TOKYO — An upbeat Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stared down critics calling for his resignation Sunday, declaring that he would not be pushed from office nor blown off his reformist course by disappointing results in elections for Japan's upper house of parliament.
The 49 seats won by Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party fell just short of the 51 he had set as his target when the campaign began in June. Despite the opposition Democratic Party of Japan gaining 12 seats, the conservative-minded LDP and its junior party allies retained their majority in the 252-member House of Councilors.
"There's no damage," a smiling Koizumi told reporters at his party's headquarters in Tokyo. "It won't develop into a question of whether I have to take responsibility."
"Taking responsibility" is a political euphemism in Japan for resigning, and it dominated conversation among the country's political class in the days before Sunday's elections. For Koizumi, the final seat tally -- though one less than the DPJ total -- qualified as a disaster dodged.
But the vote may also herald the beginning of a two-party system in Japanese politics. The usual scattergun anti-LDP vote coalesced around the DPJ, the new liberal alternative.
The DPJ opposes Koizumi on the two most emotive issues facing Japan. Its members have been critical of his reforms of an overburdened pension system in a country with a shriveling birthrate and the longest life expectancy in the world. And they oppose Koizumi's decision to support President Bush by sending 550 noncombat ground troops to Iraq, which stretches interpretations of the pacifist clause in Japan's constitution.
"The people have issued a resounding 'no' to Koizumi's policies," DPJ leader Katsuya Okada said after the vote.
Until recently, the prospect of Koizumi being forced from office before a general election due in two years seemed unlikely. His image as a loveably roguish political outsider had translated into high personal poll ratings.
That support crumbled dramatically in the last month, when voters soured on the prime minister over the pension reform legislation passed in June. The government raised premiums and cut future benefits -- all while Koizumi was trying to explain why he and seven of his Cabinet ministers had a checkered history with paying their own pension premiums.
The ensuing outcry turned Koizumi's once-modest goal of 51 upper-house seats into the symbolic threshold for political survival. Although real power rests with parliament's lower house, the House of Representatives, two previous LDP prime ministers have resigned after poor showings in upper-house elections.
With some polls a week before the vote predicting just 41 seats for the LDP, Koizumi spent the campaign's final days trying to lower expectations. He concluded his campaign standing atop a truck at a busy Tokyo intersection Saturday night, hoarsely pleading for a mandate to continue economic reforms.
The reaction from the crowd was polite: a fluttering of Japanese flags from a few hundred supporters, but no hint of the squeals and swoons Koizumi once inspired at rallies.
"The LDP conducted an old-fashioned campaign this time," said Masajuro Shiokawa, a former Koizumi finance minister, now retired from politics. "They should have discussed the social service and defense issues more carefully."
Koizumi acknowledged that failure when he showed up at a glum LDP headquarters two hours after the polls closed. "I will make more effort to gain the confidence of citizens," he said, ascribing the loss of seats to poor selling of his policies.
"We are on the right course," he insisted.
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Rie Sasaki of The Times' Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.
