Japan Innovation Party leader Hirofumi Yoshimura, also governor of Osaka Prefecture, has indicated a possibility of returning to national politics.<\/p>\n
Yoshimura told a meeting of JIP executives in the city of Osaka on Sunday that he aims to conduct a local referendum on the Osaka metropolis plan for regional administrative reorganization, a signature policy of the JIP, by spring 2027.<\/p>\n
He went on to say that he would study his possible return to national politics if the metropolis initiative is approved in the referendum, sources said.<\/p>\n
At the meeting, the JIP, the coalition partner of the country\u2019s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, decided that Yoshimura would remain JIP leader, without holding a leadership election following the Feb. 8 House of Representatives general election.<\/p>\n
In the election, the JIP, also known as Nippon Ishin no Kai, failed to increase its seats markedly.<\/p>\n
Yoshimura is apparently aiming to solidify the LDP-JIP ruling coalition through his possible return to national politics.<\/p>\n
The metropolis plan, which calls for scrapping the current city of Osaka and reorganizing it into special wards under Osaka Prefecture \u2014 a similar structure to Tokyo\u2019s 23 special wards \u2014 was turned down in local referendums twice, in 2015 and 2020.<\/p>\n
Yoshimura resigned from the post of governor last month in his fresh bid for reelection with a renewed pledge to realize the Osaka metropolis project. He secured reelection as Osaka governor in the poll held Feb. 8, the same date as the Lower House election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will put what I have promised into action by the end of my current term (as Osaka governor through April 2027),\u201d Yoshimura told reporters at the Osaka Prefectural Government office Monday.<\/p>\n
Yoshimura won a Lower House seat in the December 2014 general election and served as a lawmaker in the chamber until early October 2015, when he resigned to run in the Osaka mayoral election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan Innovation Party leader Hirofumi Yoshimura, also governor of Osaka Prefecture, has indicated a possibility of returning to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176],"tags":[701,4932,177,179,236,706,85,180,178],"class_list":["post-51890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics","tag-2026-lower-house-election","tag-hirofumi-yoshimura","tag-japans-politics","tag-japanese-politics","tag-ldp","tag-nippon-ishin-no-kai","tag-osaka","tag-politics","tag-politics-of-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}