OSAKA--Osaka Mayor Ichiro Matsui expressed his intention to resign from politics after his pet project to reorganize Osaka city into a metropolis like Tokyo was narrowly voted down in a second referendum on Nov. 1.

“I need to take responsibility (for the outcome),” Matsui, head of regional party Osaka Ishin no Kai, said at a news conference held late that night.

He indicated he would leave politics when his term as mayor ends in 2023.

The referendum sealed the continuation of Osaka as an ordinance-designated city, but just barely.

According to the results, 692,996 residents, or 50.63 percent of the ballots cast, opposed the plan, while 675,829, or 49.3 percent, voted in favor.

Voter turnout was 62.35 percent, down by 4.48 percentage points from the 2015 referendum.

Matsui and Hirofumi Yoshimura, the Osaka prefectural governor who is deputy chief of Osaka Ishin no Kai, pitched the project to streamline overlapping bureaucratic functions between the prefectural and municipal governments.

They proposed that Osaka, with a population of 2.7 million over 24 wards, be reorganized into four special wards each with an administrative status similar to municipalities, much like the jurisdictional system for Tokyo’s 23 wards.

Under the proposal, the Osaka prefectural government would take over the city’s jurisdiction for urban development and infrastructure projects, while the special wards would focus on providing public services in such areas in education and child rearing.

One Osaka resident who voted against the proposal was Isako Hirai, a 76-year-old woman in Joto Ward. It was the second time she rejected the plan.

Hirai said the advocates for the dissolution of Osaka during the campaign painted only a rosy picture by emphasizing the streamlining of dual administrative functions. But she said she remained skeptical.

“Residents tend to be drawn to words of such a view,” she said.

A deciding factor in her vote was her attachment to the city.

“I could not accept the idea that Osaka city would cease to exist,” Hirai said.

Kenichi Sako, a 44-year-old company employee in Nishi Ward, also voted against the plan, just like in the previous referendum.

While he gave credit to Yoshimura for his aggressive efforts to fight the novel coronavirus, Sako questioned the wisdom of pressing for a referendum in the middle of the pandemic.

“It is impossible to put the city back together once it was dissolved,” he said.

Sako also said he was not convinced by the proponents’ calculations of the estimated costs that would be saved by eliminating “double” administrative management.

Yoshihiro Katayama, professor of local autonomy at Waseda University’s graduate school, said the result showed many citizens did not feel “inconvenienced” by the relations of the often bickering prefectural and city governments.

However, he said the narrow margin of victory pointed to a need for city officials to overhaul their services.

“If Osaka is too large for residents to have their voices heard, the municipal government needs to repair its system to better accommodate residents,” he said.

The Liberal Democratic Party, the Japanese Communist Party and other parties were opposed to the reorganizing project, citing a possible decline in resident services by the special wards.

They pointed out that the advocates’ financial prospects for the special wards did not factor in the economic impact from the pandemic. Therefore, the wards could be left with a shortfall of resources to provide sufficient resident services.

Pushing the initiative, Osaka Ishin no Kai and Komeito promised regional economic growth through streamlined administrative functions and improved resident services after restructuring the existing wards.

Komeito switched sides in the recent referendum. Natsuo Yamaguchi, leader of Komeito at the national level, traveled to Osaka to sell the plan together with Matsui and Yoshimura, but to no avail.

In the previous referendum in 2015, 705,585 voters rejected the plan, while 694,844 voters supported it.

Toru Hashimoto, then head of Osaka Ishin no Kai and Osaka mayor, retired from politics after his push was rejected in the 2015 vote.