TOKYO, 12 September 2005 — Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi scored a political triumph yesterday as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party recorded a landslide win in an election touted as a referendum on his push to privatize Japan’s cash-swelled postal system.

LDP’s final tally stood at 296 seats, public broadcaster NHK reported, greatly above the 249 seats it held when Koizumi dissolved the chamber last month, and far more than the 241 seats needed for a majority in Parliament’s lawmaking lower house. The most the LDP ever held was 300 of the body’s then 512 seats in 1986.

Combined with ally the New Komei Party’s seats, the ruling coalition had more than 320 seats — a two-thirds majority that would enable it to override votes in the upper house.

“I had hoped we would win a majority with our party alone, but we did even better than that,” a beaming Koizumi said late yesterday. “I thank the nation for its support and understanding.”

Voter turnout climbed over 7 points from the last lower house elections in 2003 to 67.52 percent, Kyodo News Agency estimated. Official figures were unavailable as of early today.

The results keep a staunch ally of US President George W. Bush in power. Koizumi is expected to stand by his dispatch of troops to support the US-led coalition in Iraq and he is also a strong supporter of the continued presence of 50,000 US military personnel in Japan. The opposition Democrats had pledged to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Victory was sweet for the popular leader, who called the election after defections within his party last month scuttled a legislative package he had championed for breaking up and privatizing Japan Post.

He kept the campaign focused on his plan, overshadowing the opposition and also rejuvenating the image of the LDP from staid ruling party to agent of dynamic change.

Along with delivering mail, the postal service has savings and insurance programs with $3 trillion in deposits, in effect making it the world’s largest bank. Koizumi contends putting those operations in private hands will bring more efficient lending of that cash and produce a bigger boost for the economy, which is the world’s second biggest but has stagnated for years.

That seemed to resonate with a public worried that bloated government bureaucracies are sapping economic growth as the aging of the population raises questions about how Japan will pay for future retirees.

Postal savings have long been used by the LDP as a slush fund for public works projects blamed for waste and corruption.

Though postal reform was likely to stay firmly at the top of Koizumi’s agenda, the landslide would strengthen his hand in pushing other changes, including an overhaul of the national pension system and his effort to rid the LDP of pork-barrel politics and refocus it on policy.

“We needed to hear the people’s voice on reform,” Koizumi said.