Commentary: Beyond Capital-City Dominance - Two Models of Territorial State Reform in Britain and Japan

In this commentary piece, Naoki Fujiwara and Andrew Stevens compare emerging efforts in Britain and Japan to reduce the dominance of their capital cities, focusing on Andy Burnham’s proposed “Number 10 North” in Manchester and Japan’s plans for a “second capital” centred on Osaka. They argue that while the British model seeks to redistribute political authority through devolution, the Japanese approach is primarily concerned with dispersing state functions to improve resilience. Together, the two cases illustrate distinct pathways towards a more territorially balanced state.

In his final year in Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, Britain's new Prime Minister, led a mayoral delegation to Expo 2025 in Osaka. The visit came at a pivotal moment for both countries, as Britain and Japan are each reconsidering how national power should be territorially organised beyond their capital cities. Burnham has spent much of his time as mayor arguing that the future of the UK requires a different relationship between Westminster and the regions, a defining project almost. Those assembled around this argument have increasingly presented Greater Manchester as a model for a more decentralised British state, firmed up in recent plans for a post-Starmer administration at Westminster itself.

The visit also marked a new relationship between the two second cities, which became twinned - Osaka's first new sister-city partnership in 36 years. For Osaka's political leaders, it was a chance to reinforce the city's growing international profile and its ambition to play a bigger role in Japan's national story. That ambition is also the origin story of the Japan Innovation Party, or Ishin. Founded in Osaka in 2010, Ishin emerged as a challenge to Japan's highly centralised system of government and the dominance of Tokyo, combining administrative reform, decentralisation and a belief that major metropolitan regions should have greater autonomy. It has struggled to build the same support nationally that it enjoys in Kansai, but it has turned Osaka into a genuine centre of debate about Japan's territorial future.

On June 24, Japan's ruling coalition, the LDP and Ishin's Japan Innovation Party under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, submitted a bill to the Diet to formally establish a "second capital". The legislation defines the “secondary capital function” as a region that both serves as a second engine of Japan’s economic growth alongside the Tokyo metropolitan area and is capable of assuming the core functions of the national government should Tokyo become unable to do so following a major disaster or other emergency. The Prime Minister is empowered to designate the region in which these functions are to be developed, while the national government and relevant local authorities are required to undertake the necessary infrastructure and institutional preparations once the designation has been made. On the evening of 24 July, the bill was narrowly approved by the House of Councillors (Senate), passing by 123 votes to 121.

The legislation therefore represents more than an emergency planning measure. It redefines the territorial organisation of the Japanese state by recognising that core state functions need not be permanently concentrated in a single capital, without challenging the unitary character of the Japanese state.

For Osaka and Ishin, the idea is an opening to challenge Tokyo's dominance and build a genuine second axis of national development.

In the UK, Burnham's proposal to move part of the Number 10 North operation to Manchester is a different answer to a similar problem. Rather than building a backup centre for government, the aim is to bring national political decision-making closer to the regions and show that Britain's future doesn't have to be organised around London.

Two different responses to capital-city dominance

The British approach is essentially political. It rests on the now-familiar argument that regional inequality is partly a product of excessive centralisation, and not just economic centralisation: it is institutional too, with government departments and policy networks clustered in Westminster and Whitehall. Greater Manchester has become the clearest example of an alternative. Through the mayoral system it has taken on responsibilities once decided in Whitehall, and Burnham's case is that regions shouldn't just receive policies designed in London, but help shape national priorities themselves. A "Number 10 North" would be more than an office relocation. Presented by Burnham as the government's new "situation room for growth", it is intended to bring together central government, regional mayors and Whitehall departments around a shared place-based growth strategy. Its significance would be symbolic and constitutional, a statement that national government itself should be more geographically distributed.

Japan's debate starts from a different place. Tokyo's dominance is a longstanding grievance too, but the immediate driver of the Second Capital concept is resilience: Japan's political and administrative systems are so concentrated in Tokyo that a major earthquake or other crisis there would threaten the functioning of the whole state. So the Japanese question isn't so much how to deconcentrate power as how to keep the state functioning if the centre is knocked out?

Osaka sits at the intersection of both arguments. Historically Japan's commercial capital, it has long wanted recognition as more than a regional city. Ishin's metropolitan reform agenda, including the proposed Osaka Metropolis Plan, aims at a governance structure that can compete with Tokyo, while the city has simultaneously positioned itself as the natural site for a second national centre.

The distinction matters: the UK model wants to redistribute political authority; the Japanese model wants to redistribute state functions. Both are forms of territorial restructuring, but they come out of different constitutional traditions. Britain's debate is about empowering regions within a traditionally centralised state, while Japan's is about building additional capacity within a state where national coordination stays highly centralised.

Even so, the overlap is real. Both countries are asking whether a single dominant metropolitan centre creates political and economic vulnerability, and both are testing whether a more balanced territorial structure might improve resilience, innovation and democratic accountability.

Beyond the capital city

The risk is that these debates get flattened into a simple contest between capitals and challengers. Manchester doesn't need to replace London. Osaka doesn't need to replace Tokyo. The real question is whether either state can move past a model where one city dominates national life.

For the UK, that means going beyond economic rebalancing into genuine political decentralisation. For Japan, it means asking whether resilience requires not just emergency planning but a stronger long-term role for regions outside Tokyo.

Ultimately, Manchester and Osaka illustrate two distinct pathways beyond capital-city dominance. Britain seeks to disperse political authority through devolution, while Japan seeks to distribute key state functions through a centrally coordinated model of territorial resilience. Despite these differences, both point towards a common constitutional challenge: how can modern states build multiple centres of governance without sacrificing national coherence?

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Naoki Fujiwara is a vice dean and professor in the Faculty of Regional Development Studies at Otemon Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.

Andrew Stevens is Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies, Newcastle University.

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Note: this post represents the views of the authors and not those of Regional & Federal Studies, the Centre on Constitutional Change, or the University of Edinburgh. 

Image credit: Sean Kippin (Osaka, Japan, June 2025).