Free high school education is Nippon Ishin no Kai’s signature policy, and party co-leader Seiji Maehara is pushing for it hard in budget committee hearings. Though the effort pits him against Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, the political rivals are actually on good terms with each other personally, thanks to a shared love — and deep knowledge — of trains.
“Maehara-san and I take various trains together. We're not trying to make trains that just run aimlessly. We want to make trains that people want to ride,” Ishiba said while sharing a train to Kyoto's Mount Hiei together with Maehara in 2020.
Ishiba, who was then considered an outsider in the Liberal Democratic Party, was offering his views on how to make Kyoto trains more attractive to tourists. He said he liked Kyoto’s introduction of a nihonshu train to bring more people on board. Maehara, then a member of the Democratic Party for the People, is from Kyoto and represents a district there.
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