Although Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Heizo Takenaka garnered the most proportional representation votes on his party's ticket in Sunday's Upper House election, analysts on Monday called his performance modest and said it might cloud the outlook for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's economic reforms.
Takenaka, 53, a scholar-turned Cabinet minister and an architect of Koizumi's economic reforms, won a proportional representation seat on the Liberal Democratic Party ticket by drawing 722,000 votes, a figure short of the party's expectations, the analysts said.
Some LDP lawmakers had hoped Takenaka would follow the example of Yoichi Masuzoe, a popular TV critic who captured 1.59 million votes in the 2001 Upper House election -- the largest number won by a single candidate in that poll.