Ayaka Otsu

Ayaka Otsu (大津 綾香) is a Japanese former child actress and politician who is the disputed de jure leader of The Collaborative Party. Otsu was an agent of Five☆Eight[ ja] during her active years as a child actress.

Early life
Otsu was born in Yokosuka, Kanagawa. She grew up in Yokosuka and Zushi until she was in High school. In her childhood years, Otsu was a child actress. For three years from 2002 to 2005, Otsu appeared as Akira Ikegami's daughter in NHK's "Weekly Children's News". Otsu retired from the entertainment industry when she was in Junior high school. Since then, she moved to the United States before moving back to Japan to study architecture at Nihon University College of Art, but dropped out. After leaving College, Otsu worked at an Architectural firm as an Architectural designer.

Political career
In January 2023, Otsu saw a candidate application advertisement on YouTube for The Collaborative Party (then-named NHK party), which was founded by Takashi Tachibana. Otsu decided to apply. On January 13, 2023, NHK party held a press conference announcing their 36 candidates for the 2023 Japanese local elections. In the press conference, it was announced that Otsu will be the party's candidate for the Meguro City Assembly.

On March 8, 2023, NHK party leader Takashi Tachibana announced his resignation after party member GaaSyy (Yoshikazu Higashitani), a member of the House of Councillors was expelled for not attending any sessions of Parliament. Tachibana changed the name of the NHK Party to "Seijika Joshi 48 Party" and announced that Otsu would be appointed as the successor leader of the party.

On March 12, Otsu dropped out of the Meguro City Assembly election, and filed her candidacy for the Kanagawa gubernatorial election, which would take place on April 9. Seijika Joshi's candidate for the election was Kina Ichikawa, but decided to drop out in favour of Otsu.

Otsu was defeated in the Kanagawa gubernatorial election on April 9, placing 3rd out of 4 candidates. On the following day, April 10, Otsu announced her intention to run for the Meguro Ward election for the second time, which was scheduled for April 26, but was defeated, placing 48th out of 57 candidates.

Leadership dispute
On April 7, 2023, former party leader Tachibana announced that Otsu had been dismissed from the party leader position on March 29, and that she had been expelled from the party on April 6. Otsu posted on her Twitter, account "I haven't resigned as the leader of Seijika Joshi, I don't approve the announcement", fueling the leadership dispute between the two that lasts to this day.

As of December 2023, Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications has not recognized the change of the party leadership. Despite this, most of the party defected and switched allegiance to Tachibana, resulting in a deadlock where Otsu is the de jure leader while Tachibana is the de facto leader.

In November 2023, Otsu changed the name of the party to The Collaborative Party.