Abe makes his plans clear

On Tuesday, Abe announced plans to seek a renewed mandate, two years before the next scheduled elections. Critics say his signature fiscal policy, both affectionately and derisively known as Abenomics, has benefited big companies and affluent city dwellers by weakening the yen and boosting the stock market, but has hurt ordinary Japanese people because inflation has outpaced wage increases.

"Some people say Abenomics has failed or it's not performing well," the prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party said at a news conference on Tuesday. "But then what should we be doing?"

Abe remains relatively popular, with a recent survey giving him an approval rating of about 50 percent. The prime minister took office in September 2006 but resigned a year later, supremely unpopular, before returning to power in December 2012, when the Liberal Democratic Party won 294 seats of the lower house's 480, and pledging to revive growth with a radical mix of hypereasy monetary policy, spending and reform.

No surrender

Abe said on Friday that he would dissolve the lower house. The election must take place within 40 days, with an expected date of December 14. Abe said he would resign if the ruling coalition, which now holds two-thirds of the seats in the chamber, failed to win a majority.

He also said that he would put off implementing the second phase of a sales tax increase, which is to take the levy to 10 percent, until 2017. Japan's economy, the world's third-biggest, unexpectedly shrank for a second consecutive quarter from July to September, a sign that the pain from an initial rise in the sales tax to 8 percent from 5 percent in April had lasted longer than expected.

Several Japanese leaders have lost their jobs over the topic of increasing the sales tax. A hefty majority of voters oppose raising it now. Abe pledged that by April 2017 he would, however, see through his sales tax rise, which he said Japan needed to fund social security costs and curb public debt, the biggest among developed nations and over twice the size of the national economy.

"We are by no means surrendering the flag of fiscal reform," Abe said on Tuesday. "(The tax rise) will not be delayed a second time."

Two of Abe's Cabinet ministers recently resigned following scandals. Many Japanese also oppose his plan to restart nuclear reactors after the 2011 tsunami created safety hazards around the Fukushima plant.

mkg/ksb (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)