TOKYO, Sept 12: Popular Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto formally launches a bid for national power today with a new political party that critics say taps simmering nationalist sentiment just as Japan faces increasingly strained ties with China and South Korea.
That tension has been growing in recent weeks as Beijing and Seoul both clash with Tokyo over rival claims to islands in the region, disputes that trace back to lingering resentment over Japan’s wartime rule in the region.
“He’s definitely pushing Japanese political discourse further to the right,” said Koichi Nakano, a professor at Sophia University in Tokyo ahead of a fundraising bash in Osaka for Hashimoto’s party. “A lot of Japanese are looking for a messiah who will turn things around and make everything wonderful.”
Some opinion polls show that Hashimoto’s Japan Restoration Party is more popular than the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). In one TV survey it even ranked higher than the biggest opposition rival
Japan has had six premiers since 2006 as it struggles with an ageing population and fading competitiveness. Hashimoto’s party could influence who becomes the seventh after a general election expected within months that the Democrats look set to lose.
Hashimoto plans to run hundreds of candidates in that election, although he insists he won’t be one of them. He only took over last year as mayor of Osaka, Japan’s second largest metropolitan area. He has already lured away seven lawmakers from the DPJ and other parties, and more may follow.
A former lawyer and TV talk show celebrity, the boyish-faced 43-year-old Hashimoto has promised to break Japan’s prolonged political deadlock and stressed U.S. Tea Party-style domestic policies to shrink the role of the central government, give more power to local authorities and promote free-market competition.
And in an apparent effort to woo right-leaning mainstream allies and voters, he is calling for Japan to beef up its ability to defend itself – while keeping ties with security ally Washington tight – and urging a public referendum on revising Japan’s pacifist constitution.
He has also echoed some ultra-conservative views on wartime history that touch raw nerves among neighbours.
“He has gone out of his way to say that sexual slaves in wartime was a fiction,” Nakano said, referring to Hashimoto’s remark that there was no evidence Japan’s Imperial Army forced Korean and other Asian women to work at military brothels. (agencies)
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