Toru Hashimoto's Self-Destruction - NYTimes.com TOKYO - Two weeks ago, Toru Hashimoto, the popular, media-savvy mayor of Osaka, was a depreciating asset in Japanese politics. The co-leader of the Japan Restoration Association, he was watching his four-year old experiment in political theater slide into irrelevance. Support for his political party, which finished a strong second in the House of Representatives election only five months ago, was now down below 5 percent and falling. On May 13, in an apparent act of desperation, Hashimoto tipped over the game board. He spoke with reporters about two hot-button issues: the Japanese Imperial Army's system of sanctioned military brothels - the so-called comfort women system - and sexual assaults by U.S. Forces on Japanese service personnel. His conclusions? First, everyone should understand why a system of trafficking of women from one end of the Japanese empire to the other was necessary, given the stresses of military life at the time. "When soldiers are risking their lives by running through storms of bullets, and you want to give these emotionally charged soldiers a rest somewhere, it's clear that you need a comfort women system,"" he said. Second, U.S. Marines on Okinawa should make greater use of sexual services establishments to release their sexual energies. The kicker was Hashimoto's declaration that he had already tried to convince a U.S. base commander of the wisdom of this idea. The backlash was swift. When Hashimoto strode into the packed hall at the Foreign Correspondents" Club on Monday, he was confronted by a firestorm of angry questions. He attempted to qualify his remarks, but his apology was half-hearted. The damage had been done. What could have possessed Hashimoto to blow up his public image along with his party's hopes? Life, after all, had been going well for Hashimoto and the Japan Restoration Association. In 2012, Hashimoto and Restoration smashed their way into Japan's national consciousness. Faced with the Liberal Democratic Party's hazy conservatism and the then-ruling Democratic Party of Japan's hazy liberalism, Restoration offered Japanese voters a third option - a platform of patriotism and the devolution of power out of central government ministries to the regions. The December elections brought the Liberal Democratic Party back to power, lifting the nationalist Shinzo Abe to the office of prime minister. Restoration, however, attracted 12 million votes, second to the Liberal Democrats" 16 million and way ahead of the Democratic Party's 9 million. With its electoral ally Your Party - yes, that is the party's real English language name - the so-called Third Pole in Japanese politics received more votes than any other bloc. But immediately after its strong showing, the Third Pole hit a wall. Abe's program of big budgets, loose monetary policy and promises of structural reform has been a hit at home (his patriotism has helped) and seized the imagination of the world's investors. While Japanese markets have suffered recent reversals, the general response to "Abenomics" has been overwhelmingly positive. The newly revived Liberal Democrats have sucked up all the oxygen in the room. The result has been a rapid and brutal thinning out of Japan's politicians. Support for the Liberal Democrats is at 43 percent. All other parties, including the now disgraced Restoration Association, poll at or below 5 percent. Hashimoto survived a no-confidence challenge on Thursday by the Osaka assembly, but this will do little to salvage his national profile. Facing marginalization in Abe's shadow, Hashimoto seems to have decided to take charge of his own destiny - by transforming himself into the international poster-boy apologist for the sexual abuse of women by military personnel. Hashimoto's remarks are the nails in the coffin of a Third Pole. The Your Party has stopped cooperating with Restoration, agreeing instead to ally itself with the ailing Democratic Party in elections this summer. The Restoration Association and the Third Pole's early successes were expressions of public resentment and disgust with the old way of doing things. Hashimoto has now shown many Japanese - and the world - that a new face is not necessarily a better one.