Ozawa, known as the “Shadow Shogun”, also promised to battle Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s unpopular move to restart two nuclear reactors, and instead focus on “developing new energy sources in place of nuclear power plants”.
Ozawa and his supporters quit the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) last week, storming out of parliament in protest at the sales tax hike in a dramatic move that shook up Japan’s normally staid political scene.
Seventy-year-old Ozawa, a major powerbroker who was a driving force behind the DPJ’s rise to power in the 2009 general election, named the new party “Kokumin no Seikatsu ga Daiichi”, which translates as People’s Lives First.
The DPJ, a loose alliance of conservative, centrist and liberal politicians, had promised to put more emphasis on the lives of regular people and wrestle national politics from the control of powerful bureaucrats.
The victory ended the Liberal Democrats’ nearly unbroken half-century reign.
“I am determined to take action in order to help revoke the bill for the consumption tax hike,” Ozawa told the inaugural meeting of his new party, comprised of 49 lawmakers from both upper and lower houses of parliament.
Noda had insisted the hike was crucial to chopping Japan’s massive public debt, the biggest debt pile among industrialised nations.
The DPJ still retains a lower-house majority, but Ozawa’s new party comes ahead of a general election expected next year with the ruling party set to suffer at the polls over its tax hike and reactor restarts.