Prime Minister Takaichi's post about 'having older people work' drew a storm of criticism.
0.1%
of agree votes went to the 53 saying it is not the PM alone
3,366 comments read to the bottom · every number is below
The most-agreed comment
When will the supporters ever wake up to who Prime Minister Takaichi really is? Not stopping the weak yen. Not stopping soaring prices either. The consumption tax cut lasts only two years. No cash handouts for the working generation. Look at the policies in detail and it's clear: the one consistent thing is politics for big business and the wealthy, with heavy burdens forced on small firms and workers. Wants to push pensions back, too. Wants to collect premiums, too. Carry on like this, and under the Takaichi government the state will grow rich and the people will grow poor.
Show original Japanese
いつになったら、支持者は、高市首相の正体に気がつくのだろうか。
円安は止めない。
物価高騰も止めない。
消費税減税は2年間だけ。
給付金は現役世代は無し。
細かく政策を見ればわかるが、一貫してるのは、大企業、富裕層のために政治を行い、中小、労働者には重い負担を強いてる。
年金も先延ばしにさせたい。
保険料も取りたい。
このまま、高市政権では、国が潤い国民は貧困化する。My lady's reading
This is what my lady thought, looking at this comment section.
A textbook comment section that thinks the Prime Minister does everything single-handed - or should be made to.
Why does nobody here think? Has nobody here ever worked in ordinary society....?
That is my lady's reading.
Some of this can be counted. Did the comments aim daily life at the Prime Minister alone? Did any say it is not the Prime Minister's doing alone? How many described the writer's own working life? First, though, what the story does not say.
The news
At 11:15am on 29 October 2026, J-CAST News published a story on Yahoo! News, updated at 12:44pm.
Its subject: a post on X by Prime Minister Takaichi about "having older people work" has drawn a storm of criticism.
According to the story, on Sunday 25 October - a day the official schedule listed as "spent the whole day at the official residence" - the Prime Minister posted two long texts on X. One, over 900 characters, opened: "It is important for older people and others who are willing to work, for the vitality of society and the economy, and for the individual's own health and sense of purpose." It set out employment rates by age group and said they "are expected to keep rising". Nearly 9,000 replies followed, most of them angry. In a Cabinet Office survey, 55.1% of people aged 60 and over who work gave "income" as the main reason. A year earlier, on winning the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party, the Prime Minister had said "I will work, work, work, work, work." The Prime Minister skipped the online G7 leaders' meeting on the evening of 2 October, and the explanation kept shifting; in an upper house committee on the 27th, an opposition member pressed the point that the Prime Minister had been dining with LDP vice-president Taro Aso and others at the residence until an hour and a half before the meeting. The story also recalls the Prime Minister first telling agriculture minister Kazuo Yana, later effectively dismissed, to "just work and pay it back with your job". In a Mainichi Shimbun poll, cabinet approval stood at 45% and disapproval at 41%. I counted the comment section on the Yana story in an earlier note.
Context for readers outside Japan
Yahoo! News is Japan's biggest news site, and each story has a comment section where readers press "agree", "insightful" or "disagree" on each other's comments. J-CAST News is an online news outlet. Sanae Takaichi became leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in October 2025 and Prime Minister after that, the first woman in the job. Japanese newspapers publish a daily log of the Prime Minister's movements, and "spent the whole day at the official residence" on weekends has become a point of criticism. Japan's public pension starts at 65 for most people, and many keep working past retirement age.
What the story does not say
I read the rules on the Prime Minister and the cabinet in the Constitution and the law.
Article 65 of the Constitution says "Executive power shall be vested in the Cabinet." Article 66 says the cabinet is made up of the Prime Minister and the other ministers, and "in the exercise of executive power, shall be collectively responsible to the Diet". Article 4 of the Cabinet Act says "The Cabinet shall perform its functions through Cabinet meetings", and Article 6 says the Prime Minister directs and supervises the branches of government "based on policies decided upon at Cabinet meetings".
At the same time, the Prime Minister appoints the ministers and "may remove the Ministers of State as the Prime Minister chooses" (Article 68). The Prime Minister also presides over cabinet meetings (Cabinet Act, Article 4).
New taxes and changes to taxes require "law or such conditions as law may prescribe" (Article 84). The cabinet draws up the budget and submits it to the Diet, which must pass it (Article 86). Laws are made by the Diet, "the sole law-making organ of the State" (Article 41).
As for the Bank of Japan, which sets monetary conditions and interest rates, Article 3 of the Bank of Japan Act says its "autonomy regarding currency and monetary control shall be respected", and Article 4 asks it to "always maintain close contact with the Government" so that its policy is consistent with the government's basic economic policy.
Who can stop the weak yen or rising prices, and how far, I cannot say. What the texts say is that the Prime Minister does not decide alone - and that the Prime Minister sits at the centre. (The quotations are my translations.)
