No, Japan’s prime minster did not make friends with a cockroach, despite what you may have heard

Some reminders: Japan isn’t always as wacky as foreign media wants to think it is, literal translation can trip non-linguists up, and Osamu Tezuka was a really good manga creator .

The official Twitter account of British newspaper The Telegraph greets visitors with “We speak your mind.” Honestly, that’s a pretty presumptuous statement, and a recent headline from the paper regarding Japanese prime minster Sanae Takaichi suggests that maybe the paper should stick to speaking its own mind, since it pretty grossly misrepresented Takaichi’s way of thinking.

On August 24, The Telegraph published an article with the headline “Japan’s PM: I’m so lonely I befriended a cockroach” and the sub-headline “Leader known for working long hours shares her sense of isolation in social media posts.” That presentation can slot pretty easily with a number of preconceptions readers might have, such as politicians being incapable of forming meaningful human relationships, Japan being a weird country, or even just a collectively low state of mental wellness in the world these days.

Here’s the thing, though.

While Takaichi did post about an encounter with a cockroach and the emotional response it triggered in her, it didn’t have anything to do with the prime minister, who’s cultivated an image of being hyper-focused on her job, feeling lonely or isolated .

If anything, her reaction came from the opposite sentiment, the idea that all living things are connected.

So rather than cherry pick a few key phrases and knead them into inaccurate clickbait, let’s take a look at Takaichi’s Twitter post from August 22, which formed the basis of The Telegraph’s claim the she’d made friends with a cockroach . 公邸について書きましたので、よく頂くご質問についても、お答えします。 「公邸にはオバケが出るそうですが、もう会いましたか？」 私は、オバケに会ったことは無いのですが、先日までは、ゴキブリに会って叫び声を上げていました。… — 高市早苗 (@takaichi_sanae) August 22, 2026 As I’ve written about the Prime Minister’s official residence, I’ll answer a question I often get asked: “It seems like the official residence would be haunted, so have you seen any ghosts inside it?” I haven’t seen any ghosts, but until recently, I’d see cockroaches, and they made me scream.

I never encountered cockroaches inside the official residences for members of the Diet [parliament].

After moving into the prime minister’s residence, I’ve made sure to thoroughly sweep under the dining room table, to place food trash in a bin with a sturdy lid, and to wash out plastic containers before recycling them.

So when, even after all that, I saw a cockroach scurrying by my feet, it was a shock.

But I’ve loved the Osamu Tezuka manga Phoenix ever since I was a child, and have reread it many times.

Let’s pause here to talk about Phoenix .