TOKYO — Japan's opposition swept to a historic victory in elections Sunday, crushing the ruling conservative party that has run the country for most of the postwar era and assuming the daunting task of pulling the economy out of its worst slump since World War II.
A grim-looking Prime Minister Taro Aso conceded defeat just a couple of hours after polls had closed, suggesting he would quit as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for all but 11 months since 1955.
"The results are very severe," Aso said. "There has been a deep dissatisfaction with our party."
Unemployment and deflation - and an aging, shrinking population - have left families fearful of what the future holds.
Fed up with the Liberal Democrats, voters turned overwhelmingly to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which ran a populist-leaning platform with plans for cash handouts to families with children and expanding the social safety net.
"This is a victory for the people," said Yukio Hatoyama, leader of the Democrats and almost certainly Japan's next prime minister. "We want to build a new government that hears the voices of the nation."
Hatoyama and his party - an eclectic mix of former Liberal Democrats, socialists and progressives - face a daunting array of challenges, economic and demographic.
Hatoyama, who quit the Liberal Democratic Party in 1993, has pledged to revive an economy emerging from its deepest recession since World War II by boosting child-care spending, cutting taxes and curtailing the power of bureaucrats. His grandfather founded the Liberal Democratic Party in 1955 and became the first of that party's 22 prime ministers.
Japan's economy has been hit hard amid the global recession and falling demand for its exports. The unemployment rate has spiked to a record 5.7 percent and younger workers have watched the promise of lifetime employment fade. Incomes are stagnant and families have cut spending.
The country also faces threats as its population ages, which means more people are on pensions and there is a shrinking pool of taxpayers to support them and other government programs.
The Democrats' plan to give families $275 a month per child through junior high is meant to ease parenting costs and encourage more women to have babies. Japan's population of 127.6 million peaked in 2006 and is expected to fall below 100 million by the middle of the century.
"This election has been all about changing the government," Hatoyama said in a nationally televised press conference. "Everything starts now."
The Democrats are also proposing toll-free highways, free high schools, income support for farmers, monthly allowances for job seekers in training, a higher minimum wage and tax cuts. The estimated bill comes to $179 billion if fully implemented starting in fiscal year 2013 - and critics say that will only further bloat Japan's already huge public debt.
In foreign relations, the Democrats have said they want Tokyo to be more independent from Washington on diplomatic issues, though they have stressed that the U.S. will remain Japan's key ally and that they want to keep relations good, while also strengthening ties with their Asian neighbors.
U.S. President Barack Obama "looks forward to working closely with the new Japanese prime minister on a broad range of global, regional and bilateral issues," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in an e-mailed statement.
"We are confident that the strong U.S.-Japan alliance and the close partnership between our two countries will continue to flourish," Gibbs said in his statement.
Official nationwide results were expected to be announced midmorning today, but public broadcaster NHK projected early this morning that the Democrats would win 308 of the 480 seats in the lower house to the Liberal Democrats' 119, citing local election results. Other parties and independent candidates won a total of 53.
The Democratic Party needed to win a simple majority of 241 seats in the lower house to ensure it could name the next prime minister. The 300-plus level would allow it and its two smaller allies the two-thirds majority they need in the lower house to pass bills.
"It's a historic election in that a clear alternation of power has happened for the first time in the postwar period," said Koichi Nakano, professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. "It's hard to know whether this is going to lead to a real change in policy, at least for the short term."
The loss was only the second the Liberal Democratic Party - traditionally the champion of big business and conservative interests - has suffered since it was founded in 1955. The only other time it was out of power was for less than 11 months in 1993-1994, and that was to a coalition of eight parties that quickly collapsed.
"This is a bloodless revolution, the first transfer of power from one party to another in postwar Japan," said Tomoaki Iwai, a political science professor at Nihon University in Tokyo. "The DPJ now faces the tough task of delivering on its promises and showing the Japanese public it can change the system."
The Liberal Democratic Party had survived through previous recessions in Japan, but since then families have grown less secure about the future.
"There's a sense of frustration and we need to change something to improve society and the economy," said Toshiaki Kato, 42, a Tokyo company employee who voted for the Democratic Party of Japan. "The DPJ is the only political party that can replace the LDP."
With only two weeks of official campaigning that focused mainly on broad-stroke appeals rather than specific policies, many analysts said the elections were not so much about issues as voters' general desire for something new after more than a half century under the Liberal Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party of Japan is a "broad church" whose competing constituents have made policy priorities difficult to identify, according to Jonathan Allum, a strategist with KBC Financial Products in London.
"This isn't the French Revolution, these are not wide-eyed radicals," Allum said in an interview. "The leaders of the DPJ have been around for a number of years and for a number of parties. These are pretty mainstream people."
Japan has had three prime ministers in three years, all of whom were deeply unpopular for their perceived lack of leadership and for failing to get the country out of its deepening economic morass.
The Liberal Democrats tried to fight back by reminding voters that their party led the nation out of the ashes of World War II. They also argued that the Democrats, who have never run the government, were irresponsible and inept.
Hatoyama's party, which already controls the upper house with two allies, held 112 seats in the lower house before parliament was dissolved in July. The Liberal Democrats had held 300 seats.
To finance an economic aid package that would total 16.8 trillion yen in 2013, the Democratic Party of Japan says it will eliminate 9.1 trillion yen in unnecessary spending, tap special accounts managed by the nation's bureaucrats and abolish some tax deductions.
"We would like the DPJ to carry out discussions that transcend party lines and produce concrete results," Fujio Mitarai, chairman of the Keidanren, the country's biggest business lobby, said inan e-mailed statement. "It's vital that a way out of the economic turmoil is found."
Liberal Democratic Party heavyweights fell with their party. Former Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, 78, will lose his seat, as will former Finance Minister Koji Omi, NHK said. Kaifu, who was first elected in 1960, would be the first former premier to lose his district since 1963.
"It's about time for change," said Yuichi Tauchi, 25, a project manager at a truck manufacturer in Tokyo after voting for the Democratic Party of Japan. "People have been losing faith in the LDP, and a change in politics will hopefully bring about optimism."
Hatoyama, who holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Stanford University in California, is a scion of Japan's most prominent political family. In addition to grandfather Ichiro, a great-grandfather was speaker of the lower house and Hatoyama's father was foreign minister. His younger brother,Kunio, is a senior member of the LDP, and was re-elected Saturday.
NHK estimated voter turnout at 69 percent of Japan's 104 million voters, which would exceed the 67.5 percent that cast ballots in the last lower house election.
Information for this article was contributed by Mari Yamaguchi, Kelly Olsen, Shino Yuasa and Tomoko Hosaka of The Associated Press and by Sachiko Sakamaki, Stuart Biggs, Takashi Hirokawa, Theresa Barraclough, Anna Kitanaka, Shingo Kawamoto, Momoko Nishijima and Takako Taniguchi of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1, 8 on 08/31/2009