Japan PM’s pledge to ‘work, work, work, work, and work’ wins catchphrase of year

Original article by Justin McCurry in Tokyo

It is not, perhaps, a word many people in Japan will want to hear as they prepare for the bonenkai office party season and some well-earned time off over the new year.

But the promise made by Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, that she would “work, work, work, work, and work” on behalf of her country has clearly struck a chord.

Her vow, made just before she took office in October, has been chosen as Japan’s catchphrase of the year, beating more than two dozen other candidates.

Takaichi drew criticism after she implored her fellow Liberal Democratic party (LDP) MPs to follow her lead. “I will have everyone work like a horse,” she said, adding that she would abandon the concept of a work-life balance in her own life.

Her remarks did not go down well in a country notorious for its long working hours, while lawyers representing people who have died from karoshi – death from overwork – described them as unhelpful.

Some have expressed concern for Takaichi’s health after she told parliament that she slept between two and four hours a night, following reports she had summoned officials to a 3am meeting at her residence.

Accepting her award this week, Takaichi said her comments had been misinterpreted. “I had no intention of encouraging people to overwork or suggesting that working long hours is a virtue,” she said, adding she was simply trying to communicate her determination to be an effective leader.

The organisers of the annual award said the shortlist had included other phrases that best captured Japan’s zeitgeist in 2025: “First female prime minister” was the second most popular; others included “Trump’s tariffs”, “bear damage” and “old, old, old rice” – a reference to the release of stockpiled grain from the 2021 crop in an attempt to rein in soaring prices.

A committee picks the winning phrase from a shortlisted top 10, which comes from a provisional list from the publisher of Japan’s Yearbook of Contemporary Society.

Takaichi is the fourth politician to have received the award. The last, Yukio Hatoyama, won in 2009 for “change of government”, after his party ousted the LDP from office for only the second time since the mid-1950s.

On Monday, Takaichi’s choice of language was in the spotlight as she told a Saudi-organised economic forum to “shut your mouths” – not out of rudeness, but delivering a line from a well-known manga comic.

“I understand that Japanese manga and anime are extremely popular in Saudi Arabia. Titles like Captain Tsubasa, One Piece, and Demon Slayer come to mind,” she told the event. “But today, I’d like to borrow a famous line from Attack on Titan to conclude my speech. ‘Just shut your mouths. And invest everything in me!!’,” she said.

Takaichi was speaking at the FII Priority Asia 2025 conference, a spin-off of the annual Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia that is dubbed “Davos in the Desert”.

Takaichi is under pressure to attract investment to boost the world’s fourth-largest economy, which contracted in the third quarter.

With Agence France-Presse