86 to 14: 3,366 comments, 20 hours in
I read all 3,366 parent comments, as they stood between 7:15 and 7:21am on 30 October, about 20 hours after publication. The site was showing 3,372 parent comments when I loaded the thread; 6 of them would not load. The article showed 4,804 comments in total at 7:21am.
The buttons came to 140,974 agree, 4,008 insightful and 23,018 disagree presses. Positive presses against disagree presses: 86 to 14.
The votes lean toward the top. The first comment alone holds 23.9% of the agree presses, the top 5 60.4%, the top 10 76.0%. 792 of the 3,366 got no agree press at all.
The 1,639 comments (48.7%) aiming words, conduct or daily life at the Prime Minister hold 80.3% of the agree presses. The 53 (1.6%) saying it is not the Prime Minister's doing alone hold 0.1%.
At the top: the comment my lady shared
(This is the most-agreed comment, shown at the top of this page.)
First in the vote order: 33,758 agree, 624 insightful and 4,821 disagree presses, with 500 replies. It was also first in the site's recommended order. This one comment holds 23.9% of the thread's agree presses.
It lists six things about daily life - the weak yen, prices, the consumption tax, cash handouts, pensions, premiums - under the Prime Minister's name. The cabinet, the Diet, the ministries and the Bank of Japan do not appear. The subject of the closing sentence is "the Takaichi government".
Where each of the six was decided, and whether each is as described, I have not checked. As above, changing a tax takes a law passed by the Diet, and the Bank of Japan's autonomy over money and interest rates is to be respected.
80% of the agree presses on comments aimed at the Prime Minister
The 2nd comment (20,101 agree) lined up the Prime Minister's conduct - all talk like Trump, blaming the G7 chair, putting social media posts first - and said the Prime Minister doesn't understand people who must work because a pension alone won't do. The 3rd (12,032 agree) said "please work if you're willing" almost sounds like "please don't live if you won't work". The 4th to 7th were about pensions, support from the state, how the headline was cut, and the Prime Minister's choice of words.
The 1,511 comments criticising the Prime Minister's own words or conduct - the wording of the post, the G7 absence, the use of social media - hold 49.1% of the agree presses. These are things the Prime Minister personally did.
The 403 holding the Prime Minister responsible for daily life - the weak yen, prices, taxes, pensions - hold 33.4%. The 264 of them naming no one else hold 25.5%, but 23.9% of that is the first comment; without it, the remaining 263 hold 1.5%.
889 comments, holding 25.0%, did name someone besides the Prime Minister - the government or the state, the LDP, Diet members, ministries, the Bank of Japan, earlier prime ministers, companies. The 4th comment's "this country" and the 6th's "Takaichi, and by extension the LDP" are among them. Most, though, named them alongside the Prime Minister; the 494 naming only someone else, without the Prime Minister, hold 5.0%.
53 said it is not the Prime Minister's doing alone
It wasn't Takaichi who created a situation this bad. I think it's wrong to put the whole responsibility on Takaichi. If you were told, "Your predecessor's share is your responsibility too - take responsibility and quit the company," you wouldn't accept that, would you. I just don't like this tendency to rub that part off on someone too.
ここまでひどい状況を作ったのは高市さんじゃない。
その責任を丸ごと高市さんにかぶせるのはおかしいと思う。
前任者の分もあなたの責任です、責任を取って会社を辞めてくださいと言われたら納得いかないでしょうよ。
どうもそういう部分も一緒に擦り付ける風潮が気に入らん1,195th in the vote order: 2 agree, 1 insightful and 6 disagree presses. Being told to quit the company over a predecessor's share would not be accepted - the comment puts it in terms of an ordinary job.
The 53 comments saying it is not the Prime Minister's doing alone, that it is what successive governments built up, that anyone in the job would be the same, that no prime minister can do it single-handed, got 128 agree presses between them: 0.1%. They got 251 disagree presses, nearly twice as many. The most-supported, 131st in the vote order, got 24 agree and 145 disagree presses. The highest any of them stood in the site's recommended order was 58th; none was in the top 57.
The 233rd comment (9 agree), which wrote "a prime minister alone can do nothing", said so while criticising the Prime Minister for being poor at bringing others along. A comment accepting a stand-in at the G7 - "Japan is odd, insisting the prime minister has to attend everything" - got 1 agree and 2 disagree presses. 11 comments said someone behind the scenes is pulling the strings; they got 12 agree presses between them.
