Voters, including teens eligible to vote for the first time, cast ballots in Sunday's lower house election amid growing fears about North Korea's missile and nuclear programs.

In Tokyo, many indicated they voted for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party, filled with anxiety that recently established parties, including Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike's Party of Hope, may be unable to handle the North Korean threat.

"We saw the Democratic Party of Japan's poor handling of the nuclear accident" at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, said 37-year-old Daisuke Kai, citing the moribund party that was in power for around three years until December 2012.

"I'm worried about whether a new party can manage the government in an appropriate manner," the company employee said.

Akihiro Matsumoto, a 28-year-old employee of an IT-related firm, also said he voted for the long-dominant LDP.

"I think it was good (for Abe) to call a snap election before the North Korean crisis becomes more serious," Matsumoto said.

Abe dissolved the House of Representatives on Sept. 28, with concern mounting that North Korea could carry out more provocations, such as its seventh nuclear test or the launch of an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile with an enhanced engine.

Takeshi Yamada, a 25-year-old graduate school student, said, "I am not a supporter of the LDP. But I voted for the party this time, believing that the experienced party can tackle the situation surrounding North Korea."

Other voters said they decided which candidate and party to vote for after taking into account the planned revision of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution by the LDP and other conservative forces.

With the LDP and other pro-amendment forces likely retaining a two-thirds majority in the lower house, in addition to the upper chamber, Abe is expected push ahead with revising the Constitution.

A 42-year-old female part-timer said she voted for the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, a new liberal party formed earlier this month that opposes amending the country's supreme law.

"I do not want lawmakers to change the Constitution. We might be involved in war if Japan changes its Constitution," she said.

Sunday's lower house election was the first in which 18- and 19-year-olds could vote, after a legal change took effect last year.

An 18-year-old male high school student said, "I felt tense when I cast the first vote in my life into the ballot box."

"I want politicians to make every effort to create a country where we can have hope for the future," he added.

In the western Japan city of Hiroshima, devastated by a U.S. atomic bombing in August 1945, 18-year-old Sachiko Hashida cast a vote hoping for peace, saying Japan should join a treaty banning nuclear weapons that was adopted by the United Nations in July.

"I would like politicians pursuing nuclear nonproliferation to do their best," Hashida said.

Japan refused to participate in the treaty, along with the world's nuclear weapon states and other countries under the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

Some other voters, meanwhile, appeared at voting stations in an apathetic mood, with an 83-year-old woman saying, "I wasn't able to recognize policy differences between the parties."