Komeito is a Buddhist political party in Japan that was founded by members of the Soka Gakkai new religious movement in 1964. The party originated as a Buddhist lay study group that was clamped down upon by the authoritarian regime during World War II before, under Daisaku Ikeda's leadership, becoming a powerful party of kingmakers in Japanese politics. Komeito draws much of its support from Soka Gakkai members, urban residents (due to the party's emphasis on community development and local governance), teachers and educators (due to its support for improved educational standards and educational resources), moderate and centrist voters who sought a balance between social welfare and economic growth, and pacifict and anti-nuclear movement supporters.
The party, originally called the "Political Federation for Clean Government", was initially accused of violating the separation of church and state and was discriminated against during the 1960s, with Daisaku Ikeda and several other leaders being imprisoned for "election fraud". In 1970, the party was forced to formally separate from Soka Gakkai, although it continued to remain the religion's de facto political arm. The party grew the fastest as rural workers moved to urban areas; these male and female laborers found themselves living alone, and Komeito aggressively campaigned for the votes of these disenfranchised and disaffected voters, causing them to butt heads with the Japanese Communist Party and creating a fierce rivalry between the parties for control of the same constituencies. Komeito professed an ideology of "humanitarian socialism," while hoping to represent the shop owners and housewives excluded from a two-party system dominated by the LDP (representing financial interests and large corporations) and the Japan Socialist Party (representing the trade unions and working class). Komeito supported the 1947 constitution and opposed nuclear weapons, and it usually supported the JSP in its first incarnation.
In 1993, after forging an alliance with Ichiro Ozawa and his LDP rebels, Komeito helped topple the LDP's decades-long monopoly on political power. However, the party split in two in December 1994 as the new government fractured; several party members joined the big tent, opposition New Frontier Party, while another faction formed the New Komeito Party in 1998. This party adopted a more conservative agenda than the former Komeito and allied itself with the LDP in 1999.
Komeito commanded a very loyal electorate of 8 million Soka Gakkai practitioners and was a major force in every municipal area; nearly every Komeito voter was Soka Gakkai, and nearly every Soka Gakkai member was a Komeito voter. Its voters were among the highest-participating voting bloc in Japan, with their vote being directed from the Soka Gakkai leadership. The party's welfarist platform was attractive to voters who felt left behind by the country's focus on the workplace rather than the family, and a bloc of Komeito elected officials became kingmakers in Tokyo politics and other local-level politics. At a local level, however, the Komeito sided with whichever party could guarantee the protection of Soka Gakkai's religious corporation status.
The Komeito's partnership with the LDP, which began in 1999, was defined by an agreement under which Komeito voters would vote for their own candidates in elections to proportional representation lists, while they would vote for LDP candidates in the district elections, as Komeito lacked the strength to win district seats by itself. The deal was incredibly profitable for both parties, as the LDP was able to dominate in parliament, while Komeito received protection for the Soka Gakkai and acquired leverage over government policy, adapting it to be more humanistic and less authoritarian. Komeito supported the reduction of the central government and bureaucracy, increased transparency in public affairs, and increased local autonomy, while supporting a reduced consumption tax rate, school fee reductions, and child allowances. Komeito also helped moderate the LDP's stances on expanding the JSDF, while also seeking to eliminate nuclear arms and Japanese involvement in armed conflicts, even as they supported the American alliance. The party was largely male-dominated, while Soka Gakkai was female-dominated; the Soka Gakkai's Married Women's Association helped revise Shinzo Abe's education policy (which was initially supposed to be hyperpatriotic).
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