In her short term as prime minister, Sanae Takaichi has shown that she has the same kind of reality distortion field that other singular political talents have.

Her status as Japan's first female prime minister, her middle-class (read: non-hereditary) background and her blunt, earnest manner have inspired a well-documented frenzy, Sanakatsu, akin to the parasocial attachment fans feel about celebrities.

Her leading the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to the largest majority any party has won in the postwar era has only intensified the frenzy and, with it, the air of surreality that surrounds her.

At Bloomberg, Gearoid Reidy notes this tendency, writing how both conservatives and liberals – he is referring mostly to people outside of Japan – are "leading some to project their beliefs onto that soon-to-be-iconic blue suit." He argues that on some key issues, migration and China policy, she is well within the mainstream of public opinion.

However, I think it is a mistake to dismiss the reality that Takaichi has been firmly situated in a new conservative movement that has a sweeping vision for social transformation, one that has often been out of step with many Japanese people. 

Takaichi's popularity with the broader public, particularly with younger voters who have different or hazy understandings of what "conservative" and "liberal" or "left" and "right" mean, should not obscure that for most of her career Takaichi has been a foot solider in the project of what Shinzo Abe summarized when he became prime minister in 2006 as "leaving behind the postwar regime." She has now inherited the mantle of the movement's leadership.

This new conservative movement, as I describe it at length in a book, The Iconoclast, has wanted to leave behind postwar reforms – there is a particular enmity towards anything associated with the US occupation, which in its early stages was determined to "democratize" and "demilitarize" Japan – and build a strong, proud country that can contend for world power.

This movement has sought to revise textbooks, opposing the "masochistic" view of Japan's wartime past that saps pride in Japan and therefore weakens the country.

It has sought to revise the Constitution – not least because movement adherents reject a document drafted by "foreign hands" and because they want to dismantle the constitution's limitations on military powers, limitations they have sought to erode when constitution revision proved beyond their strength.