Sanae Takaichi’s smashing victory promises a new ‘Morning in Japan’

Sanae Takaichi, the Margaret Thatcher of Japan, just won a huge victory in snap elections — a great sign for the forces of civilization against internal stagnation and the bullies in Beijing.

Takaichi won leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party in October, signaling a new and optimistic era for the governing party — but immediately faced stonewall opposition in the legislature’s upper chamber.

Now the LDP has won a supermajority in the 465-seat lower house, allowing it to override the defeatists.

Japan’s first female prime minister is every bit as tough as Thatcher, pointedly standing up to China’s rulers over Taiwan — which is also a challenge to the pacifist forces that have long limited Tokyo’s global influence.

With Beijing blatantly bent on dominating east Asia and the Pacific (and indeed the world), it’s great to see the people of Japan rallying around a leader with true grit.  

A protégé of the late, great Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving PM ever, Takaichi has proved to have serious popular appeal, including among the young.

She also has a huge social-media presence, unprecedented for a Japanese politician; her pledge to “work, work, work, work and work” became the country’s catchphrase of the year.

Whether “Sanamania” is rooted in her love of motorcycles or her heavy-metal drumming, her trademark pink ballpoint pen and black leather handbag or the unique way she keeps breaking glass ceilings even as she firmly defends traditional morality, she’s a tremendous breath of fresh air.

Like Abe, Takaichi gets along well with President Donald Trump, who before the vote, praised her on Truth Social as “a strong, powerful, and wise” leader.

She called the snap elections to win direct public backing for her agenda of boosting Japan’s defenses and confronting the threats from China and North Korea — and the gamble has now paid off.

Much as Thatcher brought Britain back roaring from decades of slow decline half a century ago, or as President Ronald Reagan introduced a new “Morning in America,” Takaichi promises to lead her nation into a fresh and vigorous future — bolstering the forces of civilization world-wide.

Amid Xi Jinping’s neo-Stalinist purges and expansionist megalomania in China, Vladimir Putin’s mad drive to restore the old Soviet empire and the persistent declinism of Western Europe’s elites, “Morning in Japan” truly has a fantastic ring to it.