Koizumi has said this election is an opportunity for the country to endorse or veto his structural-reform initiatives, and he has vowed that he will step down if the LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, cannot maintain a majority. Heizo Takenaka, Koizumi's Economics Minister and chief architect of the postal-reform plan, told Time: "The question being put to voters is whether Japan should establish a smaller government or a big government." That may be, but the dissolution is also a political maneuver aimed at achieving another long-term goal of Koizumi's: to ideologically purify and unify the LDP and bring it under more centralized control. "I'm firmly resolved to shatter the old framework of the LDP and instead form a new framework for the party," Koizumi said.

Although the LDP has ruled Japan almost continuously for the past 50 years, it has always been a disjointed and fractious body. Historically, powerful LDP insiders controlled smaller collections of lawmakers that functioned almost like parties within the party, often with radically conflicting political agendas. Faction leaders routinely made important decisions by trading favors rather than hammering out unified policy. The result: contradictory lawmaking, opaque governance and internal squabbling that can lead to the sort of embarrassment that happened on Aug. 8, when a block of lawmakers voted down their leader's most cherished initiative. "Japanese parties have never functioned the way they do in Europe or the U.S.," says Tomoaki Iwai, a political-science professor at Nihon University. "Koizumi is redefining the relationship between party headquarters and the politicians."

Koizumi has demonstrated that he is willing to be ruthless in exacting revenge and imposing order. National LDP headquarters has withdrawn support from the 34 postal rebels running in the election (three of the 37 have retired) and Koizumi has personally dispatched handpicked candidates, tagged by the media as "the assassins," to run against all but two of them. With characteristic media savvy, Koizumi has pushed many of the highest-profile and, frankly, best-looking assassins to the forefront of the campaign. These candidates include a former TV anchorwoman who is now Environmental Minister, a former Miss University of Tokyo turned finance ministry bureaucrat, and a celebrity cookbook author. Although the LDP is fielding the lowest percentage of female candidates among the major parties, and only 10 of the 32 assassins are women, it is the "female assassins" that have captivated the nation. "It's like a virtual harem," sniffs Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) candidate Muneaki Samejima, who is in a four-way showdown that features Koki Kobayashi, a postal rebel, and the woman sent in to eliminate him, Environmental Minister Yuriko Koike, one of the best-known of Koizumi's shock troops. "Getting his favorite women together and sending them off on a mission? It's like the [North Korean] Happy Corps," says Samejima, "and Koizumi is Kim Jong Il—anyway, that is the story going around [this] constituency."

Such stunts have led to the Japanese media's coinage of the derisive phrase "Koizumi gekijo" (Koizumi theater), but they have clearly galvanized a normally apathetic electorate. According to a poll by the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's largest newspapers, 50% of respondents say they are interested in this election, a higher percentage than in any other general election the paper has polled. TV shows are filled with raucous debate and newspapers delight in tracking the dramatic ups and downs of the assassins stalking their prey. Campaign stump speeches and rallies that would have drawn only a few dozen supporters in the past are now thronged by hundreds.

There is no better example of this rousing spectacle than the race in Hiroshima's sixth district, where Shizuka Kamei, 68, is facing-off against Takafumi Horie, the 32-year-old founder and CEO of Internet-services firm Livedoor. As former policy chief and the head of his own faction, Kamei was once one of the most powerful men in the LDP. This summer, he took center stage as one of the kingpins orchestrating the defeat of postal privatization. Since then, his world has been turned upside down.

Surprised by the dissolution of the lower house and by the LDP's withdrawal of support, Kamei quit the party to form the People's New Party. He seems almost insulted to be facing Horie, a brash tech wunderkind who, though he is running as an independent, was chosen by Koizumi to bring Kamei down. "I'm not very familiar with him or his campaign," Kamei told Time, "but I hear that it's all a curiosity." Though already well-known as one of Japan's most successful young entrepreneurs (his stake in Livedoor alone is worth nearly $1 billion), Horie shot to household fame last year during his failed attempt to buy a professional baseball team and an unsuccessful bid to take over Fuji TV.

In the sleepy town of Onomichi in the prefecture of Hiroshima on the first day of campaigning, the two men's styles couldn't be more different. Horie jumps atop the podium, mobbed like a rock star by a crowd of young, predominantly female onlookers. "The way Japan has been using its money is horrendous," he yells into the bundle of microphones he is holding. "The old guard just wishes to preserve their own benefits. I can do better ... I can revive businesses in Onomichi. For me the most important thing is to raise the turnout rate, to give motivation to those who say elections are useless!" The LDP is hoping Horie can tap a wellspring of frustration over the stagnation that has settled upon the region during Kamei's tenure. And to a degree, Horie is doing so. "Nothing has changed here in years," says Masumi Nishikawa, a local housewife, "and if Kamei stays it'll just remain the status quo."

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	The Wasted Asset [Aug. 29, 2005] Japanese women are smart and entrepreneurial, so why is so little effort made to harness their talents? Japan's Nervous Neighbors [Jan. 31, 2005] Sixty years after the end of World War II, some Asians are still uneasy about Japan's global role Unfinished Business [Jul. 06, 2004] Even with his popularity waning, Junichiro Koizumi might get one last chance to leave a good mark on Japan Koizumi's Second Act [Sep. 16, 2003] Japan's Premier looks set for re-election, but will he be a real revolutionary or just another failed reformer? More Related Items | Search all issues of TIME Magazine