With news of almost daily suicide attacks in Iraq, top government officials share the anxiety of relatives of Japanese soldiers who have been sent there.

Casualties could trigger a plunge in public support for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and deal a fatal blow to his administration.

Koizumi, a lone wolf in the Liberal Democratic Party, depends heavily on his popularity to maintain his government.

No Japanese soldiers have died in combat since the end of World War II, and these troops are engaging in Japan's most dangerous overseas mission in the postwar period.

But Koizumi has refused to say how he would take responsibility if any Japanese soldiers were to be killed.

"The prime minister would be held responsible in the end," Koizumi told a House of Councilors session on Feb. 5. "I would make a decision" on how to take responsibility if anyone in the SDF is killed or injured.

Polls show a growing acceptance of the dispatch of Self-Defense Forces units to Iraq, despite the deteriorating local security situation and deepening chaos there.

Some 84 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by the daily Mainichi Shimbun in March said they opposed the U.S.-led war against Iraq. A poll conducted in July, immediately after the enactment of a special law facilitating the SDF dispatch to Iraq, found that 19 percent supported an immediate dispatch and 38 percent were opposed.

The latest poll, conducted Jan. 24 and Jan. 25, showed that 47 percent opposed the dispatch and 47 percent backed it.

"Public understanding (for the SDF dispatch) is gradually spreading, and the number of those supporting the dispatch and opposing it are now almost even," said Hidenao Nakagawa, chief of the LDP's Diet affairs.

Etsushi Tanifuji, professor of political communication at Waseda University in Tokyo, said support for the dispatch has grown due to the "for-the-flag effect," in which a political decision to start a war or dispatch soldiers temporarily boosts public support for the government.

People sympathize with soldiers leaving for battle and their families, which temporarily tends to overcome the pros and cons of diplomatic issues, he said.

"It is usually difficult for people to see a diplomatic issue as being linked to their daily lives," Tanifuji said. "But with the government dispatching specific military units, it has emerged as a human story for them for the first time."

The U.S-led war against Iraq boosted the approval rating of British Prime Minister Tony Blair in March, Tanifuji said.

The effect will not last long, he said, referring to Blair, who is facing dwindling public support amid suspicions that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction at the time of the invasion.

"Whether Koizumi can retain a high public-approval rating will depend on whether he can draw up a story" that can convince people of the need to send troops to Iraq, Tanifuji said.

Kazuhisa Kawakami, professor of political science at Meiji Gakuin University, believes the nuclear threat posed by North Korea has helped raise support for the dispatch.

People regarded the SDF mission as a way to demonstrate support for the United States, Japan's only military ally and means of protection from North Korea.

"The North Korean issue and the question of whether to send troops to Iraq are linked in the minds of Japanese people," Kawakami said.

He said the public believes that the SDF troops will engage in noncombat missions, such as supplying water and providing medical services, and will not be involved in any real battles.

"People now understand it is unavoidable to send the SDF as long as it is for humanitarian missions to assist in the country's reconstruction," he said.

He believes Koizumi's approval rating would not decline dramatically if any Japanese soldiers were to be killed in Iraq.

Koizumi has skillfully used dramatic diplomatic events to boost his popularity.

For example, the approval rating for his Cabinet dipped after he sacked popular former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka in November 2001.

Yet it recovered in September 2002, when he made a surprise visit to North Korea and concluded a joint declaration with the country.

"He is very good at taking advantage of an epoch-making event," Kawakami said.

Koizumi can maintain popular support if the government can spin tales of casualties into moving stories of noble victims, he said.

The government quickly put a positive spin on the killings of two Japanese diplomats and their driver near Tikrit in northern Iraq in November.

After unknown gunmen killed Katsuhiko Oku and Masamori Inoue, who worked closely with the U.S.-led occupation authority, the Japanese media carried a slew of emotional stories about the diplomats' "sincere personalities" and their serious efforts to bring about Iraq's reconstruction.

Ruling-party politicians and government officials have repeated slogans of "not yielding to threats of terrorism" and "succeeding their dying wish" to complete the slain diplomats' mission.

Kawakami warned, "People should carefully watch what is going on behind information manipulation of any kind."