Other controversial trips include past visits to Yasukuni Shrine, a memorial to Japan’s war dead. The shrine is a thorny issue in Japan and abroad because it also enshrines World War II war criminals. I would be glad if all cabinet members would visit the shrine,” she has previously said.

In 2004, Takaichi wrote that textbooks exaggerated the Nanjing Massacre’s death toll beyond the population of Nanjing in December 1937.

In 1994, Takaichi was shown promoting a controversial book praising Adolf Hitler’s electoral talents. The book “Hitler’s Election Strategy” was published, which Takaichi later endorsed in 2014.

In 2014, Ms Takaichi was photographed with Kazunari Yamada, the leader of Japan’s neo-Nazi National Socialist Japanese Workers’ Party, in an image later posted on the group’s website.

In 2004, Takaichi wrote a column on her website regarding the Japanese history textbook controversies, defending comments that textbooks were “extremely self-deprecating” and should decrease usage of terms including “comfort women” and “forced labor”. She has resisted acknowledging Japanese wartime aggression and atrocities and denied that coercion was used against Korean laborers and women held as sexual slaves for Japanese troops. She was part of a campaign to remove references to wartime sexual slavery from school textbooks.

In December 2020, Takaichi stated that proposed legislation to recognize separate family names for married couples could “destroy the social structure based on family units”.

In 2022, Takaichi made remarks about the Yasukuni Shrine issue that were controversial in South Korea. She used derogatory language, saying continuing to visit the shrine would eventually make “neighbouring countries…look foolish and stop complaining”.

In September 2025, Takaichi was criticized for claiming that foreigners had kicked deer in Nara Park based on videos circulated on social media.

Ms Takaichi has previously said that increasing numbers of foreigners in Japan were “rattling nerves”.

In 2013, Sanae Takaichi, the then head of the LDP’s policy-research council, urged Shinzo Abe to reconsider past wartime apologies and expand Japan’s regional presence.

She supports the imperial family’s male-only succession, and opposes both same-sex marriage and amending the 19th-century law that requires married couples to have the same surname.

There was also a statement where she said that China is getting ahead now and getting smug and I forgot the rest I would be glad if all cabinet members would visit the shrine,” she has previously said.