Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has revealed that she was shocked after encountering a cockroach at the official residence in Tokyo, but later found herself unexpectedly feeling “lonely” after the insect was eliminated.
The 65-year-old prime minister shared the anecdote in a lengthy post on X on Saturday, August 22, while answering some of the questions she said she often receives.
One of the questions asked whether Takaichi had encountered the ghosts reportedly said to haunt the prime minister’s official residence.
The Tokyo mansion has long been associated with ghost stories involving people who died during two coup attempts in the 1930s, shortly after the building was constructed.
Takaichi said she had never seen any ghosts in the residence. However, she revealed that she had encountered something else—a cockroach.
“I’ve never encountered a ghost, but until recently, I was the one screaming when I came across cockroaches,” she wrote on X.
Takaichi explained that she had never encountered cockroaches while living in the members’ dormitory. She said she also took several precautions after moving into the official residence, including regularly cleaning under the dining table, placing food scraps in a sturdy, covered garbage bin, and washing and sorting plastic containers.
She said she was therefore shocked when a cockroach suddenly ran past her feet one day.
The prime minister admitted that she could not bring herself to kill the insect, partly because of her childhood love for Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix manga, which explores themes of reincarnation.
“Maybe because of that, even now as an adult, I can’t bring myself to kill insects, cockroaches included,” she wrote.
Takaichi said she found herself thinking about the cockroach’s possible place in the cycle of reincarnation and decided to leave it alone for a while.
“For a while, I endured it, hoping it would somehow leave on its own,” she wrote.
However, her staff were reportedly alarmed when they learned about the insect.
“‘It’s unclean. I’ll handle it,’ one of the secretaries said firmly, and arranged for Operation Combat,” Takaichi recounted.
She said she did not see any more cockroaches in the residence after her staff dealt with the problem.
Despite being relieved, however, Takaichi admitted that she also felt a little sad when the insect was gone.
“I felt relieved, but also a little lonely, or maybe sad…” she wrote.
The cockroach anecdote came after Takaichi explained in another X post that she had been working more frequently from the prime minister’s residence, which is located next to her office, rather than from the office itself.
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