After more than a year in office, Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto enjoys approval ratings Prime Minister Taro Aso can only dream of, and he's wielding his popularity to push budget cuts and sweeping fiscal and economic reforms on the way to what he eventually hopes will be a semiautonomous Kansai region.
At the same time, Hashimoto, a lawyer who gained popularity through his withering comments on TV talk shows before winning office in January 2008, faces growing scrutiny among those who wonder if he isn't going too far too fast.
The prefectural bureaucracy and the political opposition are warning that Hashimoto is not an independent populist but a tool of conservative business leaders and politicians who want to merge Kansai's local governments into one entity semiautonomous from Tokyo but less accountable to local residents than the current prefectural system.