Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, pharmacist, tax accountant, bus driver, chef. Name the profession, and Japan is likely running perilously low on its practitioners — not just to the point of inconvenience, but to somewhere a little more existential.

So while there is much to welcome in the ruling Liberal Democratic party’s election of Sanae Takaichi as both its new leader and (we may reasonably assume) the country’s first female prime minister, it is hard not to see some cruelty in the selection. 

Her route to power has been set out by inflation, by the deep discomfort it is causing a nation and by her predecessor’s failure to address it. To survive, Takaichi must somehow create public comfort with rising prices while inheriting an economy grappling with the “enshortification” of everything.