Osaka Ishin no Kai (One Osaka) officials were reeling with embarrassment and threatening to file a police complaint this week after a weekly tabloid magazine published the names of the 888 students studying at an academy set up by the local political group and its founder, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto.
Osaka Ishin no Kai is expected to support up to 300 candidates in the next Lower House election, where Hashimoto has predicted they could win up to 200 seats. Local media polls in late July indicated Osaka Ishin no Kai-backed candidates would win somewhere between 80 and 150 seats, mostly in the Kansai region.
Many if not most of the 300 candidates will come from those who have attended the academy since June, listening to lectures on local government reforms, on merging the city of Osaka and the prefecture, on the regional block system, on tax and welfare issues, and on foreign and defense policy.