Autumn 1987. A plane touched down at Dulles International Airport. A twenty-six-year-old Japanese woman passed through immigration and stepped out into the air of Washington, D.C. In her hand was a single suitcase. In her pocket was 100,000 yen borrowed from her father—barely 700 dollars at the exchange rate of the time. She knew no one, and she had no fixed destination. This was the day Takaichi Sanae arrived in Washington.

When she stepped outside the airport, the city was silent. It was a holiday weekend. The shutters were down on every shop. Even if she was thirsty, there was nowhere to buy water; even if she was hungry, there was no food to be found. Clutching a single map, she walked the unfamiliar streets. As night fell, the temperature dropped. She stayed in a hotel that night. At 70 dollars a night, her 100,000 yen wouldn't have lasted even ten days.

The next morning, she opened the classified ads in The Washington Post. She had to find an apartment. After making calls and pounding the pavement, she eventually found a room for 300 dollars a month. It was a small space of about 15 square meters, equipped with a bathroom, a kitchenette, and heating. However, there was no bed. There wasn't even a blanket. She had to try to sleep on cardboard boxes flattened on the floor. The building manager, a Black woman named McCoy, took pity on her and lent her an old blanket. That single blanket was all she had to survive her first winter in Washington.

This scene captures the twenty-six-year-old life of the woman who would later become a candidate for Prime Minister of Japan. This is not simply a story of a poor student. It was the result of a deliberate choice. The Matsushita Institute of Government and Management (MIGM) provided overseas fellowship programs, which supported tuition and living expenses. However, Takaichi did not go as an official MIGM envoy; instead, she carved out her own path to Washington with a single letter she wrote herself.

The catalyst was television. While a student at the Matsushita Institute, Takaichi saw an American congresswoman on CNN: Patricia Schroeder. A Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Colorado’s 1st District, she had been in the House since 1973. Serving on the Armed Services Committee, she was a figure who advocated for women's rights, family policy, and defense budget cuts. In September 1987, Schroeder held a press conference to announce she would not run in the Democratic presidential primary. At that moment, she cried. The scene of her leaning on her husband's shoulder and shedding tears was broadcast nationwide. Some media outlets mocked her, claiming "women politicians are too emotional."

Takaichi saw the scene differently. In her eyes, a woman crying at the center of politics appeared not as weakness, but as authenticity—the tears shed by someone who wants something desperately but fails to achieve it. Takaichi wrote a letter in English and sent it to Representative Schroeder's office. "I want to work by your side. I am someone who wants to become the future Prime Minister of Japan." It was a bold, unprompted letter sent by a student of the Matsushita Institute to the office of a U.S. federal legislator.

A reply came. It was from Dan, Representative Schroeder's Chief of Staff. "You may come."

The Matsushita Institute was initially concerned because it was not an official dispatch. Eventually, however, they agreed to recognize this Washington tenure as part of the institute's overseas training program. And so, Takaichi welcomed the Washington autumn with nothing but a single blanket.

The Rayburn House Office Building—a House office building located south of Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Schroeder's office was located there. When Takaichi first opened the door to that office, Dan, the Chief of Staff, greeted her with a look of surprise. "You really came." It seemed the fact that the Japanese woman who sent the letter had actually appeared was unexpected to him. Representative Schroeder shook her hand and smiled. That was the beginning.

Her first tasks were simple: arriving early in the morning to sort the incoming mail and answering the phones. Colorado constituents would call with various demands, civil complaints, grievances, and sometimes shouting. When a Japanese woman answered, they would demand, "Put the Representative on the line." She had to handle these requests appropriately—in English, and within the context of American political culture. At first, there were many mistakes. There were moments of panic when her pronunciation wasn't understood, and times of trouble when she didn't know idiomatic expressions.

