The spouse of Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, the nation’s first female leader, said he hoped to support his wife by being a “stealth husband,” cooking meals for her, but staying out of the spotlight, reports said.
“Unlike in the West, it is better for a partner to stay out of the spotlight,” Fukui Television quoted Taku Yamamoto, 73, as saying on Tuesday after Takaichi became prime minister.
He said it was essential that Takaichi, who won the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership this month, is able to work with the coalition “to pursue her vision of prime minister.”
Photo: Jiji Press via AFP
“I want to provide solid support as ‘a stealth husband’ to ensure that my presence does not become an obstacle to that,” he added, according to the Asahi Shimbun daily, Fuji Television and other media.
Yamamoto, a former fellow LDP lawmaker, married Takaichi in 2004, but the couple divorced in 2017 citing “differences in political views.” The couple remarried in 2021, after Yamamoto reportedly supported Takaichi when she ran for the LDP leadership election that year. He lost his seat in the lower house in the subsequent snap election.
Takaichi’s views on gender place the 64-year-old on the right of an already conservative LDP. She named only two other women to her Cabinet, with Satsuki Katayama as minister of finance and Kimi Onoda as minister in charge of economic security.
Takaichi opposes revising a 19th-century law requiring married couples to share the same surname, a rule that overwhelmingly results in women taking their husband’s name.
That is despite the difficulties the law has given the couple.
During Takaichi and Yamamoto’s first marriage, she took his name. In the second, he took hers.
The pair live together in a house complex for members of parliament in Tokyo, where Takaichi helps care for Yamamoto after he suffered a stroke this year and was also diagnosed with prostate cancer, reports said.
Media reports said that he first proposed to Takaichi in 2004 over the phone.
He told her that “as I have a chef’s license, I’ll make sure you eat delicious food throughout your life,” Jiji Press reported.
Takaichi, an admirer of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and a heavy metal drummer in her youth, said that he “was a rather unsociable person, someone I would say I wasn’t very comfortable to be with.”
He won her over, saying that “if you’re seriously looking for a marriage partner, I’m divorced so I’ll run as a candidate,” Takaichi said on her Web site.
Takaichi had lost her parliamentary seat in 2003, but regained it two years later, so both of them became parliament members.
As Takaichi was not good at cooking, he continued to prepare meals, saying that “the kitchen is my domain, so please don’t enter,” Jiji reported.
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