Four opposition parties on Wednesday jointly presented a nonbinding resolution to the House of Representatives, urging ruling coalition lawmaker Kenshiro Matsunami to vacate his seat over a scandal linking him to a gangster.
The Democratic Party of Japan, the Liberal Party, the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party said earlier they hope the resolution will be adopted in a plenary session of the Lower House on Thursday.
Matsunami is a member of the New Conservative Party.
The Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling coalition, which comprises the NCP, is expected to block an immediate vote on the resolution. , saying that the lawmaker should first be allowed to explain himself at the Lower House Council on Political Ethics.
Matsunami, 56, said last week that he had allowed a construction firm with ties to a gangster to pay 2.75 million yen as part of salaries to two of his secretaries between March 1997 and February 1998. He said he severed the arrangement after learning the firm's chairman belonged to an underworld syndicate.
The NCP -- the smallest member of the tripartite ruling bloc with 14 Diet seats -- has decided not to demand that Matsunami quit the Diet or leave the party over the scandal.
Matsunami himself has refused to step down.
A former all-Japan student wrestling champion and sports anthropology professor at Senshu University, Matsunami is serving his second-term as a Lower House member representing Osaka Prefecture's No. 19 constituency.