On Nov. 1, Osaka residents will vote for the second, and hopefully last, time on whether to merge the city's administrative areas into four large, semiautonomous wards.
The vast majority of news coverage of the issue in the Kansai region has been focused on arguments for or against a merger from the point of view of Osaka politics.
Local politicians, academics, financial experts and lawyers, along with news commentators and even comedians from the Yoshimoto Kogyo talent stable — who play, or overplay, the role of the befuddled “ordinary voter” — can be seen trying to make sense of detailed financial graphs and wordy PowerPoint presentations used by invited guests to prove their arguments or disprove their opponents' claims.