The support rate for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet rose to 59.1 percent this week, up 11.8 percentage points from last month, according to a Kyodo News survey released Tuesday.

The disapproval rate for the Cabinet was 33.2 percent in the latest survey, conducted Monday and Tuesday after the country's lower house election on Sunday. That is down 6.2 points from the previous survey, conducted shortly after Koizumi dissolved the lower house Aug. 8.

Of those supporting the Cabinet, 20.0 percent said their support is because of the premier's leadership, almost doubling from 10.3 percent in the previous poll.

Of the respondents, 39.4 percent assessed the landslide election victory of Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party as positive, while 24.9 percent said it was not good that the LDP won so resoundingly.

Asked what issue they felt was most important, 31.9 percent said postal privatization, the centerpiece of Koizumi's reform drive, while 26.2 percent said the pension system and child- rearing, the issues the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan focused on during the campaign.

Kyodo conducted the telephone survey on 1,493 randomly selected households containing eligible voters across Japan, from which 1, 025 eligible voters responded.

Source: Xinhua