The stability of Japan’s most popular postwar political figure and the party which has held power uninterrupted for some 55 years may have been seriously eroded July 11 when voters appeared to have withdrawn significant support for the leadership’s siding with the US policy in Iraq and possibly over domestic reforms.

The Prime Minister and his party were somewhat unexpectedly jolted by a surge of support for the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) which rallied despite the departure of its previous leader in a heated election campaign controversy over pension reform.

Koizumi and the LDP had also become caught up in the pension controversy, which found a number of top politicians, including the Prime Minister himself, exposed for non-payment of their obligations into private pension plans, although only the DPJ leader and others were forced to resign.

But Koizumi and the LDP also resorted to last-minute name-calling and other attempts to smear the opposition.

They had been taken somewhat off-guard by the persistence of public opinion polls in the run-up to the elections indicating rising support for the DPJ in spite of the loss of its leader. The polls were said to reflect the disaffection of the Japanese public at large for Koizumi and the LDP especially over their support for the US war in Iraq and the dispatching of Japanese troops there. Polls indicated that the Prime Minister’s popularity rating, which had been at record highs in the past, had slumped to some 36% during the campaign.

While the election itself was not crucial since it involved only half of the 242 seats in the less-influential Upper House of the Parliament, it was regarded largely as a mid-term test of public opinion.

But the vote suggested that the Prime Minister, who had shone in two previous elections, had suffered a serious loss of support over the unpopular Iraq policy, but also over economic management, including pension reform and privatisation. The DPJ had argued during the campaign that the economic recovery emerging in previous months after some 13 years of stagnation had come largely from private sector actions since most of the reforms announced by Koizumi had in fact been watered down by the LDP forces themselves. And his strong support of the US was derided by the fact that backing in the US itself and in other members of the original coalition for the war in Iraq was on the decline. Voters were also said to be sceptical of his summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang in the midst of the election campaign, on the same day as his own involvement in the pension payment scandal surfaced.

Also involved in the election result was the Cabinet’s Economics Minister Heizo Takenaka, 53 who won a seat with the LDP following a rise of 6% in the country’s GDP in the first quarter of 2004.

But many international analysts consider the LDP as the most conservative force in the country and largely responsible for holding back many of the reforms Koizumi and Takenaka have vowed to undertake and many deemed were required to confirm a recovery. Much of the credit for the signs of recovery was attributed to exports to the booming Chinese market and the shift of some production abroad by Japanese companies. Much of the promised privatisation and banking restructuring had in fact not materialised, although Koizumi has focused on the problem.

The outcome of the race encourages the trend set by the November 2003 House of Representatives election toward what has been described as a two-party system revolving around the LDP and Minshuto, analysts said. Meanwhile, the Japanese Communist Party suffered a humiliating setback, with its 15 seats contested in the race. Only three JCP candidates and two Social Democratic Party candidates had been unofficially declared winners. Five independents also were unofficially pronounced winners. According to a Yomiuri Shimbun estimate, voter turnout in the election came close 56.44 percent, the third-lowest figure registered in the upper house race.

Koizumi afterwards said he saw the results as “a warning” but some press analyses suggested that to retain power and effectiveness, he would also have to move to introduce fresh reformist faces in his own party.

There was also attention cast in the aftermath on the leadership of the DPJ, assumed in some desperation during the campaign by 51-year old party secretary-general Katsuya Okada. A survey in The Economist magazine later described him in August as “young by Japanese standards, and telegenic. He has also shown he can deliver on election day.” DPJ leadership elections were scheduled for September and although the party was composed of various strands of political opinion and leaders, the analysis regarded him as possibly likely to manage the internal DPJ tensions while hoping that the leading LDP is overwhelmed by its own strains.