Japan party chiefs make final appeals to voters

Leaders of Japan's ruling and opposition parties made their final appeals to voters yesterday, a day before an election that could determine the fate of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

Koizumi's ruling coalition cannot be ousted from power as a result of the election for parliament's upper house, as it holds a majority in the powerful lower chamber.

But a poor showing in elections for the upper chamber would weaken his clout and might invite calls for his resignation.

A hoarse-voiced Koizumi urged a large crowd of voters gathered in Tokyo's Ginza shopping district - despite pouring rain - to back his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Yasunori Yamazaki, a 31-year-old computer engineer who stopped to listen, said he was leaning toward doing so.

"If you look at Japanese politics up to Koizumi, Koizumi is so much better," Yamazaki said.

Such support would be welcome for Koizumi and his party in what looks like a tightly contested election.

A survey published by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper on Friday showed that voters were about evenly split between the LDP and the main opposition Democratic Party.

The LDP appeared to have recovered some ground from previous polls, but the survey was largely in line with those released earlier this week showing the party was in danger of falling short of its goal of winning 51 of the 121 contested seats.

The upper chamber has a total of 242 seats, with elections for half of them held every three years.

If the LDP performed poorly and won only 44 seats, that would almost certainly force Koizumi to step down, analysts say.

In 1998, Ryutaro Hashimoto was forced to resign as prime minister following a disastrous LDP performance in an upper house election in which it only won 44 seats.

While Koizumi stumped in urban centres, Katsuya Okada, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, spent the day in southwestern Japan, seeking to bolster support in closely-fought rural districts where his party has traditionally been weak.

Friday's emotional reunion of a Japanese woman abducted by North Korea decades ago with the US ex-soldier she married and had to leave behind in the communist state when she came home in 2002 just might tip the scale toward the LDP.

Japanese media gave heavy coverage to the Jakarta reunion of Hitomi Soga with Charles Robert Jenkins - who Washington says deserted in 1965 - and the couple's North Korean-born daughters, and some voters might credit Koizumi with making it possible.

That would be a welcome relief for the prime minister, whose party has been on the defensive over public dissatisfaction toward government pension reforms - a key election topic.

Voters are angry at the ruling camp for raising contributions and cutting benefits, but many are also unconvinced that the opposition would do much better.

Japan's dispatch of some 550 troops to Iraq on a reconstruction mission is focus of debate. The Democrats opposed the deployment and want the soldiers brought home until security in Iraq improves and an elected government put in place.

One 51-year-old woman listening to Koizumi said she wouldn't be voting for the LDP "because of the Iraq problem".

Like many domestic media critics, she also felt the ruling party was exploiting the reunion of Soga and her family.

"I think the LDP has been really using the news of Soga and that's scary," the woman said.