KADOMA, Osaka Pref. -- A liberator of a closed local legislature or a troublemaker? That is the question being asked of Hisayoshi Toda, a newcomer to the Kadoma Municipal Assembly.

Promising to disclose activities of his own as an assembly member and the assembly itself, Toda, 44, was elected last April to a 28-seat assembly with 1,313 votes, the least votes among the 28 members.

Since then, he has been fighting a series of battles with non-Communist members of the assembly. Among many others, a recent controversy concerning Toda is whether to wear a tie in the assembly.

Toda, the only independent member, has been refusing to wear a tie till today because "wearing a tie is uncomfortable for me, a former truck driver, and I did my election campaign without wearing a tie."

A nonbinding rule introduced earlier this month stipulating that male assembly members have to wear a suit and tie was a result of long conflict between Toda and 23 assembly members of New Komeito, the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Japan. The four other members are with the Japanese Communist Party. They did not agree to the new rule.

Toda said that wearing a tie has nothing to do with assembly members' activities and it is ridiculous to say going without one is disgraceful.

Konami Kaze, secretary general of New Komeito's Kadoma assembly members, the largest force in the chamber with eight seats, said it is a common rule to put on a tie. "Because he did not follow an unwritten rule, we had to introduce the rule as such."

According to a local assembly official, the rule is nonbinding and offenders are not subject to discipline. However, the official said, repeated violation could be interpreted as a failure to comply with a regulation demanding members' respect for the dignity of the assembly and therefore be cause for disciplinary action.

"After all, it is all up to the assembly members to decide how to interpret the violation of the nonbinding rule," the official said.

Toda said the tie controversy is only part of the strategy of the non-Communist camp to marginalize him in the assembly.

Prior to the dress code, the non-Communist majority even decided to ban assembly members from bringing a bag to plenary and committee sessions, which was obviously targeted at Toda because he always brings paper bags to carry legal materials or necessary resources.

"It was just senseless. They want reasons to complain about me," Toda said. "I think they feel threatened by my effort to disclose every detail of the assembly."

When Toda spent 60 minutes firing questions at an assembly session in June, the question time was shortened to 20 minutes per person by the steering committee, of which Toda was not a member.

After his remarks at the plenary session in September concerning the money scandal involving the then deputy mayor, Toda was disciplined and told to apologize, but he refused. Earlier in the session, he had proposed a motion to demand the resignation of the deputy mayor. This was rejected by the non-Communist parties without counterargument. After the September session, the deputy mayor resigned and in October hanged himself.

During the same session, the non-Communist camp also passed a motion censuring Toda for operating his Web site because they found some of the messages written by readers and Toda in the site maligned the assembly and some of its members.

"They don't like me to disclose the assembly's activities on my Web site because the assembly has long been closed to the public," Toda said.

Although the plenary session is open to the public, committee sessions are closed and so are the minutes of the sessions.

In February, the steering committee banned an assembly member from reading the minutes without the permission of the committee chairman and an assembly chairman. This was because Toda, on his Web site in January, published the minutes of a September disciplinary committee session that targeted him.

In principle, the minutes are not open to the public and no one has ever done as Toda did, the official said.

Kaze, a member of the steering and disciplinary committees, said Toda had lost the trust of other members by revealing the committee minutes. Despite Toda's request to read the minutes of the steering committee, he was not permitted to because "there was no guarantee that he would not publish the minutes again," Kaze said.

Toda said he cannot fulfill his duties as an assembly member because he is denied access to the minutes, and he may take legal action against chairmen of the committee and the assembly.

"Without transparency, no one can check the assembly. I want to provide an opportunity for voters to grade the assembly members' work," he said.

Kaze argued that with an information disclosure ordinance coming into force in July, she could not understand why Toda does not follow the rules until then.

According to the official, however, how the ordinance will be applied to the assembly has yet been discussed, and it will be the members themselves who decide what the ordinance will cover.