Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan 155729111X, 9781557291110

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Notes to this edition This is an electronic edition of the printed book. Minor corrections may have been made within the text; new information and any errata appear on the current page only. Japanese Research Monograph 18 Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steven R. Reed, editors ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-162-2 (electronic) ISBN-13: 978-1-55729-111-0 (print) ISBN-10: 1-55729-111-X (print)

Please visit the IEAS Publications website at http://ieas.berkeley.edu/publications/ for more information and to see our catalogue. Send correspondence and manuscripts to Katherine Lawn Chouta, Managing Editor Institute of East Asian Studies 1995 University Avenue, Suite 510H Berkeley, CA 94720-2318 USA [email protected]

May 2015

Kōmeitō

Japan Research Monograph 18 Center for Japanese studies

Kōmeitō

Politics and Religion in Japan

Edited by George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steven R. Reed

A publication of the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Although the institute is responsible for the selection and acceptance of manuscripts in this series, responsibility for the opinions expressed and for the accuracy of statements rests with their authors. The Japan Research Monograph series is one of the several publication series sponsored by the Institute of East Asian Studies in conjunction with its constituent units. The others include the China Research Monograph series, the Korea Research Monograph series, and the Research Papers and Policy Studies series. Send correspondence and manuscripts to Katherine Lawn Chouta, Managing Editor Institute of East Asian Studies 1995 University Avenue, Suite 510H Berkeley, CA 94720-2318 USA [email protected] Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Komeito : politics and religion in Japan / George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steven R. Reed, eds.    pages cm. — (Japan research monograph ; 18)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-1-55729-111-0 (alk. paper) — ISBN 1-55729-111-X (alk. paper) 1. Komeito. 2. Soka Gakkai. 3. Religion and politics—Japan. 4. Japan— Politics and government—1945– I. Ehrhardt, George, author, editor of compilation. II. Klein, Axel, 1968– author, editor of compilation. III. McLaughlin, Levi, 1972– author, editor of compilation. IV. Reed, Steven R., 1947– author, editor of compilation.  JQ1698.K6K554 2014  324.252’084—dc23 2014035304 Copyright © 2014 by the Regents of the University of California. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. Cover design: Axel Klein and Mindy Chen. Photograph by Axel Klein.

Contents

List of Abbreviations Preface and Acknowledgments

vii ix

Part I: Introduction 1. Kōmeitō: The Most Understudied Party of Japanese Politics George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steven R. Reed

3

Part II: The Context 2. Religious Groups in Japanese Electoral Politics Axel Klein and Steven R. Reed

25

Part III: The History 3. Electioneering as Religious Practice: A History of Sōka Gakkai’s Political Activities to 1970 Levi McLaughlin 4. Kōmeitō’s Uncertain Decades between Religion and Politics Yuki Abe and Masahisa Endo

51 83

Part IV: The Structure 5. How Kōmeitō Politicians Get Elected 113 George Ehrhardt 6. Party Ideals and Practical Constraints in Kōmeitō Candidate Nominations 139 Daniel M. Smith

7. Kōmeitō, Sōka Gakkai, and Money in Japanese Politics Matthew Carlson 8. Housewife Voters and Kōmeitō Policies George Ehrhardt

163 187

Part V: The Way to Power 9. Anti-Kōmeitō Countermobilizations Axel Klein and Steven R. Reed 10. Kōmeitō in Coalition Linda Hasunuma and Axel Klein

215 240

Part VI: Conclusion 11. Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steven R. Reed

269

List of Contributors 277 Index 279

Abbreviations

DPJ Democratic Party of Japan DSP Democratic Socialist Party HRP Happiness Realization Party JCP Japan Communist Party JSP Japan Socialist Party LDP Liberal Democratic Party LP Liberal Party MMD Multi-member district MMM Mixed member majoritarian system NCP New Conservative Party NFP New Frontier Party PFCL Political Funds Control Law PKO Peace Keeping Operation PR Proportional representation RKK Risshō Kōseikai SDF Self-Defense Forces SGI Sōka Gakkai International SMD Single-member district SNTV Single non-transferable vote

Preface and Acknowledgments

Anyone who studies politics in contemporary Japan will eventually come across the tense relationship that persists in the country between politics and religion. Students of modern Japanese politics usually encounter the topic of religion in occasional references to prewar State Shinto, or when they learn that the 1947 Constitution guarantees a legal separation of state and religious organizations—​a guarantee born initially of fear that state support of religious enterprises could enable a return to reverence for a divine emperor. Considerations of this aspect of Japan’s constitution generally conclude with discussions of the most commonly documented instance of perceived transgressions of the politics/religion divide, namely, the periodic visits by Japanese prime ministers to the controversial war memorial Yasukuni Shrine, which routinely results in condemnation by Chinese, Taiwanese, and Korean governments. Further discussions tend to move toward intra–​East Asian conflict and away from Japan’s domestic political and religious spheres. Resulting investigations of the religious dimensions of this conflict almost always take students backward in time to learn about the wartime legacy of State Shinto, thereby veering them away from contemporary interactions of politics and religion. Because the issue of religion and politics has been framed as a constitutional and regional issue, political scientists have largely ignored the most prominent example of their intersection within contemporary Japan: Kōmeitō, the “Clean Government Party,” and its origins in the lay Buddhist organization Sōka Gakkai. Kōmeitō should be an obvious topic for any student of Japanese politics: the party has served as the third-largest party in the Diet for most years since the late 1960s, it has operated in coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party since 1999, and its representatives occupy thousands of seats in regional legislatures across the country. On a topical level, Kōmeitō should interest students concerned with debates surrounding politics and religion because it stands as the only example of a party founded by a religious organization that has found a

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lasting and influential place at all political levels in Japan. Kōmeitō has risen to prominence in the face of considerable public ambivalence and, not infrequently, outright hostility. Due to its size, its influence on the course of postwar Japanese politics, and its distinctive identity as the Japanese Diet’s only originally religious party, we assert that one can neither understand Japanese politics nor contemporary Japanese religion without coming to some level of understanding of Kōmeitō. However, despite Kōmeitō’s obvious importance, there has not yet been a single reliable book-length treatment, in any language, that presents scholarly, nonpartisan investigations of how Kōmeitō took shape and how it operates as a political party. This is just such a book. The pages that follow detail reasons for the glaring lacuna to date in research on Kōmeitō and other politically active religious groups. Put simply, conducting research on this topic has meant confronting multiple taboos: (1) digging into the history and contemporary grassroots-level activities of Sōka Gakkai and several other controversial new religious movements; (2) documenting the inner workings of institutional apparatuses and electoral practices that straddle the fraught politics/religion divide; (3) searching through documents on seldom studied religious groups; (4) unearthing details surrounding some of the most scandal-ridden episodes in postwar Japanese political history; and (5) collating information from a wide variety of sources, often of uncertain reliability, to reveal gaps between the rhetoric employed by political organizations—​of all types—​and the reality of how politics operates on a day-to-day level. Perhaps surprisingly, rather than encountering resistance from individuals or organizations that may have been nervous about long-standing taboos surrounding our research, we have enjoyed a heartening degree of support from fellow scholars in the fields of politics and religion. Additionally, people situated at all levels of Kōmeitō, Sōka Gakkai, and several other religious groups were willing to consult with us extensively. Over the several years during which this project took shape, the authors of this book—​eight political scientists and one religious studies scholar—​have been able to attend Kōmeitō events and Sōka Gakkai meetings, interview politicians at the national and regional levels, acquire difficult-to-find published documents related to Kōmeitō’s past, and otherwise gain access to heretofore inaccessible sources of information on Kōmeitō. The enthusiasm with which our endeavor was received by fellow scholars in Japan and overseas, by Kōmeitō politicians and their supporters, and even by Kōmeitō’s political and religious rivals, indicates to us that many people share our conviction that scholarly attention to Kōmeitō is long overdue. This collection was born at a fortuitous meeting of the editors at the German Institute of Japanese Studies (Deutsches Institut für Japanstudien,

