Japanese election goes to conservative LDP in landslide

• Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said he would step down as party chief
• Shinzo Abe will return to prime minister's post he held in 2006-2007
• Dispute with China over uninhabited islands could heat up further

BEIJING — With little public enthusiasm, but potentially major consequences, Japanese voters handed a landslide victory Sunday to the main opposition party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Its hawkish leader Shinzo Abe, set for a second stint as prime minister, promises to revive Japan's stagnant economy and stand up to an increasingly assertive China.

The result highlights growing right-wing sentiment in Japan, analysts say, and risks worsening the tense relationship between China and Japan. The two nations, which have the world's second- and third-largest economies, are locked in a dispute over a group of uninhabited islands.

Current prime minister Yoshihiko Noda said Sunday night he would step down as president of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) to take responsibility for the defeat. Winning a landmark election victory in 2009, the DPJ ended almost a half-century of LDP rule in Japan, but the party has since disappointed the public and continued the nation's "revolving door" series of short-lived premierships that began when Abe first held office for a year in 2006-2007.

Abe, 58, will be Japan's seventh prime minister in just over six years, after what may prove a "historic election," said Michael Cucek, a Tokyo-based political commentator. By late Sunday night Tokyo time, exit poll projections suggested the LDP and its likely coalition partner, the New Komeito Party, could have a two thirds' "super majority" in the lower, more powerful, House of Representatives, he said.

Unlike earlier governments stuck in policy deadlock with an upper house controlled by the opposition, the LDP "will have no excuse for not doing things, as they will have the technical ability to pass any legislation they wish," regardless of any upper house vote, Cucek said. Though the LDP emphasizes Japan's alliance with the United States, it "assumes far more American agreement with its policies than it probably actually has" and risks conflict with China in which the United States may not back Japan, he said.

Several new parties swelled the electoral field to a record 12, yet voter turnout below 60% represented a record low, Kyodo News agency reported. About 10 million Japanese who voted in 2009 opted out this time, "indicating a general unhappiness with the choices available," Cucek said.

Those who did vote reached, often reluctantly, for the familiar, analysts said. "The voters supported the LDP because they are tired of the DPJ government; they are failures. But this does not mean voters endorsed LDP policy," said Tetsuo Kotani, a researcher at the Japan Institute of International Affairs in Tokyo.

"It is not the victory of the LDP, it is the loss of the ruling party," said Yuichi Hosoya, who teaches international politics at Keio University in Tokyo. "Many people worry about the leadership of Shinzo Abe, but they cannot trust the ruling party," he said. Japan's deep structural problems — including its aging society and huge financial deficit — plus the rise of Chinese military power, provoke voter discontent every election and prove "impossible for any one prime minister to solve," Hosoya said.

Ai Noguchi, 22, a third-year political science student at Keio, chose the DPJ in her first general election as she said Noda deserved more time to enact his policies. "Abe was a weak prime minister," she said. "He just stepped out of office (in 2007) because he had a stomachache. I can't really believe him." Japan's rightward shift could bring problems with its neighbors, notably China, she said.

An early voter Sunday, Noguchi saw few other young people at a polling station where her arrival sparked plenty of comment from the mostly elderly volunteers, she said. Outnumbered by Japan's senior citizens, young people "don't go to vote because they feel it doesn't really count," said Noguchi, who urged lawmakers to connect the younger generation to the political process by ending the ban on social media use by candidates during the official campaign.

After two decades of stagnation and deflation, the key issue was the economy, said Kotani, a maritime security specialist. Regional tensions also loomed large. North Korea defied the world and fired a long-range rocket last week, while China sends patrol boats daily into Japan's territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands, called the Diaoyu by the Chinese, he said.

"China may increase its creeping provocation a little more," he said, such as sending additional planes into Japanese airspace, as happened for the first time last week. But, Kotani said, "I don't think it will change dramatically." Abe plans to station Japanese personnel on the Senkaku, a move certain to displease Beijing, "but Abe cannot antagonize China as that will have a negative impact on the Japanese economy," Kotani said.

If Japan sends people to be based on the Senkaku, "there could be a low-intensity conflict between Japan and China," Hosoya warned.