Here are some items of interest to wrap up Japundit’s coverage of yesterday’s election, culled from the Nishinippon Shimbun:

• Prime Minister Koizumi’s Liberal-Democratic Party won 294 of the 476 Diet seats, its second highest total since the party was founded 50 years ago.
• In the direct election for individual Diet seats, the LDP won 219 of 300 possible seats, an even higher percentage. The Democratic Party of Japan, the primary opposition party, won 52 seats in this phase. The DPJ actually won more seats under the proportional representation phase (61) than in the direct elections. They wound up losing 64 seats overall.
• There were 33 LDP anti-privatization rebels running for reelection as independents or under the banner of parties of convenience. 15 won and 18 lost (though I just saw a report that reverses those numbers).
• Years ago, the former Socialist Party, now the Social Democratic Party, was the primary opposition party. They picked up one seat this time to give them seven, renewing concerns of their eventual demise. They now have fewer seats than the Communist Party. Only one of the seats was won in a direct election; the rest are proportional representation seats. Former party head Takako Doi, well known as a pioneer among Japanese women assuming a leading role in a political party and serving as speaker of the Lower House, was defeated. For many years she visited North Korea during the Socialist Party’s peace cruises to that country and attended Kim Jong-il birthday parties.
• Kiyomi Tsujimoto is a former two-term Diet member from the SPJ who was being groomed for a leading role when she was arrested for misusing government-paid salaries for her secretaries. She received a suspended sentence in February 2004. She resigned from the Diet, ran for the Upper House and lost, but won a proportional representation seat this time. Tsujimoto is remembered in Japan for reportedly being a mistress of a Japanese Red Army member, admitting during her trial that she gave financial assistance to the Japanese Red Army, and locking horns with former LDP bigwig Muneo Suzuki, who did jail time for bribery. Suzuki was being formally questioned in the Diet for his improprieties, and he went ballistic when he thought Tsujimoto was showboating during her question period. (She was; she also tends to shriek.) Suzuki’s supporters went sniffing and found the goods on Tsujimoto, so both left the Diet in disgrace. Suzuki, by the way, ran on the ticket of another party of convenience, and he also was returned to the Diet as a proportional representative.

• Yuriko Koike, Satsuki Katayama, Kuniko Inoguchi, Kyoko Nishikawa, Makiko Fujino, and Yukari Sato, six of the female “assassins” with the highest profile recruited by Koizumi to take out the anti-privatization rebels, all won seats, some directly and some by proportional representation.
• Prime Minister Koizumi won reelection in his Kanagawa District 11 seat with more than double the total of his four opponents combined.
• 32-year-old Internet entrepreneur and media darling Takafumi Horie finished second in his race against LDP rebel Shizuka Kamei. Kamei won 110,979 votes to Horie’s 84,433. The DPJ candidate took 68,365 votes, so Kamei won by plurality. Horie ran as an independent backing Prime Minister Koizumi, but was not eligible for a proportional representation seat because that requires party membership.
• My favorite story: Prime Minister Koizumi recruited Kyoko Nishikawa (second photo), a proportional representation delegate from a different prefecture, to run against an LDP rebel in Fukuoka Prefecture’s 10th district. The LDP rebel had close ties to the local party organization, so the head of the party in the district dismissed her when she came to call and made clear in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t going to get any help from them. His comment made the national news: “Go out and campaign on an orange crate”. In a classic case of making lemonade from lemons, Nishikawa did just that. She made an orange crate her symbol, and stood on one during all her campaign speeches. She won a seat in the direct election by trouncing the incumbent.
• Final note: My first year in Japan, one of the (many) students in my English classes was a sixth grader named Takamaro Fukuoka. He won a seat by direct election this time on his second try. I wish I could say that I knew he was destined for greatness, but I thought he was just another average kid placed by his parents on the elite career track.

Enough politics! Tomorrow I’ll resume posting about the good stuff: sex and festivals!