Preface and Acknowledgments

xi

DIJ) in Tokyo in 2008, where we discovered that we were all independently pursuing research on the connection between religion and politics. Later in 2008, Axel Klein, then senior research fellow at the DIJ, organized a symposium on Kōmeitō at which the editors of this volume and several of our authors presented papers on our work to date. The DIJ effectively became our base of operations from that point onward, and several other meetings sponsored by the institute followed. These included a symposium in 2010 that brought together numerous Japanese scholars of religion and politics, and a meeting in the same year at which the volume’s authors were able to speak extensively with the veteran Kōmeitō politician Ueda Isamu. Generous additional financial support from the Faculty of Policy Studies of Chūō University, the home institution of our editor Steven R. Reed, provided us with valuable research assistance at this juncture. Further interviews with Kōmeitō politicians followed. We were also fortunate to have Ian Reader from Lancaster University and Erica Bafelli, now at the University of Manchester, conduct a workshop at the DIJ on their 2012 special issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, to which Axel Klein and Levi McLaughlin contributed Kōmeitō-related research findings. This workshop is one more example of the interdisciplinary cooperation that has helped to improve the chapters of this book. We wish to thank Hirasawa Katsuei, Hirohashi Takashi, Kajimoto Akira, Katō Kōichi, Nagaoka Tōru, Ōe Yasuhiro, Ōta Akihiro, Sakaguchi Chikara, Satomura Eiichi, Shirahama Kazuyoshi, Shirakawa Katsuhiko, Takagi Yōsuke, Tanaka Junkō, Takemura Masayoshi, Tōyama Kiyohiko, and, above all, Ueda Isamu for meeting sometimes more than once with our authors to provide invaluable insight into Kōmeitō and related topics. Our thanks also go to Nishiyama Shigeru, from Tōyō University, Tsukada Hotaka, now at Kokugakuin University, Mark Mullins, now at the University of Auckland, and Saitō Jun, formerly at Yale University, for presenting information to our authors at crucial early stages of the project. Additionally, George Ehrhardt and Levi McLaughlin wish to thank members of Sōka Gakkai, who must remain anonymous for the sake of academic integrity, for generously allowing them to attend meetings at their homes and for letting them accompany members undertaking electioneering activities. Steve Reed wishes to thank Annette Yoshiko Reed for running him through basic training in religious studies, without which he would have never considered participating in this project. Axel Klein is grateful to Florian Coulmas, then director of the DIJ, for supporting the project from the very beginning. Researching and writing this book has truly been a group effort, with all authors assisting each other in several ways, and the editors are grateful for the additional support our authors have contributed beyond

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composing their individual chapters. This cooperation may be one reason why it has taken us six years to publish this volume. As it turns out, however, there was a very welcome side effect to this prolonged process. Additional support—​incisive comments from two anonymous reviewers; tremendous encouragement from Keila Diehl and Katherine Lawn Chouta, managing editors at Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies; and hard work from our copyeditors Alexandra Davydova, Stan Eberlein, Chris Pitts, and Ann Rives enabled us to publish this volume just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Kōmeitō in November 2014. A Junior Faculty Development Award from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at North Carolina State University provided funds that allowed Ann Rives to complete our index, and a publication subvention grant from the Triangle Center for Japanese Studies made possible by funds from the Japan Foundation went to another round of copyediting that sped the final push toward publication. All remaining errors are the responsibility of the editors. We are aware that this volume does not represent a definitive account of either Kōmeitō or religion and politics in Japan, but we are confident that the chapters, which survey a wide variety of fields associated with this fraught relationship, will stimulate further research into this understudied complex of topics.

Part I: Introduction

One

Kōmeitō The Most Understudied Party of Japanese Politics

George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steven R. Reed

Why This Book? When the Japanese lay Buddhist movement Sōka Gakkai (literally, the “Value Creation Study Association”) founded the political party Kōmeitō in 1964, it did so with the declared intention of bringing “Buddhist democracy” (buppō minshushugi) to the country. According to Ikeda Daisaku, then third president of Sōka Gakkai, Kōmeitō was to promote social welfare, humanistic socialism, and pacifism through a political program rooted in a combination of the Buddha’s Dharma and the best of the ­Euro-American philosophical tradition (McLaughlin 2009, 94–​95; Kōmeitō 1964; see also chapter 3 of this volume). To many observers at that time, however, Kōmeitō did not represent a socially progressive new political force fighting for the good of the Japanese people; rather, it was seen as a dangerous, constitution-violating fusion of religion and politics. For most of its critics, Kōmeitō was a poorly disguised attempt by a suspicious new religious group to take control of the country by manipulating democratic processes to usher in theocratic rule. Despite controversy surrounding its institutional continuity with an expansionist religious sect, Kōmeitō enjoyed increasing electoral success until the end of the 1960s. In 1970, Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō cut all official organizational ties following a series of scandals involving attempts by Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō leaders to forestall published critiques of the Gakkai and then president Ikeda. Thereafter, the party removed all religious content and language from its political programs. Reformed and nominally independent, the party lost much of its founding vigor. Its era of spectacular growth had ended, but Kōmeitō maintained its powerful

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organizational base, which allowed it to retain an influential presence in electoral politics. Indeed, from the 1990s on the party operated as a power broker in the middle of every political turning point at the national level, shifting back and forth between ally and opponent of Japan’s major political players. Kōmeitō played a key role in defeating the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP; Jimintō) in the 1993 general election. It was key to the shortlived success of the New Frontier Party (NFP; Shinshintō), and it was also key to the NFP’s ultimate failure (see chapter 5). It was subsequently instrumental in sustaining the LDP-led coalition government between 1999 and 2009, and it continued its partnership with the LDP in opposition from 2009 until December 2012, when the LDP and Kōmeitō were once again elected to government. Thus, because of Kōmeitō’s role in these pivotal events, and in others, one cannot understand Japanese postwar politics without understanding Kōmeitō. However, in spite of its influence, Kōmeitō has remained opaque. Scholarship to date on Japan’s political system does not reflect the party’s significance, and the relatively small quantity of extant literature on Kōmeitō, in Japanese and in English, tends to rely on newspaper articles and outdated sources in concise attempts to explain the party. Some wellregarded academic studies of Japanese politics all but ignore the party entirely. It is this neglect of Kōmeitō and the resulting gap in our knowledge that spurred us to write this book. This volume, however, is not only meant to shed light on a long-ignored part of Japan’s political system. We also hope to make Kōmeitō more accessible to comparative political science. After a long period during which religion was rarely found on the political science research agenda, it was pushed back into the limelight by the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and subsequent cases of religiously motivated extremism. Since then, a large portion of political science research on religion has dealt with Islam and terrorism.1 Many other studies have used a Western- and Christian-based approach that does not necessarily fit well with political realities outside Europe and North America. That Japan has featured rarely in international comparative studies is, for a number of reasons, no surprise. Controversy surrounding visits by politicians to Yasukuni, a Shinto shrine and war memorial at which the spirits of convicted war criminals are revered, frequently inspires discord between the Japanese government and its Asian neighbors. This site of religious and political antagonism is of primary interest to those investigating the way in which former wartime enemies deal with their past and 1  According to Kettell (2012), 40 percent of all articles on religion and politics deal with this topic. See also Wald et al. (2005) and Philpott (2009).

