Political party of Shintaro Ishihara splits in Japan

A minor Japanese opposition party, led by former nationalist Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara, split into two yesterday as his drive to change the country's pacifist constitution backfired.

Ishihara met flamboyant Osaka city mayor Toru Hashimoto, who had shared the chair of the conservative Japan Restoration Party, and they agreed to part company.

An attempt by Hashimoto to merge with another minor force in parliament, the Unity Party, contributed to the break-up. Unity rejects Ishihara's drive to scrap the US-inspired post-second world war constitution.

"I cannot side with a political party which does not accept the establishment of an independent constitution," Ishihara, 81, told reporters.

"I asked [Hashimoto] to divide the party into two. Mr Hashimoto accepted this."

Ishihara has long advocated the creation of a new constitution that allows Japan to have strong armed forces that can go to war. The present charter bans the use of force in settling international disputes.

Ishihara's own political group joined Hashimoto's in late 2012, when he renounced the Tokyo governorship to return to national politics through general elections in which the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regained power with a landslide victory.