This is The Guardian.

Today, how the most powerful woman in the world wants Japan to march to a new beat.

It wasn't the sort of scene you'd normally associate with Japanese diplomacy.

What we've just inflicted on you, is the sound of two very rusty drummers trying, not entirely successfully, to keep time to BTS's dynamite.

The one with marginally more rhythm is Sanai Takahichi.

And she ought to be the better player, to be fair.

She used to play in a heavy metal band

and was notorious for playing so wildly

that she was always breaking her drumsticks.

But since last autumn,

she's been better known as the Prime Minister of Japan,

and that was her giving a lesson to her South Korean counterpart.

Takeichi has had a whirlwind first six months in charge, meeting world leaders.

So we have a very popular, powerful woman, as well as her metal heroes, deep purple.

You are my god.

And now, Japan's first ever female leader wants to transform the world's fourth largest economy,

and top of her to-do list, scrapping its pacifist constitution, which has stopped Japan taking

part in foreign conflicts since the Second World War.

But what does that mean for the rest of the region?

From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt.

Today in Focus.

The Cult of Sani Takaiichi.

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