TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan faced renewed pressure Monday over his ruling party's poor showing in local elections and fresh criticism over his handling of the country's nuclear crisis.
A candidate for the opposition Liberal Democratic Party won Sunday's lower house by-election in central Aichi prefecture, beating four rivals after Kan's Democratic Party of Japan failed to even contest the seat, media reported.
Candidates backed by the DPJ also broadly lost ground in the second round of local elections held Sunday, following the party's defeat in gubernatorial and prefectural assembly polls earlier this month.
Kan's party still controls the lower house but he came in for renewed criticism in parliament Monday over his handling of the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami and has been leaking radiation.
The election setback appeared to reflect public distrust in the Kan administration's handling of the quake and tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster, local media reports said.
Kan noted the poll results but brushed aside criticism, saying the government was doing what it could to tackle the disasters.
"The tough election outcome has to be taken seriously," Kan told an upper house budget committee meeting. "The government will continue to make an all-out effort to tackle reconstruction and the nuclear disaster."
Some anti-nuclear candidates won seats in Sunday's elections, which picked 73 city mayors, 63 town and village leaders and hundreds of local assemblies.
In Tokyo's Setagaya ward, former parliamentarian Nobuto Hosaka, 55, was elected mayor after calling for a shift to renewable energy from dependence on nuclear power, local media reported.
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