TOKYO — Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won a crushing reelection victory Sunday, gaining sweeping political command in Japan and securing a mandate for a more thorough overhaul of the nation's sclerotic economy.
The final count gave the Japanese leader's Liberal Democratic Party 296 seats in the 480-seat lower house of parliament, up from its previous 212 seats. The victory was the party's second-best showing in its five-decade history and gave Koizumi an outright majority even without the support of his junior coalition partner, the Buddhist-based New Komeito Party.
The verdict vindicated Koizumi's gamble last month to call an election and force a showdown with lawmakers, including 37 members of his party, opposed to his plan to privatize the massive state-owned postal system.
The magnitude of his victory could usher in a new era in Japanese politics. Koizumi ran a theatrical, confrontational campaign in a country that has always held the belief that politics must operate by consensus, with accommodation worked out in the backrooms and radical edges shaved off every policy.
"I believe the results of this election reflect that we have changed," a relaxed Koizumi said on national television after the vote. "Though opposition may be strong, we will proceed with reforms."
The election was ostensibly fought over the privatization of Japan Post, which in addition to delivering the mail is a financial giant that holds $3 trillion in savings and insurance assets.
The money has long been used for public works projects of sometimes questionable value, symbolizing for many the cronyism and corruption in Japanese politics. Koizumi argued that the discipline of privatization would end the waste.
However, many also saw postal reform as code for a wider referendum on whether Japan needed to change the way its government and economy operate and on whether Koizumi was the leader to make the fixes.
The answer from voters was a clear yes. Polls showed Koizumi led the short campaign from the start and was pulling away as it ended. Frustrated opposition leaders complained they couldn't get a hearing on other issues, from a looming pension crisis to sour relations with China and the decision to send Japanese soldiers to Iraq.
Katsuya Okada, a former bureaucrat who led the opposition Democratic Party of Japan into the election, immediately said he would resign as party leader. The DPJ lost 64 of its 177 seats, a sign that Koizumi's party had taken away a swath of its base among urban voters. Okada described the extent of the defeat as "beyond my expectation."
