The Liberal Democrats won 56 of the 121 seats, official results showed on Monday.
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Voters backed the hawkish prime minister, despite a lacklustre economic performance, handing his Liberal Democratic Party and its allies control of more than half of the upper house of parliament.
Abe’s victory gives him an opportunity to reform Japan’s constitution to loosen restrictions over military activities in a national referendum.
The LDP’s own draft amendment plan calls for keeping the war-renouncing spirit of the constitution, but wants to remove language it sees as infringing on the country’s means to defend itself.
Turnout was estimated at 54.7%, higher than the 52.61% in the previous Upper House election in 2013, although it was the fourth lowest figure in Japanese history. But if Abe sets his sights low, he may be able to win approval for a modest revision that could lay the groundwork for deeper change later.
Nevertheless, the overall victory will still bolster Abe’s grip over the conservative party that he led back to power in 2012 promising to reboot the economy with hyper-easy monetary policy, fiscal spending and reforms.
Yukio Edano, the legislator who ran the campaign for the main opposition Democratic Party, acknowledged that winning back people’s trust has been hard, but said the public agreed with his party’s message that Abenomics wasn’t working for regular people.
An unexpected decline in machinery orders shows the economy needs something to overcome consistently weak corporate investment. “These expectations are spurring a surge in stocks and selling of the yen”.
“We have promised through this election campaign that we will sell the world the agricultural products and tourism resources each region is proud of”, he said.
The prime minister said he wanted to take advantage of the Bank of Japan’s zero-interest-rate-policy and issue bonds for public-private partnerships.
LONDON, July 11 (Reuters) – Global stocks rallied on Monday as a combination of electoral success for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the emergence of a sole candidate to succeed David Cameron as British prime minister reduced political uncertainty even as markets looked forward to more stimulus from central banks.
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“If Prime Minister Abe tries to seek a constitutional amendment, a fierce controversy is likely to arise, affecting directly the order in Northeast Asia, including the Korean Peninsula, where the USA and China are tensely faced against each other”, the Hankyoreh said. But that has not weakened Abe in recent elections, although he has made clear he is eager to restart reactors that were idled after the disaster, the worst since Chornobyl, and make nuclear power a Japan export.