Kōmeitō

5

how international relations are affected by this process. The field of religious studies also deals with the Yasukuni issue, but published findings from this area have yet to capture attention from comparative political science research. However, when it comes to religiously motivated terrorism—​the most common target of international comparative studies—​Japan offers only one recent instance, in the form of Aum Shinrikyō’s violence that culminated in its coordinated attack on the Tokyo subways in March 1995. Otherwise, there are few obvious Japanese religious or political affairs that are likely to grab headlines overseas: there is no contemporary violent conflict between Japanese religious organizations, only a tiny proportion of the Japanese population is Muslim or Christian, and the 1947 Constitution guarantees a clear separation of religion and state. Still, Kōmeitō’s status as a religious party that plays a pivotal role in local- and national-level politics clearly merits the attention of comparative political science. As the search continues for meaningful theories on how religion and politics interact, this volume provides an unprecedented amount of additional information on the Japanese case that will inform theoretical investigations. What Has Been Written Thus Far about Kōmeitō? Not enough. Extant research on Kōmeitō is largely handicapped in one or two ways: (1) most publications favor cursory macrolevel overviews of the party that omit attention to microlevel details that reveal how Kōmeitō functions, and (2) there is very little work published in the last few decades that comes from sustained academic attention to Kōmeitō. Scholarship on Kōmeitō is often inspired by the party’s most prominent feature: its relationship with Sōka Gakkai. Consequently, studies tend to deal with the costs and benefits of the Kōmeitō-Gakkai alliance, with electoral mobilization of Gakkai members being the favorite topic, or they tend to focus on the question of the separation of state and religion. The result of this singularity of focus is that important aspects of studying party politics tend to take a backseat in research on Kōmeitō. In addition, sectors of the Japanese news media have remained eagerly interested in capitalizing on negative images of New Religions, including Sōka Gakkai, creating an environment within which Kōmeitō is automatically linked to scandal and intrigue. Some weekly magazines and tabloid press outlets run stories on religious groups alongside celebrity gossip and other lurid topics.2 They regularly publish negative reports 2  For established national newspapers, the question of when and how to report on religious groups is difficult. A number of large religious organizations have become important customers, as they regularly take out expensive ads and, in the case of Sōka Gakkai’s daily

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on new religious movements (for example, title stories were published in Shūkan Daiyamondo, 12 September 2009, and Sapio, 10 February 2010, 25 August 2010, 9 March 2011), on the relationship between religion and politics (Shūkan Posuto, 26 November 2010), or on religious organizations and money (Shūkan Daiyamondo, 13 November 2010). Given the prurient nature of most of these publications, it comes as no surprise that their reporting is often biased and that they tend to ignore standards of substance and veracity. It is predominantly this part of Japan’s mass media that perpetuates popular interpretations of Kōmeitō as a sinister plot by Sōka Gakkai to transform postwar Japan into a system designed to install its honorary president Ikeda Daisaku as Japan’s unquestioned ruler. In addition to journalists who write books about Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō (Yamada 2004; Hirano 2005a, 2005b, 2008), there is another major source of publications that nourish this negative image: disgruntled former administrators and leaders of the religion or party who parted ways with their organizations in the midst of scandals or conflicts with Ikeda Daisaku. In particular, numerous publications by Yamazaki Masatomo, a former legal counsel for Sōka Gakkai who left the religion in 1980, were the most heated and widely read critiques of all matters related to the Gakkai and Ikeda, including Kōmeitō.3 Harashima Takashi, Takeiri Yoshikatsu, and Yano Jun’ya, all key figures in Sōka Gakkai’s immediate postwar development and among the first members to take office and lead Kōmeitō, also ended up leaving the party and Sōka Gakkai after acrimonious conflict. Each has released exposés vilifying the party, its religious parent, and Ikeda.4 Sōka Gakkai, and to a lesser degree Kōmeitō, have tried newspaper Seikyō Shinbun, even rent the printing facilities of major dailies. This business relationship has apparently affected decision making within editorial departments and the actions of reporters (see Watanabe 2000). 3  In addition to many articles published in Japanese magazines and tabloid newspapers, examples of Yamazaki’s vigorous criticisms of Sōka Gakkai, Kōmeitō, and Ikeda Daisaku include Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō no hanzai hakusho (White paper on Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō crimes; 2001); Zange no kokuhatsu: Watashi dake ga shitteiru Ikeda Daisaku/Sōka Gakkai no shōtai to inbō (Confession of repentance: The true character and conspiracy of Ikeda Daisaku/Sōka Gakkai that only I know; 1994); “Gekkan Pen” jiken: Umoreteita shinjitsu (The “Gekkan Pen” incident: The buried truth; 2001), a book that digs into the monthly magazine Gekkan Pen’s reporting on Ikeda Daisaku’s josei mondai (woman problem) and the resulting lawsuits that ended in Sōka Gakkai’s favor; and Sōka Gakkai to “Suikokai kiroku” (Sōka Gakkai and the “Suiko Association Record”; 2004), which discusses plans formulated by Ikeda and others in the 1950s among Sōka Gakkai’s elite inner circle surrounding the second Sōka Gakkai president Toda Jōsei. 4  Yano Jun’ya has recently been the most active former Kōmeitō leader on the publication front. He has published numerous books on the organizations in which he held leadership positions for decades; for instance, in 2009 he came out with “Kuroi techō”: Saiban zen kiroku (“Black Book”: Complete record of lawsuits), which chronicles his court battles with Sōka

