For Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, sleeping five consecutive hours is now a rare enough event to warrant a post. On July 20, a public holiday in Japan, she wrote on X that she had finally allowed herself what she called a long sleep: since becoming prime minister, she explained, resting between zero and three hours a night has become the norm.
Takaichi said she spent her July weekends reading piles of government documents from early morning until late at night, reviewing economic plans and parliamentary materials. The previous weekend she had also worked until dawn to get through several thousand accumulated emails.
After the five hours of sleep, the prime minister did not spend the afternoon resting. She ironed handkerchiefs and linen, mended the hem of a skirt, and reinforced some loose buttons on her jackets. The post was probably meant to show how demanding her life was; instead it ended up opening a debate about work organisation and the message sent by a leader who presents sleep deprivation as everyday life.
Yūichirō Tamaki, leader of the Democratic Party for the People, observed that those who govern should delegate what others can do and focus on decisions reserved for the country's leadership. He suggested Takaichi hand off at least some of the household chores to someone else and get more rest. Members of her own Liberal Democratic Party also spoke about the need to surround oneself with reliable staff; from the opposition came the accusation of publicly performing sleeplessness.
Other politicians raised a simpler question: can a person who sleeps so little make a prime minister's decisions with a clear head? Takaichi, the first woman to lead the Japanese government, had already spoken in the past about extreme working rhythms. Now the problem is not just how many hours she actually manages to sleep, but why she is still the one ironing handkerchiefs after governing until dawn.