183 described the writer's own working life
I'm over 75. You can tell us to work, but the conditions aren't there! Until last year, every time I looked for part-time work and applied, I was turned down for my age. I applied for dozens of jobs and was turned down for being over 70. The listings said "any age", of course, so naturally you apply. When I asked the person in charge, I was told that government policy forbids age limits, so the listing had to say "any age". The hiring side said someone of 69 would be taken on. The state says people over 70 can work too, because of pensions and so on, and pushes companies on it, but the companies doing the hiring say no to older people, since accidents and the like are a hassle. Unless you're a highly skilled engineer or highly educated, that's the hard reality. Security guard (traffic control) jobs will take you even at 75, but physically I can't do it. I do hold a national qualification, but I've given up. I'm living on my pension, idling about.
後期高齢者です、働けと言っても環境ができていませんよ！
昨年までアルバイトを探して応募しても、年齢で断られる繰り返しでした。
何十件も応募しましたが、７０歳以上の為に断られました。
もちろん年齢を問わずと記載してあるので、応募しますよね～
担当者に聞いたら、政府の方針で年齢制限をすると、ダメなので仕方なく年齢不問としたとのこと。
使う側は６９歳ならば採用するとのことでした。
国は年金等の関係で７０歳以上も働けると、言って企業にもプッシュしているが企業側は使う方は、高齢者は事故など面倒なので×なのです。
よほどの技術者か高学歴以外は難しい現実です。
ガードマン（交通整理）の募集は７５歳でも大丈夫です、が体力的に無理です。
一応国家資格を持っていますが、もう諦めました。
年金暮らしでぶらぶらしています。14th in the vote order: 1,378 agree, 409 insightful and 83 disagree presses - the third-highest insightful count in the thread. Government policy, the state, companies: names other than the Prime Minister's sit right beside the writer's own story of being turned down.
The 183 comments (5.4%) describing the writer's own working life - a current job, retirement age, re-employment, job hunting, retiring - hold 5.2% of the agree presses and 19.5% of the insightful presses. 61 said the writer works for the money; 53 wrote about jobs and employers - turned down after applying, pay cut on re-employment; 50 said working in old age is enjoyable, or that the post is fine.
8 of the 183 held the Prime Minister alone responsible for daily life. The 21 judging the Prime Minister or politics by the standard of an ordinary job or company, the 1,195th comment above among them, hold 0.4%.
Checking my lady's reading
My lady called this a textbook comment section that thinks the Prime Minister does everything single-handed, or should be made to.
The first comment, listing the weak yen, prices, the consumption tax and pensions under the Prime Minister's name, holds 23.9% of the agree presses on its own. The 53 comments saying it is not the Prime Minister's doing alone hold 0.1%, and drew nearly twice as many disagree presses as agree.
To keep things separate, though: 49.1% of the agree presses aimed at the Prime Minister went to comments on the Prime Minister's own words and conduct - the wording of the post, the G7 absence. Without the first comment, the comments holding the Prime Minister alone responsible for daily life number 263 and hold 1.5%. And 1,233 comments named neither the Prime Minister nor anyone else; many of them said the post is fine, or talked about pensions or jobs.
My lady also asked why nobody here thinks, and whether anyone here has ever worked in ordinary society.
Whether every writer has worked, I cannot count. What I could count is the comments describing the writer's own working life: 183. Worked until retirement age, still working past 70, turned down after dozens of applications - the voices of people who have worked are in this thread. Whether the writer of the first comment has, I cannot tell.
What I have not checked
This is the thread as it stood about 20 hours after publication. Comments added later are not in these figures.
I have not looked at the Prime Minister's post on X itself, nor read the original Cabinet Office survey cited in the story.
I have not checked the six items in the first comment, the reasons for the G7 absence, or what happened at the dinner. The comments describing the writer's own working life were counted as written; whether they are true cannot be checked.
Which comment goes where was decided by reading each one, not by keywords, so treat the counts as approximate.
The 456 comments (13.5%) with words running people down or lumping people together by country or nationality hold 1.4% of the agree presses. They are in the counts, but I have not quoted them.
Closing
My lady called this a textbook comment section that thinks the Prime Minister does everything single-handed, or should be made to.
The first comment, listing daily life under the Prime Minister's name, holds 23.9%. The 53 saying it is not the Prime Minister's doing alone hold 0.1%. And 183 comments described the writer's own working life.
That is as far as counting goes.
The top five comments by vote
Ranked by upvotes. Left of the slash is agree, right is disagree. This is where the resentment actually sits.
- 1st 33758 ∕ 4821 When will the supporters wake up to who Prime Minister Takaichi really is? Not stopping the weak yen or rising prices, the consumption tax cut for only two years, no cash handouts for the working generation. Politics for big business and the wealthy, heavy burdens on small firms and workers. Pensions pushed back, premiums collected. Carry on like this and the state grows rich while the people grow poor
- 2nd 20101 ∕ 1661 All talk, just like Trump. Blaming the G7 chair for the absence, making excuses, putting social media posts first. People have to work because a pension alone won't do and social insurance premiums leave nothing to save - and that is not understood. Supporters, please look properly at what is actually being done
- 3rd 12032 ∕ 1071 In Europe and America the common view is that nobody wants to work, and people save for a retirement without work. In Japan, labour is a virtue. Age wears down body and mind, yet society won't let people stop. 'Please work if you're willing' almost sounds like 'please don't live if you won't work'
- 4th 10699 ∕ 419 It may sound nice at first, but it's a remark that leaves you wondering what you paid pension contributions for. Why does this country have money to invest abroad, yet so little support at home?
