Kunio Hatoyama, deputy head of the Democratic Party of Japan, submitted his Lower House resignation Tuesday so he can run in the April 11 Tokyo governor's poll.
"I have decided to resign from the Diet now because I have found it difficult to keep working in national politics while campaigning for the Tokyo gubernatorial election," Hatoyama, a seven-term Lower House member and former education minister, said after submitting his resignation to Lower House speaker Soichiro Ito.
His resignation will be approved later in the Diet's plenary session. With the resignation, it is likely that Takashi Fukaya, a Lower House member and chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party's Executive Council, will quit the Diet and run in a supplementary Lower House election in Tokyo's No. 2 district.
In the last Lower House election, held in October 1996, Hatoyama was elected from the single-seat Tokyo No. 2 district, beating Fukaya. But Fukaya, who also ran in the election under the proportional-representation system, was able to win a seat in the same election.
Many lawmakers have opposed Fukaya's move, saying his intentions would be hard for the public to understand and would distinguish between lawmakers elected from the single-seat districts and those elected under the proportional-representation system.