The Kōmeitō (), also known as the Kōmei Party and Clean Government Party (CGP), was a political party in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, initiated by

Daisaku Ikeda was a Japanese Buddhist leader, author, educator and nuclear disarmament advocate. He served as the third president and then honorary president of the Soka Gakkai, which is considered among the largest of Japan's new religious movements but ...

, and described by various authors as the "political arm" of

Soka Gakkai is a Japanese new religions, Japanese new religion led by Minoru Harada since December 2023 based on the teachings of the 13th-century Buddhist priest Nichiren. It claims the largest membership among Nichiren Buddhism, Nichiren Buddhist group ...

. Kōmeitō was considered a

centre Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

centre-left Centre-left politics is the range of left-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. Ideologies commonly associated with it include social democracy, social liberalism, progressivism, and green politics. Ideas commo ...

political party of the progressive camp until the 1990s. However, since the 1990s, Kōmeitō has become politically closer to the right-wing LDP and has become a centre to

centre-right Centre-right politics is the set of right-wing politics, right-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. It is commonly associated with conservatism, Christian democracy, liberal conservatism, and conservative liberalis ...

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...

party.

History

The party was established in January 1962 as the Kōmei Seiji Renmei (''Clean Government League'') by the Sōka Gakkai, an organization that promoted

Nichiren Buddhism Nichiren Buddhism (), also known as ''Hokkeshū'' (, meaning ''Lotus Sect''), is a branch of Mahayana Buddhism based on the teachings of the 13th-century Japanese Buddhist priest Nichiren (1222–1282) and is one of the Kamakura period school ...

. Running as independents, three members of the Sōka Gakkai had been elected to the

House of Councillors The is the upper house of the National Diet of Japan. The House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives is the lower house. The House of Councillors is the successor to the pre-war House of Peers (Japan), House of Peers. If the t ...

in the

1956 elections The following elections occurred in the year 1956. Africa * 1956 Gold Coast legislative election * 1956 Italian Somaliland parliamentary election * 1956–1957 Kenyan legislative election * 1956 Nyasaland general election Asia * 1956 Burmese gene ...

, with the 1959 elections seeing nine members elected. It also had several members elected to local assemblies. In 1957, a group of Young Men's Division members campaigning for a Gakkai candidate in an Osaka House of Councillors by-election were arrested for distributing money, cigarettes, and caramels at supporters' residences, in violation of elections law, and on July 3 of that year, at the beginning of an event memorialized as the "Osaka Incident," Daisaku Ikeda was arrested in Osaka. He was taken into custody in his capacity as Sōka Gakkai's Youth Division Chief of Staff for overseeing activities that constituted violations of elections law. He spent two weeks in jail and appeared in court forty-eight times before he was cleared of all charges in January 1962. Amongst its policies, the new party supported the 1947 constitution and opposed nuclear weapons. Headed by Harashima Kōji. In the July 1962 elections the new party won nine seats in the House of Councillors.Haruhiro Fukui (1985) ''Political parties of Asia and the Pacific'', Greenwood Press, pp459–460 On 17 November 1964 the party was renamed Kōmeitō. In 1968, fourteen of its members were convicted of forging absentee ballots in Shinjuku, and eight were sentenced to prison for

electoral fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share o ...

. In the 1960s it was widely criticized for violating the

separation of church and state The separation of church and state is a philosophical and Jurisprudence, jurisprudential concept for defining political distance in the relationship between religious organizations and the State (polity), state. Conceptually, the term refers to ...

, and in February 1970 all three major Japanese newspapers printed editorials demanding that the party reorganize. It eventually broke apart based on promises to segregate from Soka Gakkai. In 1969, the Kōmeitō became the third political party in Japan. In the 1980s '' Akahata'' discovered that many Soka Gakkai members were rewarding acquaintances with presents in return for Komeito votes, and that

Okinawa most commonly refers to: * Okinawa Prefecture, Japan's southernmost prefecture * Okinawa Island, the largest island of Okinawa Prefecture * Okinawa Islands, an island group including Okinawa itself * Okinawa (city), the second largest city in th ...

residents had changed their addresses to elect Komeito politicians. It was also revealed that while the party was technically separate from the Soka Gakkai, monetary donations made that were tax exempt were being funneled into funding for the Kōmeitō party as revealed by an expelled Kōmeitō member of the Tokyo municipal assembly. It was usually supportive of the

Japan Socialist Party The was a major socialist and progressive political party in Japan which existed from 1945 to 1996. The party was the primary representative of the Japanese left and main opponent of the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party for most of its ex ...

, and opposed the LDP (

Liberal Democratic Party Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party, Democratic Liberal Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties have usually followed liberalism as ideology, although they can vary widely from very progr ...

), the major ruling party at that time. Kōmeitō did quite well, and in 1993, when the LDP was for the first time declared an opposition party, the Kōmeitō became one of the ruling parties, headed by the liberal

Japan New Party The was a Japanese political party that existed briefly from 1992 to 1994. The party, considered liberal, was founded by Morihiro Hosokawa, a former Diet member and Kumamoto Prefecture governor, who left the Liberal Democratic Party to protest ...

, but which also included the Democratic Socialist Party,

Japan Renewal Party The was a Japanese political party that existed in the early 1990s. It was founded in 1993 by 44 members of the Liberal Democratic Party led by Tsutomu Hata and Ichirō Ozawa. It was instrumental in ending the LDP's 38-year dominance of Japanes ...

, the

New Party Sakigake The , also known as the New Harbinger Party, was a political party in Japan that broke away from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) on 22 June 1993. The party was created by Masayoshi Takemura. The party was centrist, and had many reformist ...

, and the

. In 1994, the latter two parties left the coalition, and in July they took over the rule, making another coalition with the LDP. The Kōmeitō was again thrown into opposition. On December 5, 1994, The Kōmeitō split into two parties. The Lower House chairs and some of Upper House chairs formed Kōmeitō New Party, and five days later, they joined into the New Frontier Party. The others, i.e. local assembly members and the rest of the Upper House chairs, formed Kōmei and independent friend of the New Frontier Party. In 1998, however, the New Frontier Party dissolved, and former Kōmeitō members formed New Peace Party and

Reform Club The Reform Club is a private members' club, owned and controlled by its members, on the south side of Pall Mall, London, Pall Mall in central London, England. As with all of London's original gentlemen's clubs, it had an all-male membership for ...

. They merged with Kōmei in the same year and then became known as the NKP ( New Kōmeitō Party). The NKP adopted a more conservative agenda than the former Kōmeitō and in 1999 they supported the ruling party, the LDP.Hiroshi Aruga, "Sōka Gakkai and Japanese politics", in ''Global citizens, the Sōka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the world''
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Leaders

Election results

House of Representatives

House of Councillors

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Komeito Soka Gakkai Buddhism in Japan Buddhist democratic parties Centrist parties in Japan Conservative parties in Japan Defunct political parties in Japan Economic progressivism Political parties established in 1962 Political parties disestablished in 1998 Progressive parties in Japan 1962 establishments in Japan 1998 disestablishments in Japan Komeito ja:公明党