{"id":242999,"date":"2025-10-22T07:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T07:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/242999\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T07:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T07:46:10","slug":"japanese-pm-sanae-takaichi-talks-about-her-love-of-metal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/242999\/","title":{"rendered":"Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi talks about her love of metal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Japan has its first female Prime Minister, and she is not like other Prime Ministers. The 64-year-old ultraconservative Sanae Takaichi rides motorbikes, practises karate, and, most importantly, is a longtime fan of heavy metal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last month, before she was elected Prime Minister, Takaichi appeared on Babymetal’s Metal Radio, a Tokyo FM show hosted by Babymetal<\/a> members Su-metal, Moametal and Momometal. The show promises to “unite the world and connect the world through metal” and features interviews with “secret metal” fans.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the show, Takaichi talks about her love of metal, revealing that it dates back to her early childhood.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

“When I was in elementary school, I started listening to Black Sabbath<\/a>: Paranoid, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and things like that,” says Takaichi [machine translated from Japanese]. “Then, when I got to middle school, Deep Purple<\/a> came out, and then Burn and Smoke On The Water and so on, and I got into that.”<\/p>\n

Takaichi, who played bass guitar and keyboards in middle school, was eventually approached by a “delinquent type” who asked her to play keyboards in what she calls a “really crappy band.” She took up drums in high school, where she was in a band who played cover songs, including the Rolling Stone<\/a>s’ Jumping Jack Flash, before joining an all-female outfit whose repertoire included UFO<\/a> classics Rock Bottom and Doctor Doctor, plus Rainbow<\/a>‘s I Surrender.<\/p>\n

“When I get irritated by my husband’s choice of words or behaviour, I play the electronic drums after he’s gone to bed,” says Takaichi. “Burn by Deep Purple is a staple. I play songs like this to let off steam.”<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the interview, Takaichi expresses her love of Michael Schenker<\/a>‘s classic instrumental Into The Arena, and Narita, the second album by US rockers Riot<\/a>. She also speaks of her longtime affinity for Iron Maiden<\/a>, and proclaims her favourite musician to be Japanese star Yoshiki<\/a>, leader of X Japan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sign up below to get the latest from Metal Hammer, plus exclusive special offers, direct to your inbox!<\/p>\n

The entire interview can be heard below (in Japanese).<\/p>\n

BABYMETAL\u306e\u30e1\u30bf\u30e9\u30b8\uff01#32 \u30e1\u30bf\u30c8\u30e2\uff1a\u9ad8\u5e02\u65e9\u82d7 – YouTube
\n\"BABYMETAL\u306e\u30e1\u30bf\u30e9\u30b8\uff01#32<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan has its first female Prime Minister, and she is not like other Prime Ministers. The 64-year-old ultraconservative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243000,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-242999","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}