Osaka mayor offers Japan a "third-way" Japan's newest political party has yet to contest a national election - but it has already begun accumulating parliamentary seats. Over the past week, seven Diet members have announced plans to join the Japan Restoration party, until this month a purely regional organisation led by Toru Hashimoto, mayor of the western city of Osaka. Such defections and the Restoration party's growing national support - some polls suggest it is already more popular than the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) - are part of a wider political upheaval likely to have far-reaching but unpredictable consequences for Japan and its neighbours. The new party's rapid rise reflects in part the personal appeal of Mr Hashimoto, a charismatic former lawyer and TV personality with an unusual habit, in Japan, of expressing strong opinions in forceful language. But it also underscores deep dissatisfaction across Japan with establishment parties such as the DPJ, which won a landslide general election victory in 2009 but has struggled to maintain momentum and remains riven by internal division. The once-powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is benefiting from DPJ woes, but remains unpopular with most voters and this month dumped its own leader. In an illustration of the obstructionist politicking that has marked its time in opposition, the LDP recently supported a censure motion against the DPJ - even though it contained language harshly criticising a deal the party had itself made with Yoshihiko Noda, the prime minister. "It is now very evident that the two major parties are incapable of leading government and that's why the "third pole" is becoming popular," says Jiro Yamaguchi, a political scientist at Hokkaido University. The DPJ is likely to be badly beaten at the next general election which most analysts say Mr Noda will be forced to call by early next year at the latest. That prospect was a major driver behind a recent party split that slashed its lower house majority and this week's defection of three Diet members to the Restoration party. Mr Noda is expected to fend off challenges from three parliamentary colleagues in a party leadership election on September 21, but Mr Yamaguchi says the vote could uncover widespread dissatisfaction among members of local DPJ organisations. "His power or authority may be [further] undermined to some extent," Mr Yamaguchi says. That means fresh doubt over national strategy on such pressing issues as energy and the future of the nuclear power sector following last year's crisis at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant. It is also likely to complicate policy making on measures to stimulate a faltering economy and on whether to liberalise trade. Defeat for the relatively liberal DPJ, which came to power with policies stressing social welfare, will almost certainly spell a rightward shift in Japanese politics. Just how far right depends in part on the result of a leadership battle for the more conservative LDP, which elects a new president later this month. The prospects for rightwing candidates like Shinzo Abe, a former prime minister, or Shigeru Ishiba, a former defence minister, have been boosted by recent territorial disputes with neighbouring China and South Korea. Mr Hashimoto in Osaka is also a vocal nationalist, who has questioned Tokyo's past apologies over the forced recruitment of women to work as prostitutes for the military during Japan's brutal invasions of Asian neighbours in the 1930s and 1940s. Reassessment of Tokyo's stance on the so-called "comfort women" would be sure to infuriate regional neighbours. While post-election politics remain hard to predict, many analysts say a coalition bringing together the LDP and Japan Restoration party is the most likely result. Yet coalition politics are unlikely to be smooth. Mr Hashimoto has become a vocal opponent of nuclear power, while the LDP remains broadly pro-nuclear. LDP politicians are unlikely to embrace the Japan Restoration party's policy goals to halve the 480 seats in the Diet's lower house of parliament and introduce a directly elected prime minister. Indeed, analysts say the result of the next election is likely to yield another fractious coalition unable to deliver the kind of clear leadership for which many Japanese yearn. "There is going to be another weak government, with policy drift and lack of progress on the urgent issues facing Japan," says Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Temple University in Tokyo. It doesn't look all that promising.