Japan’s Hard-Pressed Premier Gets a Break : Politics: Miyazawa’s ruling party sweeps a by-election for lower house of Parliament.

Hard-luck Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa got his first break in five months in office Sunday as two ruling Liberal Democratic Party members swept a by-election for the lower house of Parliament.

Tamisuke Watanuki, secretary general of the party, said he hoped the double victory would provide “a chance to start a new flow” favoring the conservative Liberal Democrats.

Commentators immediately predicted that the turnabout in the by-election for the lower house, in which the ruling party holds a commanding majority, would encourage Miyazawa to dissolve the lower house and stage a “double election” for both chambers of Parliament in July. An election for half of the seats in the upper house must be held then.

The Liberal Democrats, who lost control of the upper house for the first time in 1989, are 13 seats short of a majority in that chamber.

In two earlier by-elections for the upper house this year, held in traditional conservative strongholds, Liberal Democrats were defeated by candidates backed by an opposition alliance. And since Miyazawa took office Nov. 2, misfortunes and mistakes have conspired with the outbreak of a series of scandals to cut in half the 72-year-old prime minister’s ratings in opinion polls.

A poll by the Yomiuri newspaper last week showed that support for Miyazawa had fallen to 26.5%, compared with 55.7% when he took office.

Until Sunday, Miyazawa lacked even a single accomplishment to point to. But in a by-election caused by the deaths of one Socialist and one Liberal Democrat in the multi-seat second district of Gumma prefecture (state), two ruling party candidates polled 73% of the votes between them to win both of the empty seats.

Yoshio Yatsu, 57, won 106,600 votes, and Yojiro Nakajima, 32, got 89,066, while the Socialists’ candidate, Toshie Sunaga, 41, finished a distant third at 66,432. A Communist polled 7,615 votes. Nakajima is the son of the Liberal Democrat incumbent who died.

In victory statements, both Yatsu and Nakajima pledged to work for political reform.

In a statement, Miyazawa called the result “an encouragement” to the Liberal Democratic Party and pledged to carry out political reform.