OSAKA (Kyodo) -- Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura said Tuesday he will run in the leadership race of Japan's second-largest opposition party early next month, following its setback in the Oct. 27 general election.

With the Japan Innovation Party seeking to bolster its support base beyond the Kansai region centered on Osaka, many members have urged Yoshimura, who is nationally recognized, to take the lead in rebuilding the party, which suffered a significant loss of seats.

In announcing the bid, Yoshimura, the party's co-leader, told a press conference in Osaka, "I think the Japan Innovation Party is on the verge of disappearing as a national political party."

"We need to show the public the reason for our existence," the 49-year-old said.

Yoshimura added there is now a "chance" to change the way national politics is conducted after the loss by the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's Liberal Democratic Party and the Komeito party of their lower house majority has forced it to talk to opposition parties.

House of Representatives lawmaker Ryuna Kanemura said he intends to file his candidacy in the Dec. 1 election, with campaigning scheduled to begin Sunday.

House of Councillors lawmaker Shigefumi Matsuzawa, a former governor of Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo, has also showed eagerness to join the race.

Yoshimura, a former lawyer who gained media exposure during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, became Osaka governor in 2019 after serving as a House of Representatives lawmaker for around a year until October 2015. He is also a former Osaka mayor.

Incumbent Nobuyuki Baba, who became head of the right-leaning JIP in 2022, has announced he will not run in the leadership race, saying he is taking responsibility for the party's decline from 43 seats to 38 in the lower house election.

Baba's replacement as leader could affect the JIP's current stance of not cooperating with the ruling coalition of the LDP and Komeito, some analysts said.

On Tuesday, Itsunori Onodera, LDP policy chief, said he and his Komeito counterpart agreed to hold meetings with JIP and the biggest opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, over a new package of economic measures Ishiba plans to compile by the end of this month.

The LDP began talks with the smaller Democratic Party for the People last week to find common ground over the package, which is designed to ease the negative impact of inflation.

After the JIP helped secure the 2025 World Expo for Osaka, the opposition party won a series of local elections in 2023, but it has recently lost momentum amid growing criticism over the ballooning costs for the event.