Japanese Ruling Party Wins Vote in Landslide : Expected to Control All Parliament Committees; Call for Rule Change to Retain Nakasone Likely

Bolstered by an upswing in the voter turnout, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone’s ruling party regained a majority with a victory of landslide proportions in the powerful lower house of Parliament, results from Sunday’s election for both houses of Parliament showed today.

With four contests left to be decided, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party was assured of 304 seats, far in excess of the 271 it needed to control all standing committees in the lower house. Along with 300 of its own winners, four conservatives who won without party affiliation also were expected to join the party.

That outcome represented a gain of at least 46 seats, compared with the last election in December, 1983, when the Liberal Democrats, under Nakasone’s leadership, suffered their worst-ever setback in the lower house.

Forecasts Exceeded

In no earlier election had the ruling party shown a net gain of more than 31 seats, and not since 1969 has it held more than 300 seats in the lower house.

The sweeping victory, which exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts for the ruling party, was considered certain to spur calls for a revision of party rules, which now dictate that Nakasone must step down Oct. 30.

A victory giving the Liberal Democrats more than 271 seats had been regarded as the minimum needed to encourage moves to retain Nakasone.

Reacting to expectations of the ruling party’s victory, the yen’s value rose to an all-time high of 158.90 to the dollar shortly after the Tokyo Foreign Exchange Market opened this morning at 159.70 yen to the dollar. The previous record, set May 12, was 159.99 to the dollar for a single transaction.

Opposition Attacks

At 11:30 a.m., the yen was trading at 159.05, a 52.2% appreciation since finance ministers of Japan, the United States, England, France and West Germany agreed last Sept. 22 to drive down the value of the dollar.

Opposition parties had attacked Nakasone for his failure to halt the rapid appreciation of the yen, and the Bank of Japan, which traders suspected was trying to hold down the yen’s value on the eve of the election, was reported to have purchased more than $2 billion worth of the American currency last week.

Prices on the Tokyo Stock Exchange also jumped 169.59 points to a new record of 17,764 yen by noon.

The Liberal Democrats scored gains throughout the country, including the Tokyo region and other urban areas where opposition parties had counted most of their strength. The big losers were the Socialists, the No. 1 opposition party, which appeared headed for its worst-ever results.

Unaffiliated Conservatives

With four seats remaining to be decided, 300 Liberal Democrats had been declared elected. The addition of the four conservatives to the Liberal Democratic victors was expected to give Nakasone at least 304 seats, a majority of 48 in the 512-seat chamber.

The biggest single-election gain scored by the ruling party, including unaffiliated winners who joined the party after the election, came in 1980, when they won 289 seats for a majority of 34.

Socialists had obtained 83 seats, while the neo-Buddhist Komei (Clean Government) Party had won 55, the middle-of-the road Democratic Socialist Party 26 and the Communists 25. Fifteen others also won.

The voter turnout of 71.4% exceeded the 67.94% of three years ago, when the Liberal Democrats lost 31 seats and their majority was slashed to a razor-thin margin of two, including unaffiliated winners who joined the party immediately after ballots were counted.

‘Mini-Coalition’

Because of deaths since 1983, the Liberal Democrats held only 250 seats going into Sunday’s election. They had retained control of the lower house only with the help of a “mini-coalition” with the New Liberal Club, a conservative splinter group that held eight seats before Nakasone dissolved the lower house June 2.

The turnout fell short of the 74.57% turnout in 1980, the only other time Japan ever held a “double election” for both houses of Parliament simultaneously. In that election, the Liberal Democrats scored their biggest previous win.

Cloudy skies with an absence of heavy rain, which had prevailed through much of the rainy-season campaign, provided what Nakasone on Sunday called “rather good weather” for voting: gloomy enough to discourage family outings but good enough to encourage voters to go to neighborhood polls.

Incomplete returns from the upper house election assured the Liberal Democrats of retaining a comfortable majority in the 252-seat chamber.

Consistent Campaigning

The ruling party got a boost partly because 61 of its 1983 candidates finished as runners-up in multi-seat constituencies in the last lower house--far more than for all the opposition parties. Large numbers of those 1983 losers, who had been campaigning consistently for 2 1/2 years, regained seats this time.

Nakasone, the first prime minister since World War II to advocate an active diplomacy for Japan, has prided himself with the first-name “Ron-Yasu” relationship he has established with President Reagan. The personal rapport with Reagan and the credit that U.S. officials have given Nakasone for his efforts to open Japan’s markets have helped avoid an explosion in U.S.-Japanese economic relations, even as Japan’s trade surplus rose from $18.9 billion in 1982, when Nakasone took office, to $49.7 billion last year.

The 68-year-old prime minister declared this afternoon that the result showed that voters support his policies to reform Japan’s education, administrative structure and export-oriented economy. He again declared that he would abide by party rules that limit him to four years in office. But he did not rule out staying in office, if he is asked to do so.

Soviet Visit Possible

On Friday, Nakasone fueled speculation that he would try to stay on beyond October by declaring that he might visit the Soviet Union late this year.

Among the first candidates to be declared elected were Nakasone and former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, 81. Both leaders ran from the four-seat District 3 in Gumma prefecture (state).

Nakasone, however, again suffered the humiliation of finishing second behind Fukuda in votes. Until the last lower house election in 1983, no incumbent prime minister had ever failed to finish at the top of the list of winners in his multi-seat constituency. In 14 contests dating back to 1952, Fukuda, who served as prime minister between 1978 and 1980, has outpolled Nakasone 10 times, beating him consistently since 1969.

The Nakasone-Fukuda rivalry produced the opposite result in the upper house.

Nakasone’s son, Hirofumi, 40, entering politics for the first time, won a seat in Gumma prefecture, topping Hiroichi Fukuda, 72, the former prime minister’s brother, who finished second in the two-seat district.

Tanaka Reelected

Former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, 68, who was convicted in October, 1983, of accepting a $1.8-million bribe from the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. during his 1972-74 term in office, also was reelected--without campaigning--at the top of the list in his four-seat district. He has not been seen in public since he suffered a stroke Feb. 27, 1985.

Although he is the head of the ruling party’s largest faction of 120 members of Parliament, Tanaka ran as an unffiliated candidate.

His refusal to resign from Parliament after the conviction, combined with the decline in voter turnout, was blamed for the Liberal Democrats’ stinging setback three years ago.

Susumu Nikaido, 76, vice president of the ruling party and chairman of Tanaka’s faction, did the campaigning for Tanaka this time. He assured voters in Niigata District No. 3 that Tanaka would recover within a year but did not say when the former king-maker might return to politics.

Former Prime Minister Takeo Miki, 79, also was reelected despite having been unable to campaign because of a brain hemorrhage he suffered June 4.