Prime Minister Reveals She Felt “Lonely” After Staff Eliminated Cockroach From Official Residence

Japan’s Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, has revealed an unusually emotional reaction to a cockroach that was discovered inside her official residence in Tokyo, saying she felt both relieved and unexpectedly “lonely” after members of her staff eventually eliminated the insect.

Takaichi, 65, shared the amusing yet personal anecdote in a lengthy post on X on Saturday, August 22, while responding to some of the questions she said she frequently receives from the public.

One of the questions centred on whether she had encountered any of the ghosts reportedly said to haunt the Japanese Prime Minister’s official residence.

The mansion has long been surrounded by stories of paranormal activity, with legends linking alleged ghost sightings to people who died during two attempted coups in the 1930s, not long after the residence was constructed.

However, Takaichi said she had never seen a ghost inside the historic building.

Instead, she encountered something much more real, a cockroach.

“I’ve never encountered a ghost, but until recently, I was the one screaming when I came across cockroaches,” she reportedly wrote in her Japanese-language post.

According to the Prime Minister, she had never encountered cockroaches while living in the members’ dormitory. She said she also took considerable precautions after moving into the official residence, including regularly cleaning the floor beneath the dining table, storing food waste in a tightly covered bin and washing and sorting plastic containers.

Despite those efforts, she said she was shocked when a cockroach suddenly ran past her feet inside the residence.

Rather than killing the insect, however, Takaichi said she could not bring herself to do so because of her childhood connection to Japanese manga artist Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix, a work strongly associated with themes of life, death and reincarnation.

She recalled thinking that perhaps the cockroach was also part of the long cycle of reincarnation.

“Maybe because of that, even now as an adult, I can’t bring myself to kill insects, cockroaches included,” she explained.

For some time, the prime minister decided to leave the cockroach alone, hoping it would eventually find its way out of the residence.

But her approach changed after members of her staff discovered that the insect was still inside the official home.

Takaichi said her secretaries were horrified when they learned about the situation.

“It’s unclean. I’ll handle it,” one of the secretaries reportedly told her before taking action in what the prime minister humorously described as “Operation Combat.”

Following the intervention by her staff, Takaichi said she did not see any more cockroaches in the residence.

Yet, rather than simply celebrating the disappearance of the unwanted visitor, the prime minister admitted that she experienced an unexpected sense of sadness.

“I felt relieved, but also a little lonely, or maybe sad…” she wrote.

The unusual revelation has drawn attention because of the contrast between Takaichi’s position as Japan’s prime minister and the very ordinary household dilemma she described.

Global Mirror News gathered that the cockroach story came shortly after Takaichi explained in another X post that she had increasingly been working from the prime minister’s official residence, which is located next to her office, rather than spending as much time inside the office itself.

Her latest anecdote has offered the public a rare glimpse into the more personal side of life inside one of Japan’s most politically significant residences, showing that even a prime minister can develop an unexpected attachment to an unwanted household visitor.