JUNICHIRO KOIZUMI, the Japanese Prime Minister, vowed to press on with his radical reform programme yesterday despite a fierce backlash against the policies in elections at the weekend.

Final results yesterday showed that the once popular Mr Koizumi had stumbled badly over sending troops to Iraq and pushing through unpopular pension reforms. His ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won two seats fewer in the Upper House elections than its minimum target of 51.

The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), meanwhile, secured more votes than the Government and won 50 seats. However, Mr Koizumi secured an LDP majority in the House of Councillors after talks with the leader of the New Komeito party, in which the two agreed that they would maintain their long-standing coalition.

Political analysts saw the huge gains made by the DPJ as a clear reaction against Japan’s deployment of troops in Iraq and the passing of a pensions law seen as flawed, badly explained and iniquitous. Within hours of the result, Mr Koizumi rejected opposition demands that Japanese troops should be withdrawn from Iraq but conceded that discussions on pension reform should be held soon to calm public fury on the issue.

Pundits said that the results provided more evidence that Japanese politics is now moving towards a two-party system, and that the innate Japanese conservatism that has held the LDP in near uninterrupted power for 50 years is disintegrating fast. The pattern of voting on Sunday was similar to that in the general election last autumn, at which voters demonstrated a surprisingly eager taste for a fundamental shake-up of the political status quo.

Insiders at LDP headquarters said that by far the most worrying aspect of Sunday’s voting was the number of rural voters casting anti-LDP ballots: their historical loyalty to the ruling party has stood for decades as its most impregnable election-winner.

Beyond the pensions crisis and Iraq, political analysts attributed the sharp backlash against Mr Koizumi to several factors, mainly that voters may simply have lost interest in his act. His three years in office is long by the standards of recent Japanese prime ministers, and voters become impatient when hearing the same soundbites time and again.

Although Mr Koizumi will remain as Prime Minister for now, yesterday’s results sparked speculation that he may not last until late 2006, when he had planned to stand down anyway.

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