Kōmeitō

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to counter this tendency with their own media output, much of which disavows or downplays obvious abiding relationships between Kōmeitō and devoted Gakkai adherents who mostly continue to treat vote-gathering for Kōmeitō and coalition allies as a regular part of their religious practice. Accounts from the likes of Harashima, Takeiri, Yamazaki, and Yano may be motivated by bitter opposition to Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai, yet they nonetheless provide invaluable insights into the inner workings of the organizations and the details of how both Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō took shape during crucial historical junctures. As architects of Kōmeitō’s founding, these writers provide us with descriptions of unmatched detail and offer vivid explanations of why the lay Buddhist organization Sōka Gakkai moved into electoral politics. They also bring to life challenges they faced building Kōmeitō into a fully realized political organization. However, tracking the story of Kōmeitō’s development by moving between the binary division of virulent critiques—​however useful they may be—​and party-line defenses that dominate published coverage of Kōmeitō reveals significant gaps. For instance, critiques of Kōmeitō fail to account for the marked absence of attempts by the party to foment a religious takeover, even during years of coalition government rule with the LDP when Kōmeitō, presumably, would have been in a position to push its plan to secure hegemonic rule. In contrast, the Kōmeitō party line proclaiming clear institutional divisions between itself and Sōka Gakkai mostly overlooks the party’s origins as a means of realizing Nichiren Buddhist objectives and neglects to analyze the obvious fact that almost all of its politicians and its most proactive voters are adherents of its parent religious group. Neither of these perspectives provides sufficient insight into complexities surrounding Kōmeitō’s historical development and the ways it works as a political party in government and in opposition. Within the armada of negative publications, it is not easy to identify the small number of balanced studies. Academics and journalists who investigated Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō in the 1960s clearly enjoyed easier access to the two organizations than is the norm today, and books on Kōmeitō written in this period, even those that critiqued Sōka Gakkai’s political activities, provide a wealth of persuasive information about the workings of the religion and the party drawn from careful research. Examples of helpful publications from this era include Murakami Shigeyoshi’s Sōka Gakkai=Kōmeitō (1967), a study that draws extensively on rare Sōka Gakkai Gakkai; in 2010 he released “Kuroi techō”: Sōka Gakkai “Nihon senryō keikaku” no zen kiroku (“Black Book”: Complete record of Sōka Gakkai’s “Japan Occupation Plan”). In 2010 he also teamed up with religion writer Shimada Hiromi to publish Sōka Gakkai: Mō hitotsu no Nippon (Sōka Gakkai: Another Japan).

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primary sources to paint a vivid picture of the religion’s early entry into electoral politics; Suzuki Hiroshi’s Toshiteki sekai (The urban world; 1970), which relies on surveys carried out in Fukuoka on Sōka Gakkai members mobilized for Kōmeitō candidates; and the journalist Hori Yukio’s book Kōmeitō-ron (On Kōmeitō; 1973), an account that brings in a wealth of material he accumulated through investigations carried out during the 1960s.5 As McLaughlin discusses in detail in chapter 3, the official Sōka ­Gakkai–​Kōmeitō split in May 1970 was fomented by furor surrounding the publication of a book by Fujiwara Hirotatsu called Sōka Gakkai o kiru (I denounce Sōka Gakkai; 1969). This book and the massive political scandal it inspired marked the beginning of a sharp decline in academic work on Sōka Gakkai’s political engagement. After the Gakkai-Kōmeitō separation, few researchers delved deeply into Kōmeitō’s inner workings. The study of Kōmeitō from this point onward was regarded as taboo within the Japanese academy; researchers clearly feared the possibility of legal or professional ramifications of associating themselves too closely with a “hot” political topic and a “suspicious” religious organization, so they mostly stayed away. As a result, research carried out in Japan on Kōmeitō grew more polarized and less meticulous from the 1970s onward. Only a few scholarly publications shed light on the political organization’s development after its split with Sōka Gakkai. The journalist Kiuchi Hiroshi’s Kōmeitō to Sōka Gakkai: Sono kiseki to senryaku (Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai: Their trajectory and tactics; 1974) provides detailed coverage of how both organizations operated immediately after their official separation, and while Kiuchi is harshly critical of both groups he makes exhaustive use of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō publications to detail their numerous conflicts with rival political parties and the press, thereby providing useful material for researchers today. Of particular note is the final portion of Shichiri Washō’s Sōka Gakkai wa doko e iku (Where is Sōka Gakkai headed?; 1980), which relies on careful readings of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō publications to trace ways the two institutions developed after they divided. The journalist Kawada Takashi’s Shin Kōmeitō-ron (New Kōmeitō discussion; 1980) provides an approachable discussion of Kōmeitō’s founding, its split from Sōka Gakkai in 1970, and its complex relationships with other parties in the ensuing decade (see chapter 4 of this volume for further analysis). Tonari no Sōka Gakkai (Sōka Gakkai next door; 1995), a multiauthor journalistic investigation of the ordinary lives of Sōka 5  For closer readings of the books by Suzuki and Hori, see chapter 3. In addition to these sources, most Japanese-language publications on Sōka Gakkai’s postwar development include discussions of Kōmeitō and the early Sōka Gakkai policy of ōbutsu myōgō, or the “harmonious fusion of government and politics.” For an overview of books and articles in Japanese on Sōka Gakkai, see Shimada (2001) and McLaughlin (2009).

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Gakkai members, published by Takarajima, includes a few short sections on electioneering. A sympathetic account, Dare mo shiranai Sōka Gakkai no senkyo (The Sōka Gakkai electoral campaign that no one knows; 1995), was published by Kitagawa Kōyō and Gokatsukai, a group consisting mostly of Sōka Gakkai members, who describe the “sweat and tears” of the organization’s rank-and-file members.6 A few other subsequent journalistic treatments, including AERA Henshūbu’s Sōka Gakkai kaibō (Anatomy of Sōka Gakkai; [1996] 2000), Sōka Gakkai Mondai Kenkyūkai’s Sōka Gakkai Fujinbu: Saikyō shūhyō gundan kaibō (Sōka Gakkai Married Women’s Division: Dissection of the strength of the strongest vote-winning group; 2001), and Takarajima’s Ikeda Daisaku naki ato no Sōka Gakkai (Sōka Gakkai after Ikeda Daisaku; 2007) are some of a few collections that include accounts of Sōka Gakkai members’ activities on behalf of Kōmeitō. There is, however, a conspicuous absence of a recent book in Japanese by researchers of any type simply on Kōmeitō—​where the party came from, how it developed, and how its various levels function. Etō Shunsuke and Shichiri Washō’s volume Jimintō/Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō (Liberal Democratic Party/Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō; 2003) accounts for the origins of the party, Sōka Gakkai’s fraught political relationships, and how Kōmeitō joined the LDP in coalition, yet it is a relatively short and focused account that centers almost exclusively on the leadership level (see Ehrhardt 2008). It does, however, employ reliable citations, a feature that is all but completely absent in the books produced by the most recently prolific writer on Kōmeitō, the former Japan Women’s University professor of religion Shimada Hiromi. Shimada is perhaps best known for losing his academic position after publicly defending Aum Shinrikyō shortly before the group attacked the Tokyo subways in March 1995 and revelations about Aum’s extended history of mass murder came to light.7 The many books he has published since then are clearly aimed at generating sales from a mass audience, yet as an accomplished scholar of Japanese New Religions Shimada is well informed about Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō, subjects he returns to frequently. His recent books that deal with Kōmeitō include Sōka Gakkai (2004), Sōka Gakkai no jitsuryoku (Sōka Gakkai’s true strength; 2006), Kōmeitō vs. Sōka Gakkai (2007), and Minzokuka suru Sōka Gakkai (Ethnicized Sōka Gakkai; 2008). These books and some of his other publications cover many historical and current events surrounding the party and include valuable information, some of which the authors of this volume use. 6  The Gogatsukai (May Society) was a response to the anti-Gakkai Shigatsukai (April Society); see chapter 9. 7  Shimada describes this event himself (2001), and the storied relationship between Aum and academics is discussed in Baffelli and Reader (2012).