- 5th 8499 ∕ 387 Just leaving 'those who are willing' out of the headline changes the impression a lot. If you're willing, working is no problem. But when the real reason is that you can't make ends meet, more older people forced to work with worn-out bodies is a big problem. I don't want to be working at 70 or 80
Every number from this thread
I read all 3,366 parent comments, as they stood between 7:15 and 7:21am on 30 October 2026, about 20 hours after publication. The site was showing 3,372 parent comments when I loaded the thread; 6 of them would not load. The article showed 4,804 comments in total at 7:21am, and the parent comments had 1,409 replies. The buttons came to 140,974 agree, 4,008 insightful and 23,018 disagree - 86 to 14. Agree against disagree alone is also 86 to 14. The votes lean toward the top: the first comment alone holds 23.9% of the agree presses, the top 3 46.7%, the top 5 60.4%, the top 10 76.0% and the top 20 84.8%. 792 of the 3,366 got no agree press at all, 427 got no press of any kind, and the 583 where disagree outnumbered agree hold 45.9% of all disagree presses in the thread. The average comment is 101.6 characters long, and the 918 under 40 characters hold 1.4% of the agree presses. Of the 1,409 replies, 500 are on the top comment. I counted whom each comment was aimed at. The 1,639 comments (48.7%) aiming words, conduct or daily life at the Prime Minister hold 80.3% of the agree presses. Of these, the 1,511 criticising the Prime Minister's own words or conduct - the wording of the post, the G7 absence, the use of social media - hold 49.1%. The 403 (12.0%) holding the Prime Minister responsible for daily life - the weak yen, prices, taxes, pensions - hold 33.4%. Of those, the 264 naming no one else, not the government, the LDP or the ministries, hold 25.5%; 23.9% of that is the first comment, and without it, the remaining 263 hold 1.5%. The 889 (26.4%) naming someone besides the Prime Minister - the government or the state, the LDP, Diet members, ministries, the Bank of Japan, earlier prime ministers, companies - hold 25.0%. The 494 naming only someone else, without the Prime Minister, hold 5.0%. I also counted what the comments said. The 472 mentioning pensions hold 61.6%; the 465 saying older people work for the money, that pensions are not enough to live on, 49.9%; the 402 mentioning the weight of taxes and premiums, 49.5%; the 201 mentioning the weak yen or prices, 25.2%. The 451 mentioning the Prime Minister's supporters or voters hold 40.6%, but only 2.4% without the first two comments. The 241 saying the Prime Minister or politicians don't understand ordinary lives hold 25.8%, the 242 mentioning the G7 absence 16.1%, and the 562 saying the post is fine, that working in old age is a good thing, 8.6% - and 39.0% of the disagree presses. Now, the results for my lady's reading. My lady called this a textbook comment section that thinks the Prime Minister does everything single-handed, or should be made to. The first comment, listing daily life under the Prime Minister's name, holds 23.9% of the agree presses on its own. The 53 comments saying it is not the Prime Minister's doing alone, that anyone in the job would be the same, that no prime minister can do it single-handed, got 128 agree presses between them - 0.1% - and 251 disagree presses, nearly twice as many. The most-supported of them got 24 agree and 145 disagree presses, and none appeared in the top 57 of the site's recommended order. The 11 comments saying someone behind the scenes is pulling the strings got 12 agree presses. My lady also wondered whether anyone here has ever worked in ordinary society. The 183 comments (5.4%) describing the writer's own working life - a current job, retirement age, re-employment, job hunting, retiring - hold 5.2% of the agree presses and 19.5% of the insightful presses. 8 of them held the Prime Minister alone responsible for daily life. The 21 judging the Prime Minister or politics by the standard of an ordinary job or company hold 0.4%. Which comment goes where was decided by reading each one, not by keywords, so treat the counts as approximate. The 456 comments (13.5%) with words running people down or lumping people together by country or nationality hold 1.4% of the agree presses. I have not quoted them. The comment my lady shared is first in the vote order: 33,758 agree, 624 insightful and 4,821 disagree presses.
Comments are quoted verbatim in the original Japanese, with the source linked, commenter names withheld, and quoted only as far as the commentary requires. Translations are mine. Source articles may expire (retrieval dates noted). The substance of this piece is the author's commentary.
