TOKYO - He admires cockroaches, once allegedly offered on air to impregnate a TV personality and openly admits to a lust for power.

Oh, and he thinks Japan needs a dictatorship.

Welcome to the world view of one of the country's most popular politicians, Mr Toru Hashimoto, the 42-year-old mayor of Osaka with naked ambitions, who is shaking Japan's political foundations to their core.

A few years ago, he was a corporate lawyer advising companies at the grubby end of personal finance - a sector filled with businesses offering loans at punishingly high interest rates - some of which were rumoured to have connections with Japan's organised-crime networks.

Now Mr Hashimoto, an almost- nightly fixture on news broadcasts, is being courted by Tokyo's politicians as he looks to take his local party onto the national stage.

With 2,000 followers signed up to a school he established to teach would-be parliamentarians, he has a ready-made army aiming to take the political high ground from squabbling lawmakers who have produced little more than a string of short-term, powerless premiers.

"What Japanese politics needs now is dictatorship - or at least a power that is enough to be called 'dictatorship'," Mr Hashimoto said last year while adding that power needs to be checked by local assemblies, voters and the mass media.

"The source of power is the will of the people... Japan's biggest misfortune is that people cannot elect their prime minister directly," he said, referring to the system that sees lawmakers vote for who gets the top job.

This authoritarian streak has been termed "Hashism" by academics and opponents.

But opinion polls have shown the one-time rugby-playing former lawyer - and father of seven - has his finger firmly on the nation's political pulse.

One survey found that 55 per cent of voters want his Osaka Ishin no Kai (Osaka Renewal Party) to win "an influential number of seats" in the next general election, while another saw him top a list of politicians "most suitable" to lead Japan, well ahead of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.

Mr Hashimoto was brought up by a single mother - his estranged father reportedly killed himself over debts to fellow small-time gangsters - and he argues vehemently against handouts, saying that they undermine society.

"'No' to cutting off weak people. 'No' to widening disparity. 'No' to competition - these sweet words are really dangerous," Mr Hashimoto said.

"We will stop this evil trend."

Formerly a man who had no qualms about nuclear power, he has voiced his protest in recent months against plans by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan to allow the restarting of reactors shut down over safety concerns following the Fukushima disaster.

Economist Noriko Hama said of the popular politician: "He tickles where people are pleased to be tickled, and attacks those whom people want attacked."

But Ms Hama echoes a criticism shared by many of Mr Hashimoto's opponents: It is all form and no content.

"I don't see where his real passion is," she said.