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However, Shimada’s tendency to omit documentation undermines the academic legitimacy of his enterprise, and most of his theoretical claims about Kōmeitō remain undeveloped.8 Japanese political science has produced many volumes that mention Kōmeitō. Numerous Japanese-language studies—​including introductory textbooks—​that deal with topics such as voter behavior, Upper and Lower House elections, the party system, and coalition governments include discussions of Kōmeitō as a matter of course. Still, the discipline has largely failed to assign Kōmeitō a place in its research agenda that corresponds to the party’s relevance. Publications that appeared from the mid-1990s on had reason enough to deal with Kōmeitō more thoroughly than they did, as the party had already been part of two coalition governments (in 1993 and 1994). However, we do not find this significance reflected in Japanese scholarship. For example, Miyake Ichirō (1995) includes Kōmeitō in some of his voter surveys, but mostly as part of the category “opposition parties.” Other than that, he dedicates only two pages to describing how many Japanese would never vote for the minor parties Kōmeitō and the Japan Communist Party (JCP; Kyōsantō). Yamaguchi Jirō and other authors in his 1997 edited volume on coalition politics ignore Kōmeitō almost completely, as do Uchida, Hayano, and Sone in their earlier volume (1994). Like many other political scientists at that time they focused on the questions of how the LDP fared in opposition and how the new parties would perform. Studies that include discussions of the short-lived New Frontier Party reduce their interest in things Kōmeitō mostly to the socalled Ichi-Ichi Line, the relationship between NFP leader Ozawa Ichirō and Kōmeitō’s then secretary general Ichikawa Yūichi (see, e.g., Kusano 1999; Ichikawa 2014). The second point of interest of this time was the voting behavior of Sōka Gakkai members and the question of whether they would support NFP candidates who did not originally belong to Kōmeitō. However, as Ōtake demonstrates by devoting only two pages to this topic in his 1997 edited volume, Kōmeitō itself did not emerge as a topic of concern for political scientists. After the NFP broke up, Kōmeitō appeared even less often in political science studies. It was widely neglected in textbooks: the 2001 volume 8  Two others with relatively widely distributed recent publications that include discussions of Kōmeitō are Tamano Kazushi, whose Sōka Gakkai no kenkyū (Sōka Gakkai research; 2008) briefly surveys Sōka Gakkai’s entry into politics and Kōmeitō’s experiences in the Diet; and Yamada Naoki, whose Sōka Gakkai to wa nani ka (What is Sōka Gakkai?; 2004) portrays the Gakkai as working through its affiliated political party to leverage power through the LDP–​Kōmeitō government. Tamano approaches the topic as a disinterested sociologist and Yamada as a tabloid journalist, yet both of their books suffer from the same weakness of not providing citations.

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on Japanese politics by Muramatsu, Itō, and Tsujinaka fails to refer to the party. When Kōmeitō joined the coalition with the LDP in 1999, the new alliance was widely criticized for being a product of opportunism and lack of political principles, and for about two years some Liberal Democrats fought the new partner (see chapter 9). While this controversy attracted some attention among political scientists, their written output on this issue never went beyond the occasional contribution to a daily newspaper or monthly magazine. Over the next eight years, we again find publications on elections that mention Kōmeitō, and some policy studies that also note the party, especially with regard to the dispatch of Self-Defense Forces (see chapter 10), though rarely on other issues.9 Yet there is not enough to demonstrate that Kōmeitō earned a relevant place on the research agenda of Japanese political scientists. In the meantime, the JCP published two volumes criticizing Kōmeitō (2001, 2002). Two former members of parliament also added their views: helped by journalist Okkotsu Masao, Fukumoto Jun’ichi has retaliated in print against his former party, which in 2007 had refused his candidacy for another term as an Upper House member.10 Democrat Hirano Sadao owed his successful entry into politics in 1992 to support from Kōmeitō, but after the end of his time in parliament in 2004 he also published three books (2005a, 2005b, 2008) criticizing the party. Thus, as we write this introduction at the beginning of 2014, only a few months before the fiftieth anniversary of Kōmeitō’s founding, there has still not been a single book on Kōmeitō as a ruling party originating from Japanese political science. In sum, the field of publications on Kōmeitō in Japan has been left mostly to polemicists, tabloid profiteers, and writers marginalized after falling victim to the vagaries of Japanese politics or popular antipathy to New Religions.11 By contrast, English-language literature on Kōmeitō suffers far less from a bias in favor of or against the interaction of religion and politics. There is no comparable market outside Japan for the kind of tabloid reportage on Kōmeitō that appears constantly in Japan.12 It also appears to 9 

An exception is Suzuki (2008). Okkotsu has made his living as a strong critic of both Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō and, with others, teamed up with former Kōmeitō lawmaker Ōhashi Toshio, who was expelled from the party in 1988. 11  For an examination of the state of research on Japanese religion following 1995, see the special issue of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies titled Aftermath: The Impact and Ramifications of the Aum Affair (2012), which includes extensive discussions of the effects of this event on Japanese politics. The volume Religion and Social Crisis in Japan: Understanding Japanese Society through the Aum Affair, edited by Robert J. Kisala and Mark R. Mullins (2001), also includes discussions related to this issue. 12  A documentary produced by Julian Pettifer for the British Broadcasting Corporation and aired on 14 October 1995 is a notable exception. “The Chanting Millions,” part of the 10 

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be easier to study the party and its main support group without dealing with the presuppositions regarding Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai that dominate Japanese society. To be sure, Sōka Gakkai has published extensively in a number of languages as part of its campaign to proselytize all over the world.13 However, publications by Sōka Gakkai after 1970 mostly avoid discussing Kōmeitō.14 Outside Japan, interest in Kōmeitō is found mostly among academics who have produced a limited quantity of work on the party. James White’s book The Sōkagakkai and Mass Society (1970) stands as the most comprehensive treatment of Kōmeitō written to date in English, and it remains an essential source for information on the early years of the party. Another scholar writing around the same time worth mentioning in this regard is the Christian missionary James Allen Dator (1965, 1967, 1972), whose articles on Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō provide an informative look at the organization’s grassroots-level activities. However, despite differences in academic milieu, English-language scholarship on Kōmeitō, like its Japanese-language counterpart, drops off in quantity and quality from the 1970s onward. Historian of religion Daniel Métraux, probably the most prolific author on the topic outside of Japan and a visiting fellow at Sōka University in 1992, has published numerous books and articles on Sōka Gakkai (1994, 1999, 2001, 2005), some of which cover aspects of Kōmeitō. While he has enjoyed access to a number of Kōmeitō politicians and many opportunities to engage with Sōka Gakkai members, his work generally remains on a descriptive level when it comes to the party (an example of this is Métraux 1999). In addition, his numerous publications on Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō hardly deal with the more controversial—​and important—​episodes in the entangled history of the religion and the political party. Discussions of Kōmeitō in English-language introductory textbooks dedicated to the political system of Japan have tended to be brief. Over the past few decades, Hrebenar ([1988/1992] 2000), Curtis (1988, 1999), BBC’s “Assignment” series, portrays Sōka Gakkai as a sinister plot to enthrone Ikeda Daisaku and includes discussions of Kōmeitō and the NFP. 13  An intriguing historical artifact reveals the pre-1970 picture, quite literally: a bilingual Japanese-English pictorial publication called Nichiren Shōshū Sōkagakkai Photographic, vol. 6 (Nichiren Shōshū Sōkagakkai 1966) concludes with an eleven-page photo spread documenting Kōmeitō members debating the government in the Diet and the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, and out in public engaged in social welfare initiatives. 14  Exceptions can be found. For instance, Sōka Gakkai’s 2000 Annual Report, which surveys the year Kōmeitō joined the Liberal Democratic Party, includes a section reaffirming Sōka Gakkai’s policy of “separating politics and religion” (seikyō bunri) and clarifying the parameters of its role as Kōmeitō’s “support organization” (shiji dantai) (see Sōka Gakkai 2000, 12–​18).

