a bit of colour. A way for the media to frame a story about a political succession, which is usually a pretty dry affair. But then you look at the rest of the picture, and it gets a lot more complicated.
Because the other thing they call her is “the Japanese Thatcher.” And her politics are staunchly conservative. Nationalist, traditionalist. Suddenly, the image of the headbanging drummer starts to look a bit… strange. It doesn’t quite fit.
The thing is, the whole package is a construction. A very deliberate, and very clever, one.
Look at her history. Before she was a politician, she was a TV commentator. And she was, by all accounts, a bit of a firecracker. Mini-skirts, motorbikes. She was lively, unconventional. She stood out. Then she gets into politics, and the motorbike gets sold. She adopts this very elegant, very practical short haircut that her hairdresser apparently modelled on Margaret Thatcher. The “Sanae cut,” they call it. It’s her uniform.
So what’s going on? Is she the rebel on the motorbike, or the Iron Lady in the sensible shoes?
It’s a bit like when someone you know gets a big promotion at a very corporate company. They used to be the one at the pub in a band t-shirt, complaining about the management. And then, overnight, they’re ‘Dave from accounts’. They’ve got the new suit, the sensible haircut, they start using words like ‘synergy’. The old version of them hasn’t entirely disappeared, but it’s been repackaged, repurposed to fit the new role. It’s a performance.
And that’s what this feels like. A performance. And a very effective one.
The heavy metal thing isn’t a contradiction to her conservative politics. It’s the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. It’s the branding. It allows her to sell a very tough, nationalist, traditionalist political product while still seeming like an individual. A maverick. Not just another stern-faced authority figure. It gives her texture. It makes her seem relatable, human, even to people who might be horrified by her actual policies.
I remember a few years back, covering politics, every new leader had to have their ‘thing’. A love of cycling, a specific brand of bacon sandwich, a slightly-too-tight t-shirt they wore for jogging. It all started to feel so transparent. A desperate attempt to look like a real person.
But this feels a bit more sophisticated. It’s not just a hobby. It’s an identity. It taps into that rebellious, anti-establishment energy that heavy metal has always had, and it attaches it to a politician who is, in almost every other respect, the absolute embodiment of the establishment. It’s a brilliant piece of misdirection.
So what does it tell us?
It tells us that in modern politics, the story is often more important than the substance. The image is more powerful than the ideology. You can sell almost any political idea, no matter how hardline, if you wrap it in a compelling enough human narrative. The non-conformist who becomes the ultimate conformist. The headbanger who wants to restore traditional values.
It makes you wonder how much of what we see of any political leader is real, and how much is a carefully constructed performance. Where does the person end and the brand begin?
The most interesting thing about Sanae Takaichi isn’t that she loves Iron Maiden. It’s that someone, somewhere, decided that was a very useful thing for us all to know. And the real question is why. What is it about her actual politics that needs the noise of a drum solo to drown it out? The answer to that is probably far more revealing than her record collection.
