Youth support puts Japan’s Sanae Takaichi on track for landslide

The handbag she carries is sold out, her pink pen has gone viral and even her favourite snacks are in hot demand: Japan’s 64-year-old leader Sanae Takaichi has sparked an unlikely youth-led craze that could propel her to a big election win.Polls suggest sanakatsu, roughly translated as “sanamania”, can help give Japan’s first female prime minister a decisive mandate in Sunday’s general election and unleash the spending plans she has promised will jolt the country’s moribund economy.Backed by her personal popularity, her ruling coalition could capture as many as 300 seats in the 465-seat lower house, polls this week showed, a remarkable turnaround given her predecessor resigned after losing control of both chambers in ballots over the last 15 months.What’s perhaps even more surprising is the appeal of the staunchly conservative leader with voters under 30, estimated by one recent poll at over 90 per cent. Her overall popularity stands at around 60 per cent.A worker stitches a leather bag at the Hamano factory in Miyota on Monday. Photo: ReutersTakanori Kobayashi, director at Hamano, the company that makes the US$900 black leather bag that Takaichi regularly totes, says he has been stunned by the young people clamouring to buy the item on a nine-month backlog.