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Neary (2002), Stockwin ([1982] 2008), Baerwald ([1974] 2010), and Kabashima and Steel (2010) have produced well-received volumes that mention the party. All of these authors stress the ties between Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō, the active mobilization of Sōka Gakkai members at election time, and the problematic image of both organizations in the Japanese public, but apart from this standard narrative there is little further analysis. In an introductory volume Governing Japan (2008), for example, Stockwin discusses Kōmeitō in less than a page, referring only to the first edition of his own Governing Japan from 1982 and James White’s seminal work (1970). Rosenbluth and Thies (2010) relegate Kōmeitō discussion to little more than one page in a subchapter on “Other Opposition Parties,” referring only to Hrebenar (1992). The citation list in Hrebenar’s textbook includes only one source on Kōmeitō, and that is from 1982.15 Three English-language political science texts distinguish themselves by explaining opposition politics during the period of LDP dominance (1955–​1993) and its immediate aftermath. In Stephen Johnson’s Opposition Politics in Japan (2000) we find a number of paragraphs explaining Kōmeitō policies and strategies over the years, but compared to analyses of the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, Kōmeitō takes a back seat. Besides newspaper articles and two interviews, his sources are Hori (1973, 1979) and Kiuchi (1974). Ray Christensen published Ending the LDP Hegemony: Party Cooperation in Japan in 2000, which draws on a similar mix of sources, and Ethan Scheiner’s Democracy without Competition in Japan (2005) refers only to newspaper articles in its treatment of Kōmeitō.16 While these books deal with Kōmeitō more extensively than other English-language publications do, they focus on electoral politics and interparty relations, not Kōmeitō on its own terms. The 2011 volume edited by Roy Starrs titled Politics and Religion in Modern Japan: Red Sun, White Lotus includes a brief yet useful chapter by Erica Baffelli on Sōka Gakkai’s founding of Kōmeitō and the religion’s ethic of “Buddhist politics.” The most recent book-length contribution to Kōmeitō research is Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen’s study of Sōka Gakkai youth and their attitude toward the party (2012). This book provides valuable onthe-ground perspectives on how Gakkai youth mobilize for Kōmeitō during elections, even as they express occasional discontent with the party’s policies and decisions in government. As a primarily ethnographic study 15  Kishimoto Kōichi’s widely read book Politics in Modern Japan ([1977/1982/1988] 1997) included less than two pages on Kōmeitō and no list of references. 16  In his 1992 dissertation titled “The Significance of the Opposition in Japanese Politics: The Case of Electoral Coalitions in Japan,” Christensen draws upon three monographs from the early 1970s, a few articles from monthly Japanese magazines, and five interviews with national (three) and local (two) politicians of the party.

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of a specific Sōka Gakkai demographic, it does not cover those aspects of Kōmeitō that are crucial to our endeavor.17 This review demonstrates that there are omissions in the academic literature on Kōmeitō. There is very little published on how the party formulates policy, selects candidates to run for office, operates in opposition and in coalition, and other salient issues. This glaring lack of studies on these topics, despite the fact that Kōmeitō has been around for half a century, speaks to lacunae in knowledge about this important organization, and therefore critical gaps in our knowledge of the postwar Japanese political system. Organization of This Book We approach Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai using a variety of methodologies in order to fill gaps in understanding the organizations. What motivated Kōmeitō’s founding? Why did a religious organization enter electoral politics, and how did its party survive and thrive, both in opposition and in government? And, perhaps most importantly, how does Kōmeitō work? Four of our chapters offer insights from fieldwork inside contemporary Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai. Two of our authors, George Ehrhardt and Levi McLaughlin, have spent long periods embedded as nonmember researchers in grassroots Sōka Gakkai activity, giving them a perspective that the current political science literature lacks. Our other contributors have conducted fieldwork during election campaigns, interviewed Kōmeitō politicians, analyzed Kōmeitō campaign finance records and other archival sources that are difficult to obtain, and synthesized data from Japaneselanguage newspapers and other publications that present understandings of how Kōmeitō developed and how it operates today. We have arranged the nine chapters that follow this introduction along three principle lines of inquiry: (1) Kōmeitō’s history, (2) its inner workings, and (3) its way to power. To establish a context for nonspecialists, chapter 2, by Axel Klein and Steven Reed, discusses the role religion plays in Japanese electoral politics, how religious identification influences voting behavior, and how religious groups support candidates and parties. This chapter summarizes the role of religion within postwar Japanese politics and compares the Japanese case to situations in other countries. 17  Another English-language study of Kōmeitō worth mentioning is Bhoopender S. Dalal’s BJP and Kōmeitō: Religion and Politics in India and Japan (2002), a published dissertation that presents a comparative study of political parties founded by religious organizations in non-Western democracies; the comparison is informative, yet the author’s inability to read Japanese limits his analysis.

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Chapters 3 and 4 turn to the history of Kōmeitō, from its founding up to the early 1990s. Levi McLaughlin explores in chapter 3 how Sōka Gakkai’s second president, Toda Jōsei, and third president, Ikeda Daisaku, drew on medieval Japanese Buddhism to inspire Gakkai followers to produce an energetic mass political movement in the 1950s. McLaughlin employs ethnography and primary source evidence to address why Sōka Gakkai entered politics by locating Sōka Gakkai’s earliest political campaigns in the mandates of Nichiren Shōshū, the branch of Japanese temple-based Buddhism in which Sōka Gakkai began as a lay association. He then describes the people who drove proselytizing and political campaigns during the 1960s and the founding of Kōmeitō in 1964 by outlining the demographic makeup of the early Gakkai membership, and concludes by examining fallout from the tumultuous series of events that led to the official split in 1970 between Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō. Yuki Abe and Masahisa Endo continue the narrative in chapter 4 by following the reformed Kōmeitō in its new existence as a party officially separated from its religious founder that faced new existential and practical dilemmas. The period from 1970 until the 1990s, when the party entered government, is a pivotal time in Kōmeitō’s development. In these decades, the party experimented with policy stances and electoral practices as it groped toward an independent identity. Abe and Endo trace how events during these decades shaped Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai members’ activities. They also offer important insights into connections between the religious mother organization and the political party, a relationship that at times—​and quite contrary to widespread belief—​was far from harmonious. In chapter 5, George Ehrhardt begins our inquiry into Kōmeitō’s inner workings as he employs data from fieldwork carried out during the July 2010 Upper House election to explore Kōmeitō campaigns from the inside. He describes vote-getting techniques in detail and traces how the political party and religious organization integrate their activities. This chapter also places Kōmeitō campaign activity in the context of the extensive political science literature on electoral behavior and determines that Kōmeitō electioneering practices, though they are arguably the most controversial regular activities in Japanese electoral politics, are surprisingly close to methods employed by political parties in the Japanese mainstream. Chapter 6, by Dan Smith, examines the party’s candidate recruitment and nomination processes. The chapter addresses not only how the nomination process works within Kōmeitō, but also who tends to get nominated, as well as where and why. Based on quantitative data on Kōmeitō candidates for the Diet from 1980 to 2013 and qualitative data obtained

