"'I want to make it a battle of ideologies,' said Takashi Kawamura, whose U.S. Tea Party-like pledge to cut taxes and slash legislators' salaries swept him to victory as mayor of Nagoya, a city of two million and capital of a prefecture that is home to Toyota Motor and other major Japanese manufacturers whose workers have been an important support base for the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).
"'I want to make Japanese politics a battle between Tax Cut Japan and Tax Hike Japan, between the socialist idea of raising taxes and the idea of cutting taxes and small government,' Kawamura told Reuters in an interview in his slightly shabby private office, where a poster proclaims 'Japan Tax Cuts and Democracy Start from Nagoya.'...
"Kawamura, who won almost 70 percent of the vote in the Nagoya mayor race, has tapped a deep well of dissatisfaction.... 'We wanted things to change but it seems like the two main parties have become just the same,' said 72-year-old Yasuo Kitagawa, who voted for Kawamura in the February mayoral race."
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