Then the bottom fell out. Across the board, every media poll shows the PM\u2019s soft support collapsing. Mainichi led the way, showing her approval collapse 10 points from 51% to 41%. For the first time, her disapproval rating (44%) outpaced her approval. Other polls from major news outlets showed that Mainichi\u2019s number wasn\u2019t an outlier, either. <\/p>\n
What caused the dip? It\u2019s hard to say, as Japanese approval polls only ask for general reasons a voter does or doesn\u2019t support a candidate. Analysts say a series of scandals has steadily eroded her soft support: questions around a controversial \u201cSanae Token\u201d cryptocurrency that traded on her name, and testimony tying her office to a wave of AI-generated smear videos aimed at her rivals in the LDP leadership race, an allegation Takaichi denies. <\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s her tendency to ram through legislation without caring what her political opponents or even the Japanese public thinks. A vivid example is her opposition to allowing Japan to have empresses again. While a majority of the Japanese public would welcome an Empress Aiko, Takaichi\u2019s plan for the Imperial Household Law makes that impossible<\/a>.<\/p>\n A leader running on 0-3 hours of sleep<\/p>\n Whatever the reason for the drop, Takaichi\u2019s reaction was\u2026well, weird. Like Tim Walz \u201cthese guys are weird\u201d level weird.<\/p>\n Takaichi\u2019s X account posted a long rant<\/a>, in her voice, about how thankful she was for the recent holiday (Ocean Day, Umi no Hi<\/a>). \u201cI got five hours sleep, the first in a long time (since becoming PM, sleeping 0 to 3 hours has become the norm).\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s not clear if the post was a reaction to the Mainichi poll, which dropped the previous day. Most people, however, read it as a defensive boast meant to shore up the flagging number. <\/p>\n It didn\u2019t work. <\/p>\n Takaichi could have been normal about her poll drop. Indeed, there\u2019s no real reason for her to panic. Despite the large drop, she\u2019s still well outside the so-called \u201cAoki Law,\u201d the rule of thumb set by former Liberal Democratic Party kingmaker Aoki Mikio. A PM\u2019s Aoki number is the combined support for their cabinet and their party. When it falls below 50, a PM\u2019s job is on the line. <\/p>\n But Takaichi\u2019s Aoki Number sits at 70. She\u2019s fine (for now). Which makes the defensive post all the more strange, especially since it blew up in her face. Of almost 400 comments analyzed on her X post, only a little over 11% came to her defense. Almost half criticized her post as performative. 17.1% said she was rendering herself unfit to perform her duties, as the lack of sleep would impinge on her judgment.<\/p>\n \u201cWorked to death like a packhorse\u201d<\/p>\n Japan already suffers from sleep issues. The nation has ranked lowest worldwide in sleep quality since 2017<\/a>.<\/p>\n As commenters noted, bragging about being Sleepless in Japan isn\u2019t a harmless boast. In a country that has a word for \u201cdeath by overwork\u201d (\u904e\u52b4\u6b7b; kar\u014dshi)<\/a>, it can cause real damage. It can get people killed. <\/p>\n Indeed, Takaichi has made this boast before. And advocates for victims of kar\u014dshi have called her out on it. <\/p>\n Members-only article<\/p>\n \t\tLog in – or unlock one for free.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tThis rest of this article is for our Insider<\/a> program members, who get one bonus article like this a week. Join our free weekly newsletter and we’ll email you this Insider article, gratis. Already used your unlock? Subscribe today<\/a> and access this article plus our entire back issue archive<\/a>. (Already a member? Login<\/a> )\n\t\t<\/p>\n \t\tKeep reading<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan\u2019s first female Prime Minister is apparently also its eepiest. Things had been going well for Takaichi Sanae…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64014,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8,17,22027,236,22029,40463,1441,9270],"class_list":["post-64013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-japan","tag-japanese","tag-karoshi","tag-ldp","tag-overwork","tag-sleep-deprivation","tag-takaichi-sanae","tag-womens-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Prime](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/takaichi-sleep-karoshi-tweet-1024x642.png\")
Source tweet: @takaichi_sanae, July 20, 2026.<\/p>\n![\"Reader-reaction](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/image-6-1024x271.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"LDP](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1785052938_761_image-7.png\")
Takaichi campaigns on the platform of creating \u201ca strong and prosperous Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n