Nippon Ishin no Kai, an Osaka-born party, faces a make-or-break moment in next month’s series of local elections across the nation.

With a goal of winning 600 seats nationwide, Nippon Ishin is gambling that, eight years after the current version of the party came into being, voters in other parts of Japan, especially the Tokyo area, are now willing to cast their ballots for what is still a very Osaka-centric political party.

But as campaigning kicks off Thursday for the first round of governor, mayoral, prefectural and municipal elections on April 9, Nippon Ishin continues to struggle in the polls. Uncertainties about whether its candidates have the appeal to sway voters who would otherwise choose a candidate from a locally established party remain.

That uncertainty also extends to Nippon Ishin’s Osaka base, where a battle for mayor is taking place. The race is between Hideyuki Yokoyama, a former prefectural assembly member, and Taeko Kitano, a former municipal assemblywoman and former member of the Liberal Democratic Party who resigned from the party to run as an independent candidate. She is supported by the LDP, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP) and the Democratic Party for the People, while Nippon Ishin co-founder and Mayor Ichiro Matsui, who is retiring from politics, tapped Yokoyama to be his successor.

In a very complicated and unique political situation, the Osaka city and prefectural governments, Osaka Ishin no Kai — Nippon Ishin’s local chapter — and Komeito are cooperating to form a majority coalition. Unlike most local assemblies where the LDP and Komeito cooperate, as they do on the national level, Osaka's local LDP assembly members often oppose the Osaka Ishin/Komeito majority.

Nippon Ishin, however, is confident of their chances next month, not only in Osaka but in the neighboring prefectures of Kyoto, Nara and Hyogo as well. The party is mainly targeting local assemblies in 11 other prefectures, including Tokyo, Chiba, Saitama, Ibaraki and Kanagawa, as well as Fukuoka, Oita, Hiroshima, Niigata, Ishikawa and Aichi.

Nippon Ishin has created local policy platforms for each of these prefectures. The local Ishin parties in each prefecture must agree to the basic national goals of Nippon Ishin, but are then free to add their own goals to their local platform, as long as they are in line with Nippon Ishin’s overall policies.

For example, in Osaka, Nippon Ishin’s policy platform calls for the prefecture and the city to become a back-up capital in the event that Tokyo cannot perform that function. But Tokyo Ishin’s platform makes no mention of that plan, and focuses instead on making child-rearing in the capital easier, reviewing the operation of Tokyo-based pachinko parlors and utilizing the tobacco tax in order to promote anti-smoking addiction measures, promises that are not in Osaka Ishin’s platform.

In a television interview last October, Nippon Ishin head Nobuyuki Baba said expanding the number of local Nippon Ishin politicians in next month’s election was the second-stage of a longer-term three stage plan to become Japan’s top opposition party, which he called the “hop, skip and jump” strategy.

“The hop stage was the 2022 Upper House election, where we won 12 seats, an increase of six," Baba said. That election brought their total of seats in the chamber to 21, including seats not up for re-election last year.

The skip stage is April’s nationwide local elections.

“We have about 400 local assembly seats at the moment, including 250 within Osaka Prefecture and the remaining 150 elsewhere. We plan to double the number of non-Osaka seats to about 600 local assembly members nationwide,” he added.

Winning that many seats would set Nippon Ishin up for the final “jump” stage, the next Lower House election, whenever it may be, in which the party aims to replace the CDP as the the top opposition party.

And if Nippon Ishin fails to win 600 seats next month? In that case, Baba has said he would resign.

“This is the plan, and in the corporate world, if the plan isn’t accomplished, someone has to take responsibility. So if we don’t reach the goal, somebody new should come in to forge a new road,” Baba said.

But experts say that even if the final number is less than 600, it doesn’t mean the party has failed, politically.

“It’s important to not only look closely at the number of seats Nippon Ishin ends up winning, but also where the party is victorious," said Meiji Kakizaki, a political science professor at Teikyo University. "Even if the final number is between 500 and 600, if they gain more seats in the Kanto, Tohoku, Chubu and Kyushu regions, it would be more meaningful (in terms of becoming a truly national party) than just winning 600 seats in the Osaka and Tokyo areas alone.”

Recent media polls show varying degrees of support for Nippon Ishin, but the party still remains behind the LDP.

A Kyodo News poll taken between March 11 and 13 showed Nippon Ishin with a 7.2% support rate. A Mainichi Shimbun poll taken on March 18 and 19 showed the party had an 11% support rate, while a poll taken between March 10 and 13 by Jiji Press showed it had a support rate of just 2.9%.

The LDP’s support rate was 40.6% in the Kyodo poll, 25% in the Mainichi poll and 23.3% in the Jiji poll. Nippon Ishin came in slightly behind the CDP in the Kyodo and Jiji polls, but was tied with the main opposition party in the Mainichi poll.

Kakizaki says that, because LDP support groups are weaker than they once were, and because the CDP failed to achieve results when they teamed up with the Japanese Communist Party in the 2021 Lower House and 2022 Upper House elections, more voters might go for Nippon Ishin this time around.

“The LDP has been winning national elections for the past decade. However, they have not evolved during this time. So, it’s possible younger Nippon Ishin candidates could be elected in their place,” he said.

But Yuji Yoshitomi, an Osaka-based journalist, said that it’s Osaka’s own unique history that led to the rise of Nippon Ishin.

“The reason Nippon Ishin has not spread widely beyond Osaka Prefecture is because other prefectures don’t have Osaka's experience with locally funded infrastructure projects that were pushed by the LDP in the 1990s that failed, creating huge local government debts," he said. "This created a distrust of the LDP that enabled the Ishin movement, with its promises of administrative reform and other cost-cutting measures, to win elections."

Because of this, he added, there are limitations to how much Nippon Ishin-backed candidates will appeal to people outside of Osaka.

While local elections elsewhere next month hold the key to the party proving itself outside of Osaka, the result of the city's mayoral race could determine the future of the party itself.

Since 2011, the Osaka mayor's seat has been held by either Nippon Ishin co-founder Toru Hashimoto or Matsui. While both the governor’s seat (held by Nippon Ishin’s Hirofumi Yoshimura) and the mayoral seat are up for election, the focus is on the mayoral race, which Yoshitomi said is closer than the governor’s race.

“If Kitano wins, Nippon Ishin’s ability to realize their policies in Osaka, their base, will be severely damaged. And if they can’t realize their policies, they will have far less in the way of achievements to use when appealing to the public," Yoshitomi said.

A Kitano victory would probably mark the beginning of the end of Nippon Ishin in Osaka, he added.

Regardless of how well it does skipping through next month’s local elections, losing the mayoral seat in Osaka could make the third part of the strategy to become the top nationwide opposition force a much tougher leap than Baba currently envisions.