Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's bold gamble in seeking a fresh mandate has paid off. Mr Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, won 290 seats in a house of 475. With its Buddhist ally, the LDP retains the so-called super majority of two-thirds in the legislature. It means the government can push through reforms. The Opposition gave a dispirited performance and found little to attack Mr Abe with. The Democratic Party of Japan, or DPJ, did not even get an adequate number of candidates to run against the LDP. Banri Kaieda, the leader of the DPJ, lost his seat in Parliament. The last time the leader of the main opposition party in Parliament lost his seat was in 1949. That's the good news for the LDP. The bad news is the election was characterised by low turnout and many of the people who stayed away are likely those less well-off who feel they have not gained from the LDP's push to end deflation.
Despite the solid victory and the purported mandate for change, Mr Abe will have to reach out to them to build the case for the reforms he intends to push through. Abenomics means many things but at its core is the belief after 15 years of deflation, Japan's economy needs a fiscal and monetary stimulus to get out of the rut. Wage increases would be a popular way out of the morass. But Mr Abe's so-called third arrow of reforms, like India's own second-generation reforms, will need imaginative selling to the public as well as determination. Mr Abe raised hopes among international investors in the first several months of his premiership but this foundered as the big reforms are yet to come. He must deliver now.
At the top of the list is the need for agricultural reforms, which means taking on Japan's unwieldy cooperatives. Another priority is the need to reform labour markets. (So far, so familiar for Indians.) There is also the opportunity to sign up to the Trans-Pacific Partnership with the United States and other countries. Mr Abe has till end 2018 to achieve some of this - but he will have to spend some political capital to get there. As the government found with its consumption tax introduced in April, moving too fast has its own costs. The tax is blamed for being partly responsible for Japan falling into recession. The second step in that process will have to be carefully calibrated.
For India, Mr Abe's election is an unalloyed good. He and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have a good personal rapport and Japan seems determined to be a true friend to India, in part because of its antipathy towards China. Mr Abe's security push might weaken because he is dependent on a pacifist Buddhist party as an ally, but his third arrow of reforms and how he markets them might yet provide Mr Modi some insights. Wealthy Japan and developing India are a world apart in many ways but on labour reforms and reforming agriculture, the challenges of transforming the rigid, bureaucratic and risk-averse nations are not that dissimilar.
