Koizumi's Landslide Victory

Jap

anese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ran the most important election of his career as if he were the hero of a medieval revenge play—and vengeance, as they say, was his. After failing to push through a bill to privatize Japan's state postal system this summer, due largely to resistance within his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Koizumi dissolved the lower house of Parliament and called for snap elections, throwing all 480 seats up for grabs and putting his career, his party's tenuous majority and perhaps the economic and political future of the country on the line. As the polls closed Sunday night, it became clear that his gamble has paid off bigger than even his most enthusiastic boosters had hoped: in a landslide victory, the LDP secured 296 seats, its biggest majority since 1986.

  With this mandate, Koizumi has virtually exterminated his two biggest foes, starting with the 37 lower house LDP members that rebelled against his postal privatization scheme. In a masterstroke of political theater, Koizumi sent a clutch of handpicked, media-friendly candidates—dubbed the Assassins by the Japanese press—to unseat his disloyal former vassals. The hit squad included a former TV anchorwoman who is now Environmental Minister, a former Miss University of Tokyo turned finance ministry bureaucrat, and a celebrity cookbook author. In the most symbolic matchup, brash 32-year old Internet entrepreneur Takafumi Horie (running as an independent) squared off against 68-year old Shizuka Kamei, the virtual embodiment of the old-guard LDP and a leader of the anti-Postal reform movement. Even though Kamei held off Horie to retain his seat, and only nine of the more than 30 Assassins actually won, the LDP's commanding majority appears to have neutralized the rebels as a significant political force. A beaming and confident Koizumi stayed up late into the night Sunday, keeping track of his party's winners and losers on a large bulletin board. "We destroyed the old LDP," he said, "and the LDP became like a new party."

More significant than the banishment of the LDP rebels, however, has been the evisceration of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Though the LDP has ruled nearly continuously for the past 50 years, the DPJ scored significant and impressive victories in the last two elections, inspiring talk of a true two-party political system in Japan. DPJ president Katsuya Okada publicly entertained the notion that his party, which won a solid 177 seats in November 2003, had a chance to score an outright majority this time around. But "Koizumi gekijo" (Koizumi theater) focused the nation's attention on the Assassin vs. Rebel drama and turned the vote into a single-issue referendum on postal reform, drowning out the DPJ's subtler messages on pension reform, government overspending and foreign policy. The DPJ won only 113 seats, prompting Okada’s resignation and leaving the party's legitimacy as a true opposition party very much in doubt.

  Koizumi now has both the popular mandate and the loyal party majority whose absence he has always blamed for stalled reform initiatives in the past—leaving no excuses if he fails to execute in his remaining year in office. He has said he plans to reintroduce postal reform bills as soon as possible, but after that, a host of challenges remain: mending relations with China and the Koreas, tackling Japan’s enormous government debt and coming to grips with the debilitating effects of a rapidly aging society. With his latest, storybook victory, Koizumi’s legend continues to grow; but the Prime Minister has much left to accomplish before his legacy is truly secure.