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through personal interviews with Kōmeitō politicians, Smith evaluates the balance between Kōmeitō’s guiding principles and ideals in candidate selection—​including those influenced by its relationship to Sōka Gakkai—​ as well as the constraints imposed on the party by its limited support base and the Japanese electoral system. Matthew Carlson turns to money in chapter 7. Campaign finance is a key issue for Kōmeitō, as the nature of the party’s financing mechanisms has long been an object of controversy. In his contribution, Carlson sheds as much light as possible on the amount of money Kōmeitō members raise and spend, and compares his results to data on other political parties. As Sōka Gakkai’s finances are not publicly disclosed and the religion remains a key conduit of funding for Kōmeitō, Carlson relies on difficult-to-obtain official sources by reviewing and updating the scant research on this important topic and highlighting the limits of existing studies. In chapter 8, Ehrhardt employs data from his participant observation and interviews with grassroots-level Sōka Gakkai adherents to argue for a political explanation of local-level Kōmeitō electioneering. When setting its policy preferences, Kōmeitō answers to the housewives of Sōka Gakkai because they make up the party’s single largest bloc of supporters and they are the most active electoral campaigners in Japan. Ehrhardt determines that local-level Kōmeitō electioneering is not mobilized by religious doctrine or Sōka Gakkai leaders’ dictates per se, yet these influences filter through the everyday life experiences and policy preferences of housewives. The final part of the book looks at Kōmeitō’s way to power. In chapter 9, Axel Klein and Steven Reed portray the evolution of Kōmeitō from a pariah party into a coalition partner by following four countermobilizations that Kōmeitō triggered. All were based on Sōka Gakkai’s entrance into the political arena, an event that permanently transformed the relationship between religion and politics in Japan by dividing those who opposed the creation of a religious political party from those who accepted it. The confrontation between the camps proved to be a tremendous impediment for Kōmeitō on its way to power, yet Kōmeitō eventually became part of Japan’s political mainstream; Klein and Reed illuminate the political obstacles Kōmeitō overcame to achieve this status. Linda Hasunuma and Axel Klein in chapter 10 provide an analysis of Kōmeitō’s first stint as junior coalition partner of the LDP (1999–​2009). By looking at office allocations, policies, and the internal dynamics of the alliance, the authors argue that Kōmeitō was not obedient to the LDP but instead acted autonomously, as junior coalition partners in other democracies routinely do. While the party had to give up some of its ideals, Kōmeitō was still able to successfully push some of its core policies,

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especially in the field of social welfare. In sum, Hasunuma and Klein conclude that the alliance between Kōmeitō and the LDP was, and still is, a natural choice for both parties. Writing on Japanese politics in the first edition of Japan’s Parliament: An Introduction, Hans Baerwald concluded his overview of opposition parties by stating that “it remains to be seen whether it is the Kōmeitō or the JCP which has been the proverbial flash in the pan” (1974, 44). History has shown that neither party has disappeared, and four decades of electoral success at every level of Japanese government and years of coalition rule tell us that Kōmeitō has proven its credentials as a bona fide political party. Kōmeitō is surely worthy of a far higher level of attention than it has received so far. In sum, it is important to understand Kōmeitō as a political party, not simply as a political tactic employed to expand the power of Sōka Gakkai. When one does so, one finds that Kōmeitō is a surprisingly “normal” party, a point that we shall discuss in more detail in chapter 11, our conclusion. It is clear that Kōmeitō has been neglected by academics for too long. The fieldwork, archival research, and analyses from political science and religious studies that we combine allow a deeper, more up-to-date look at this understudied party than was previously available, and we are confident that the information provided in the pages that follow will be of use not only to Japan specialists but also to readers interested in the intersection of religion and politics across the globe. References AERA Henshūbu. [1996] 2000. Sōka Gakkai kaibō [Anatomy of Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha. Baerwald, Hans H. [1974] 2010. Japan’s Parliament: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baffelli, Erica. 2011. “‘The Gakkai Is Faith; the Kōmeitō Is Action’: Sōka Gakkai and ‘Buddhist Politics.’” In Politics and Religion in Modern Japan: Red Sun, White Lotus, edited by Roy Starrs, 216–​239. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Baffelli, Erica, and Ian Reader, eds. 2012. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39, no. 1. ———. 2012. “Editors’ Introduction. Impact and Ramifications: The Aftermath of the Aum Affair in the Japanese Religious Context.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39, no. 1:1–​28. Christensen, Ray. 1992. “The Significance of Opposition in Japanese Politics: The Case of Electoral Coalitions in Japan.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University.

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———. 2000. Ending the LDP-Hegemony: Party Cooperation in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Curtis, Gerald. 1988. The Japanese Way of Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1999. The Logic of Japanese Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Dalal, Bhoopender S. 2002. BJP and Kōmeitō: Religion and Politics in India and Japan. New Delhi: Confluence International. Dator, James Allen. 1965. “The Sōka Gakkai: A Socio-political Interpretation.” Contemporary Religions in Japan 6, no. 3:207–​242. ———. 1967. “Sōka Gakkai in Japanese Politics.” Journal of Church and State 9:211–​237. ———. 1972. “Sōka Gakkai: Kōmeitō and Its Role in Socio-political Development of Postwar Japan.” Journal of Developing Areas 6, no. 3:345–​364. Ehrhardt, George. 2008. “Book review.” Politics and Religion 1, no. 1:137–​148. Etō Shunsuke and Shichiri Washō. 2003. Jimintō/Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō [Liberal Democratic Party/Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō]. Tokyo: Gakushū no Tomosha. Fisker-Nielsen, Anne Mette. 2012. Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan. New York: Routledge. Fujiwara Hirotatsu. 1969. Sōka Gakkai o kiru [I denounce Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Nisshin Hōdō. Fukumoto Jun’ichi. 2008. Sōka Gakkai –​Kōmeitō “kane to hin’i” [Sōka Gakkai—​Kōmeitō “Money and Grace”]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Fukumoto Jun’ichi and Okkotsu Masao . 2009. Sōka Gakkai to Kōmeitō no dōkō o kangaeru [Thinking about the attitude and movements of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō]. Tokyo: Nichirenshū Shūmuin. Hirano Sadao. 2005a. Kōmeitō–​Sōka Gakkai no shinjitsu [The Truth about Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. ———. 2005b. Kōmeitō–​Sōka Gakkai to Nihon [Kōmeitō–​Sōka Gakkai and Japan]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. ———. 2008. Kōmeitō–​Sōka Gakkai no yabō [The treacherous ambitions of Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Hori Yukio. 1973. Kōmeitō-ron: Sono kōdō to taishitsu [On Kōmeitō: Activities and characteristics]. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten. ———. 1979. “Kōmeitō.” In Kakushin seiryoku [Force of reform], edited by Shiratori Rei. Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinpōsha. Hrebenar, Ronald J., ed. [1988/1992] 2000. Japan’s New Party System. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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Ichikawa Yūichi. 2014. “Kīman ga mita ‘renritsu no kyokui’” [The “essential point of the coalition” as seen by a key person]. In Kōmei 1:16–​30. JCP [Japan Communist Party Publication Bureau]. 2001. Kōmeitō–​Sōka Gakkai no kyōsantō kōgeki o hihan suru: Ochime no handō seiji o sasaeru [Criticizing Kōmeitō’s and Sōka Gakkai’s attacks against the JCP: Sustaining waning backlash politics]. Tokyo: Japan Communist Party Publication Bureau. ———. 2002. Kitachōsen mondai “hansei” subeki wa Kōmeitō dewa nai no ka [Is it not Kōmeitō that should reflect on the North Korea problem?]. Tokyo: Japan Communist Party Publication Bureau. Johnson, Stephen. 2000. Opposition Politics in Japan: Strategies under a OneParty Dominant Regime. New York: Routledge. Kabashima, Ikuo, and Gill Steel. 2010. Changing Politics in Japan. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kawada Takashi. 1980. Shin Kōmeitō-ron [New Kōmeitō discussion]. Tokyo: Shin Nippon Shuppansha. Kettell, Steven. 2012. “Has Political Science Ignored Religion?” PS: Political Science 45 (January): 93–​100. Kisala, Robert J., and Mark Mullins, ed. 2001. Religion and Social Crisis in Japan: Understanding Japanese Society through the Aum Affair. New York: Palgrave. Kishimoto, Kōichi. 1997. Politics in Modern Japan. 4th rev. ed. Tokyo: Japan Echo. Kitagawa Kōyō and Gokatsukai. 1995. Dare mo shiranai Sōka Gakkai no senkyo [The unknown election campaigns of Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Hamano Shuppan. Kiuchi Hiroshi. 1974. Kōmeitō to Sōka Gakkai: Sono kiseki to senryaku [Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai: Their tactics and trajectory]. Tokyo: Gōdō Shuppansha. Kōmeitō. 1964. Taishū fukushi o mezashite: Kōmeitō no seisaku [Pursuing welfare for the masses: The policies of Kōmeitō]. Vols. 1 and 2. Tokyo: Kōmeitō. Kusano Atsushi. 1999. Renristu seiken: Nihon no seiji 1993~ [Coalition governments: Japanese politics from 1993 on]. Tokyo: Bungei Shinjū. McLaughlin, Levi. 2009. “Sōka Gakkai in Japan.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University. Métraux, Daniel. 1994. The Soka Gakkai Revolution. New York: University Press of America. ———. 1999. “Japan’s Search for Political Stability: The LDP–​New Kōmeitō Alliance.” Asian Survey 39, no. 6:926–​939.

