Japan’s Ruling Party--and Premier--Recover a Little Honor With Election Victory

In a by-election that Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu declared ahead of time would have a major impact both on Japanese politics and on his career, a candidate backed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party won a seat in the upper house of Parliament on Sunday.

It was the first parliamentary election since the Liberal Democrats suffered an unprecedented defeat and lost control of the upper house in a regular election July 23.

In Ibaraki prefecture (state), which borders Tokyo to the northeast, Itsuo Nomura, 47, a prefectural assembly representative, won 51.1% of the votes, compared to 43.1% for the Socialists’ Shizue Hosogane, 63, a former schoolteacher, and 5.8% for the Communists’ Setsuo Yamada, 41.

The victory raised the number of Liberal Democratic seats in the upper chamber to 109, still 18 short of a majority in the 252-member chamber.

Boost for Kaifu

Analysts, however, called it a breath of fresh air for Kaifu, who took office Aug. 9, and a blow to the Socialists, who had hoped to prove that their 26-seat surge in July was not a passing phenomenon. The Socialists’ July showing had been regarded as giving them a chance to head a coalition government after the next voting for the lower house, which elects the prime minister.

That vote must be held by July, 1990, but could come as early as the end of the year.

Kaifu and Socialist Chairwoman Takako Doi visited the prefecture to stump for their parties’ candidates--Kaifu twice and Doi three times.

The victory also bolstered the Liberal Democrats’ efforts to preserve a controversial 3% consumption tax that they implemented over public protests last April 1. Nomura campaigned on the party’s promise to revise the tax measure, while Hosogane pressed the Socialists’ insistence that it be abolished.

A broadly smiling Kaifu called the result “very welcome,” while Nomura called his victory “unbelievable.”

Hosogane attributed her defeat to voters being led astray by the Liberal Democrats’ promise to revise the consumption tax. Tsuruo Yamaguchi, the Socialists’ secretary general, agreed. He blamed the defeat on “the insufficiency of our efforts” to attack the ruling party’s revision promise.

Revision Favored

A nationwide telephone poll conducted Sunday night by NHK, the semi-governmental radio and TV network, found that 52% of the voters now favor revision of the tax rather than its abolition, which was supported by 43%. Another 5% said they were satisfied with the tax in its present form. Before the July election, a majority of the voters opposed the tax.

The election marked a setback for the Socialist Party’s so-called Madonna strategy. A slate of candidates on which women were well represented helped the Socialists score their 26-seat surge in the regular upper house election. And Hosogane’s nomination for the Ibaraki by-election, made necessary by the death of a ruling party incumbent, was an extension of that strategy. In the July election, 24% of the Socialists’ winners were women.

A low voter turnout--only 45.6%, or 15.9% fewer than in July--was believed to have helped the Liberal Democrats.

But the Socialists’ failure to win the cooperation of two moderate opposition parties, as well as the new labor federation, Rengo (Private Sector Trade Union Federation), dealt a blow both to Hosogane’s chances and to the prospects for opposition cooperation in the forthcoming lower house election.

Nomura’s showing in rural areas indicated that the Liberal Democrats are regaining the support of farmers, who turned heavily to the opposition in July to protest the ruling party’s moves to open Japan’s agricultural markets to imports. He led vote-getting in 73 of the prefecture’s 88 villages.

Counting two gubernatorial and two mayoral elections, the Ibaraki contest was the fifth ballot contest since July in which the Socialists have failed to score a victory.