Cabinet Spokesman Defends Takaichi’s Grueling Sleep Schedule
- Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sparked national concern after revealing her minimal sleep schedule on social media. In a post garnering over 35 million views, she celebrated getting "five full hours of sleep for the first time in ages" during a public holiday.
- After taking office in October 2025, Takaichi announced she would "discard the term 'work-life balance'" to focus entirely on her duties. She describes working "from early morning until late at night" as a point of pride rather than a cause for concern.
- Opposite lawmaker Toru Kunishige warned that chronic sleep deprivation "impairs judgment— much like a state of intoxication—and could pose a risk to national crisis management." Democratic Party for the People leader Yuichiro Tamaki urged her entourage to provide better support.
- The debate is striking given Japan's recent shift toward flexible work cultures to combat "karoshi," or death by overwork. While white-collar "salarymen" often rack up 12 hours of work daily, recent government policies encourage four-day workweeks to boost work-life balance.
- Defending the Prime Minister, deputy foreign affairs minister Ayano Kunimitsu wrote that colleagues should understand individual "circumstances and behind-the-scenes stories." Takaichi is not the first world leader to garner attention for poor sleep, joining former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
42 Articles
42 Articles
Monday was Sea Day in Japan, a national holiday in which many people escape the summer heat by swimming, surfing and relaxing on the beach. But not Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. According to a publication on her social networks on Tuesday, Takaichi spent the long holiday rereading policy documents and dealing with a stack of thousands of e-mails. She wrote that she managed to sleep "five hours in a row for the first time in a long time" — much …
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi caused a stir by admitting that she had recently been sleeping between zero and three hours a day. "That was a private post," her cabinet chief defended the politician.
It is the debate born in Japan after the first Minister Sanae Takaichi wrote that for her it became the norm
The head of government is lurking on social media about her dedication to work and her nil domestic skills. Internet users believe it is a smokescreen to make up her low popularity figures
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