The Asianist

The Yomiuri Shimbun headline says it all:

ELECTION 2005--SHOWDOWN OVER REFORM / Koizumi bet pays off big-time / LDP-New Komeito coalition wins more than 300 seats in poll

My previous comment regarding Koizumi's resounding victory holds.

Top on his agenda is the postal privatization bill, but another priority apparently is Japan's normalization with North Korea, in conjunction with discussions about Japanese abductees in North Korea.

Still, Koizumi seems to understand the obstacle to any normalization -- the de-nuclearization of North Korea:

Former LDP vice president Taku Yamasaki, who is widely seen as Koizumi's right-hand man, told a Monday morning TV program the prime minister would have to meet Kim Jong-il one more time by next September. Yamasaki said he understood popular feeling in Japan about the issue of Japanese people abducted by North Korea in the 1970s, but the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula now under discussion at six-party talks needed to come first. He said the six-party talks were not the forum to discuss strictly bilateral issues.

But leave it to the Associated Press to call Koizumi's new mandate from the Japanese people as something that "hurts 2-party system" as if the election victory is a some sort of democracy-breaking coup.

But even the AP had to admit the opposition Democrats were weak:

One problem was the party's inability to distinguish itself from the LDP. In the past, it has run as the anti-LDP - a tactic that worked when dissatisfaction with the ruling party ran high.

But in this case, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made the vote a referendum on his proposal to privatize the postal system by 2017, stealing the reform banner from the opposition.

In the vacuum, the Democratic Party of Japan's lack of compelling ideas became glaringly obvious.

"Democratic Party" lacking compelling ideas? Shades of Gore/Kerry, eh?