On a recent evening, about 2,500 members of the UI Zensen labor federation filled a hall in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward to rally for fellow member Mitsuyoshi Yanagisawa, who will run in the July 11 House of Councilors election.
Yanagisawa is one of eight candidates backed by the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) to run in the proportional representation portion of the election on the Democratic Party of Japan ticket.
UI Zensen groups textile, chemical, food and other services industry unions, and has some 800,000 members. Rengo, to which UI Zensen is affiliated, is the nation's largest union federation.