The approval rate for Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's Cabinet dropped below the benchmark 30 percent line after a controversial sales tax hike passed the lower house a day earlier, according to a Kyodo poll on Wednesday.

The support rate fell 2.1 percentage points to 29.9 percent from the previous poll conducted by Kyodo earlier this month. The disapproval rate jumped 4.3 percentage points to 54.3 percent in the latest survey.

Japan's House of Representatives on Tuesday passed the tax hike bill which was supported by Noda but drew fire from a group of lawmakers within his Democratic Party.

The ruling party and the major opposition parties voted on the bill to double the nation's sales tax rate by October 2015. But the ruling party's former leader Ichiro Ozawa and those democrats close to him rebelled in Tuesday's vote.

The poll also revealed that 40.8 percent of the respondents are willing to see the lower house dissolved for a general election as soon as possible.