As time passed, however, her role changed. She became the person in charge of handling Japan-related matters in Schroeder’s office. In the late 1980s, the most heated issue between the United States and Japan was trade: automobiles, semiconductors, and steel. American manufacturers raised issues with the 'unfair competition' of Japanese companies, and the U.S. Congress was discussing trade retaliation bills against Japan.

In 1986, the United States and Japan signed a semiconductor agreement. It was an accord in which Japan agreed to increase purchases of American-made semiconductors and avoid dumping in overseas markets. However, in March 1987, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) declared that Japan was not implementing the agreement. The Reagan administration imposed 100 percent retaliatory tariffs on Japanese electronic products. Relations between the two nations were grim.

Takaichi was right in the middle of this. She organized materials for congressional hearings and wrote memos explaining the context when lawmakers made statements regarding Japan. Every day, she felt firsthand how Japan was perceived by the American side. It was not merely an economic friction. From the American perspective, Japan was a "country that does not follow the rules" and a "country that does not open its markets." She observed closely where that perspective came from and what logical structure it possessed.

This experience would later be woven into Takaichi's economic security policies. Throughout her career as Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, and especially as the Minister in charge of Economic Security, she repeatedly emphasized several points: the safety of supply chains, domestic production of core technologies, and moving away from excessive dependence on specific countries. The prototype of those policies lay in the scenes she witnessed in congressional offices in Washington in 1987. The reality of bilateral relations being shaken by a single semiconductor. She learned with her own body the fact that technology and the economy are directly linked to national security.

Daily life in Washington was not easy. Being an Asian woman often meant being treated as invisible rather than being noticed. When she walked through the corridors of Congress, people would simply pass her by. There were times when her comments in meeting rooms were ignored. A look of "Who is this person?" was often palpable. Being from Japan invited additional prejudice. At the time, Japan was perceived in Washington political circles as an "economic aggressor." She endured each day amidst the dual prejudices of her gender and her nationality.

Yet this experience did not make her soft. Quite the opposite. How to endure in the face of prejudice, how to hold one's ground while being ignored, and how to accurately grasp the opponent's logic and then overturn it—Washington trained her. If the Matsushita Institute taught her theory, Washington taught her reality.

Over time, her relationship with Representative Schroeder moved beyond a simple staff-legislator dynamic. Schroeder recognized Takaichi’s abilities and entrusted her with increasingly substantial roles in Japan-related issues. Takaichi later used the title "Legislative Researcher at the U.S. Congress" on the cover of her first book. While this expression later caused controversy over career exaggeration, testimony from those in Schroeder’s office confirms that the work she performed in Congress substantially exceeded the level of a simple intern.

In 1989, Takaichi returned to Japan. Her two years in Washington had come to an end. Then, in 1992, based on that experience, she published her first book. The title was 『アメリカの「女性大国」神話を斥ける』 (Rejecting the Myth of America as a "Women's Powerhouse"). It was a book that refuted the common notion that America is an equal country for women. It contained what she had seen and experienced personally. From the perspective of an Asian woman ignored in the halls of Congress, she dissected the realities of American democracy and gender politics.

In that book, she argued that while America appears to have a high status for women on the surface, there is a structure in which only women of a certain class can reach those positions. And to change that structure, she argued, it is more important to change substantive policies than to simply increase the number of symbolic women. This was the conclusion of the first book written by a future Japanese Prime Minister candidate.

Patricia Schroeder passed away in March 2023 at the age of 82. She did not live to see Takaichi become the Prime Minister of Japan. The connection that began with a single letter sent after that tearful press conference in 1987 remains in history in that form.

Washington changed Takaichi. However, the direction in which it changed her was not simple. She became someone who admired America, yet at the same time, she became someone who viewed America with cold realism. While she understood the importance of the alliance, she also developed a will not to be subordinate to the ally. The memories of a twenty-six-year-old witnessing the scene of semiconductor negotiations created the architect of economic security policy half a century later. A single cardboard box laid on a hard floor. The Washington nights that began there thus led into history.