Osaka Capital Failed

Democracy defeated despotism with a slight margin. In the referendum over introducing new government system in Osaka, or Osaka Capital Initiative, votes for opposition overtook the supporters by 0.7 percentage point. Prominent leader of the initiative as Mayor of Osaka City, Toru Hashimoto, announced his retirement from political world. His failure was not something attributed to misunderstandings of the voters, but a consequence of hasted reform ignoring fundamental democracy.

Osaka Capital Initiative is a plan to dismantle Osaka City and make it integrated to Osaka Prefectural Government, in which Osaka City will be divided into five autonomic districts. While the reason for the initiative has been to get rid of dual governance by both city and prefecture, the opposites criticized possible deterioration of public service, such as medical support or nursery, being brought by the integration.

But, the original plan was not only about city and prefecture. It assumed greater integration of Kansai area. But, City of Sakai, another key city in Osaka Prefecture, rejected the plan, being afraid of ending its history as commercial city maintained for some centuries. Cities in Osaka Prefecture except Osaka City were also negative to be involved in the plan. It is fair to say that the initiative was already dying. Hashimoto tried to revitalize his personal agenda by shrunk version of integration between city and prefectural Osaka.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is supposedly disappointed with the result. He expected victory of Hashimoto for his constitutional amendment. Hashimoto could have been expected to support it with his colleagues in Japan Innovation Party. All Abe wanted was not new system of autonomy in Osaka, but votes in both Houses of National Diet. Schedule for constitutional amendment will be reconsidered after Hashimoto’s resignation.

Democratic Party of Japan expects further cooperation in policies with Innovation Party. DPJ wants more votes in the Diet to confront the big leading coalition by LDP and Komeito. Unusual coalition with LDP, Komeito and Communist Party in Osaka encouraged DPJ to seek new structure of party cooperation. But, it is obvious that the structure in Osaka only on the issue of Osaka Capital Initiative will not applied to every policy issues in Tokyo.

After all, the referendum in Osaka asked the voters whether they would accept radical reform by Hashimoto. Although the initiative was not complete plan, Hashimoto asked the voters blank ballots for his populist politics. Obviously, it was not something democracy supposed to be. People in Osaka showed their power at the last moment.