Japan Considers Second Capital to Support Tokyo

ILLUSTRATION UNSPLASH/Jezael Melgoza

JAKARTA - The Japanese government led by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) officially submitted a draft law to the Japanese Parliament to establish a "second capital" that will help implement the functions of the capital Tokyo and encourage decentralization.

As reported by ANTARA from Kyodo, the LDP and its coalition partner, the Osaka-based Japan Innovation Party (JIP), submitted the bill's draft on Wednesday with the goal of its approval before the parliamentary session ends on July 17.

The bill will be a driving force in JIP's efforts to reorganize the city of Osaka in western Japan as a metropolis like Tokyo by establishing a special area.

The legislation to establish the dual capital system is part of a coalition agreement between the LDP led by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and JIP last October.

JIP's support made Takaichi manage to get enough votes in Parliament to become Japan's first female prime minister.

The JIP-proposed Osaka metropolis plan aimed at streamlining the city's administration was rejected by the LDP and narrowly lost in two city-level referendums in 2015 and 2020.

In order to increase the possibility of a new referendum passing, JIP initially planned to expand the scope of the referendum to the entire Osaka Prefecture, with the bill originally having an additional article that allowed for a prefectural-level referendum.

However, the JIP decided to give in to the LDP and dropped the additional article after a number of LDP members were concerned that the prefectural-level referendum would not be in line with the principle of autonomy guaranteed by the constitution.

Amid Takaichi's popularity, the LDP-JIP coalition is large in the Japanese House of Representatives election in February 2026 to control three-quarters of the House of Representatives, which allows it to overturn the high court's rejection of a bill.

Furthermore, the two parties also submitted another bill to encourage a reduction in the number of seats in the lower house.

The bill plans to remove 45 seats allocated according to proportional representation, out of a total of 465 seats in the House of Representatives, if no other agreement is reached regarding the reduction in the number of seats one year after the bill is passed.

The plan to reduce the number of seats by 10 percent of the total seats in the DPR is also part of the coalition agreement between the LDP and JIP.