Koizumi's landslide victory can be seen as a reaffirmation of public support for his reforms, chiefly the privatization of the mammoth postal system, the direct issue over which he dissolved parliament. Since coming to power, Koizumi has tackled the weakness of Japan’s financial institutions, something experts had called a potential trigger for a world financial panic, and now it looks as though he will achieve his long-cherished ambition of reforming the postal system.

The plan calls for the dinosaur Japan Post, which commands some 24,000 post offices and looks after 360 trillion yen in postal savings, to be privatized over the next few years. Under a holding company, it would be broken up into four companies -- postal services, counter operations, savings and insurance. The savings and insurance parts would be completely privatized by 2017.

The significance of the privatization does not stop at making the lumbering corporation more efficient. The dissolution of Japan Post with its 280,000 employees, a traditional source of votes and funds for the LDP, is no less than an attempt to change the nature of Japanese politics, dominated as it has been by factionalism and interest groups. That is why it has met with such fierce opposition from politicians, the postal union and industries with interests in Japan Post.

With their ballot, the Japanese voters have made a clear choice for Japan's path of survival. Koizumi earned the people’s confidence because his reforms produced concrete results. Of course, his government is not without its problems. A foreign policy that dismisses Asia and places supreme importance on the United States, an implacable line on visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, a zeal to amend Japan’s pacifist postwar Constitution -- all these have earned it the distrust of its neighbors. But leaving the problems for Asia's future aside, Korea's politicians and voters would be well advised to ponder the message inherent in Koizumi’s landslide victory.