Shinzo Abe

Oct. 27 (UPI) — President Donald Trump landed in Tokyo Monday morning as part of a three-nation Asia trip, meeting with Emperor Naruhito and new Prime Minister Sanae Takaishi

Trump and Naruhito met Monday morning at the emperor’s home, then retired to his hotel room. He has no more public events scheduled for the day.

The visit was Trump’s first trip to Japan since 2019. His goal for the trip is to reaffirm ties with Japan and encourage Japanese companies to invest in the United States.

He is scheduled to meet on Tuesday with Takaishi, who became Japan’s first woman prime minister just last week. Trump and Takaishi spoke on the phone Saturday. Trump praised Takaishi to reporters for being “philosophically close” to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

“It’s going to be very good. That really helps Japan. I think she’s going to be great,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One, Kyodo News reported.

Trump’s next stop is Busan, South Korea, where he’ll meet with President Xi Jinping. On Air Force One, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Trump and Xi would work on the U.S.-China trade deal on Thursday. Other things they will discuss are fentanyl, rare earth minerals and agricultural purchases, Bessent said.

Trump also told reporters that he would be willing to meet with North Korea‘s Kim Jong-un this week. A reporter asked if a meeting were possible, would he extend his Asia trip, and Trump said he hadn’t thought of it, but it would “be easy to do.”

On Sunday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Trump oversaw the signing of a peace agreement between Cambodia and Thailand.

Oct. 4 (UPI) — Sanae Takaichi, a hardline conservative, is set to become Japan’s first female prime minister after being elected by her Liberal Democratic Party on Saturday.

The 64-year-old former economic security minister defeated four other candidates to lead the LDP after two rounds of voting. She has served as party president this year.

If elected by both houses of the parliament later this month, she will replace Shigeru Ishiba, who announced last month he would resign after being in office for less than one year. Ishiba is a member of the LDP.

In the past two elections, the party became the minority among representatives and councillors in parliament, which is known as the Diet.

Takaichi has 32 years of political experience, including serving Nara, which is in Japan’s main island of Honshu, in the lower house. She was the economics minister from 2022 to 2024.

In a runoff, Takaichi defeated Shinjiro Koizumi, the 44-year-old agricultural minister seen as the favorite going into Saturday’s election. She received 149 lawmaker votes and 36 LDP chapter votes, ahead of Koizumi’s 145 votes from lawmakers and 11 from the prefectural chapters.

Other candidates were Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, former LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi and former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi .

“I’m feeling how tough it’s going to be from here on, rather than feeling happy,” Takaichi said after her election. “We won’t be able to rebuild the party if I don’t get everyone’s help, from all generations. I will scrap my work-life balance and work and work and work and work and work.”

Takachi wants to broaden her support, saying “everyone, and of all generations” — including election rivals — need to help mend the divided party.

Takachi is a protege of Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister assassinated in 2022.

She is vowing to bring back an economic vision known as Abenomics, which includes high fiscal spending and cheap borrowing. Japan currently has a sluggish economy of high inflation and stagnant wages.

In addition, she has to contend with a tariff deal worked out with U.S. President Donald Trump that includes a 15% duty on its exports in exchange for a commitment of $550 million in the U.S. economy.

She must work out how to spend that money, including investments, loans and loan guarantees.

Takaichi was the only candidate to consider renegotiating the deal, saying “we must speak out firmly.”

Tkaichi, who is more conservative than the other candidates, is a former TV host.

“I think she’s in a good position to regain the right-wing voters, but at the expense of wider popular appeal, if they go into a national election,” Professor Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo, told the BBC.

She is a member of the “hardline” faction of the LDP, whose support has imploded “because it lost touch with its right-wing DNA,” Kingston said.

But he noted Takaichi won’t have much success “healing the internal party rift.”

Takachi is an admirer of Margaret Thatcher, who became Britain’s first female prime minister in 1979.

“She calls herself Japan’s Margaret Thatcher,” Kingstone said. “In terms of fiscal discipline, she’s anything but Thatcher. But like Thatcher she’s not much of a healer. I don’t think she’s done much to empower women.”

Takachi has opposed legislation that allows women to keep their maiden names after marriage. Also, she is opposed to same sex marriage, which is not a national law in Japan.

Aug. 15 (UPI) — In an address at the National Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead in Tokyo, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba called for remorse over Japan’s actions during World War II.

“Eighty years have now passed since the war ended,” Ishiba said in a speech Friday that Japanese prime ministers deliver each year at the memorial. “Today, generations with no firsthand experience of war make up the great majority. We must never again repeat the horrors of war.”

“We must never again lose our way,” he added. “We must now take deeply into our hearts once again our remorse and also the lessons learned from that war.”

His predecessors Shinzo Abe, Yoshihide Suga and Fumio Kishida hadn’t mentioned the word “remorse” when they delivered the prime minister’s address annually since Abe first left out the word from his speech in 2013.

A tradition of including a recommendation of remorse had started with former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, who in 1995, during the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, said in his address that he had “feelings of deep remorse” concerning Japanese past bellicosity.

He further offered an apology for Japan’s past “colonial rule and aggression.”

Murayama’s 1995 address has since been viewed as an impactful speech known as “The Murayama Statement.” Successive prime ministers had continued to mention remorse until Abe’s 2013 presentation.

Japanese Emperor Naruhito also spoke during the ceremony Friday, and he too included the word and a need for repentance.

“Looking back on the long period of post-war peace, reflecting on our past and bearing in mind the feelings of deep remorse, I earnestly hope that the ravages of war will never again be repeated,” he said.