2015 referendum in Osaka and surrounding cities, Japan
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (May 2015)Click [show] for important translation instructions.
View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:大阪市特別区設置住民投票]]; see its history for attribution.
You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|大阪市特別区設置住民投票}} to the talk page.
A referendum on the implementation of the Osaka Metropolis Plan was held in Osaka on 17 May 2015. In the event of a "yes" vote, the wards in Osaka City would be reorganized into special wards similar to those in Tokyo. The proposal was defeated by a slim margin of 10,741 votes (0.76%).[1]
50.4% voted against the proposal.[2] 13 out of 24 Osaka wards voted "no".
Interest on the referendum was particularly high. The turnout of 66.83% is 5.91% higher than the turnout in the 2011 mayoral and gubernatorial election.[1]
After the defeat of the plan he had championed in the previous five years, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto announced that he would retire from politics once his term expired in December 2015.[2][3] A major shakeup also occurred in Hashimoto's Japan Innovation Party, with the leader Kenji Eda and secretary-general Yorihisa Matsuno both announcing their resignation from their posts after the defeat.[1]
The referendum outcome was perceived as a blow to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who had supported the plan despite opposition from the Osaka branch of his Liberal Democratic Party, hoping that the Innovation Party would in turn support his efforts to amend the Constitution.[4][5]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