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———. 2001. “The Changing Role of the Kōmeitō in Japanese Politics.” In Global Citizens: The Sōka Gakkai Buddhist Movement in the World, edited by David Machacek and Bryan Wilson, 128–​153. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005. “The Sōka Gakkai’s Critical Role in the Rapidly Changing World of Postwar Japanese Politics.” In Religious Organizations and Democratization: Case Studies from Contemporary Asia, edited by Deborah A. Brown and Tun-Jen Cheng, 267–​286. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Miyake Ichirō. 1995. Nihon no seiji to senkyo [Politics and elections in Japan]. Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai. Murakami Shigeyoshi. 1967. Sōka Gakkai=Kōmeitō. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten. Muramatsu Michio, Ito Mitsutoshi, and Tsujinaka Yutaka. 2001. Nihon no seiji [Japanese politics]. 2nd ed. Tokyo: Yuhikaku. Neary, Ian. 2002. The State and Politics in Japan. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nichiren Shōshū Sōkagakkai, ed. 1966. Nichiren Shōshū Sōkagakkai Photographic. Tokyo: Seikyō Shimbunsha. Vol. 6. Ōtake Hideo. 1997. Seikai saihen no kenkyū [Research on political realignment]. Tokyo: Yūhikaku. Pettifer, Julian. 1995. The Chanting Millions [documentary]. London: British Broadcasting Corporation. Philpott, Daniel. 2009. “Has the Study of Global Politics Found Religion?” Annual Review of Political Science 12:183–​202. Rosenbluth, Frances McCall, and Michael F. Thies. 2010. Japan Transformed: Political Change and Economic Restructuring. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Scheiner, Ethan. 2005. Democracy without Competition in Japan: Opposition Failure in a One-Party Dominant State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shichiri Washō. 1980. Sōka Gakkai wa doko e iku [Where is Sōka Gakkai headed?]. Tokyo: Shin Nippon Shuppansha. Shimada Hiromi. 2001. “Sōka Gakkai wa dono yō ni kenkyū saretekita no ka” [How has Sōka Gakkai been researched?]. Fukujin 6:183–​199. ———. 2004. Sōka Gakkai. Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho. ———. 2006. Sōka Gakkai no jitsuryoku [Sōka Gakkai’s true strength]. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha. ———. 2007. Kōmeitō vs. Sōka Gakkai. Tokyo: Asahi Shinsho. ———. 2008. Minzokuka suru Sōka Gakkai: Yudayajin no kita michi o tadoru hitobito [Ethnicized Sōka Gakkai: The people who follow the path of the Jews]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Shimada Hiromi and Yano Jun’ya. 2010. Sōka Gakkai: Mō hitotsu no Nippon [Sōka Gakkai: Another Japan]. Tokyo: Kōdansha.

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Sōka Gakkai Hōkokushitsu, ed. 2000. Sōka Gakkai Annual Report 2000. Tokyo: Sōka Gakkai. Sōka Gakkai Mondai Kenkyūkai, ed. 2001. Sōka Gakkai Fujinbu: Saikyō shūhyō gundan kaibō [Sōka Gakkai Married Women’s Division: Dissection of the strength of the strongest vote-winning group]. Tokyo: Gogatsu Shobō. Starrs, Roy, ed. 2011. Politics and Religion in Modern Japan: Red Sun, White Lotus. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Stockwin, Arthur. [1982] 2008. Governing Japan. Hoboken: Blackwell. Suzuki Hiroshi. 1970. Toshiteki sekai [The urban world]. Tokyo: Seishin Shobō. Suzuki, Kenji. 2008. “Politics of the Falling Birth Rate in Japan.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 9, no. 2:161–​182. Takarajima, ed. 1995. Tonari no Sōka Gakkai: Uchigawa kara mita gakkai’in to iu shiawase [Sōka Gakkai next door: The happiness of Gakkai members seen from the inside]. Tokyo: Takarajimasha. ———. 2007. Ikeda Daisaku naki ato no Sōka Gakkai [Sōka Gakkai after Ikeda Daisaku]. Tokyo: Takarajimasha. Tamano Kazushi. 2008. Sōka Gakkai no kenkyū [Sōka Gakkai research]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Uchida Kenzō, Hayano Tōru, and Sone Yasunori. 1994. Daiseihen [Great political change]. Tokyo: Tōyō Keizai Shinpōsha. Wald, Kenneth D., Adam L. Silverman, and Kevin S. Fridy. 2005. “Making Sense of Religion in Political Life.” Annual Review of Political Science 8:121–​143. Watanabe Takesato. 2000. Seikyō Shimbun no yomikata: Sōka Gakkai/ kikanshi no enerugī gen o saguru [How To Read the Seikyō Shimbun: Investigating the source of Sōka Gakkai/in-house publication]. Tokyo: Sangokan. White, James W. 1970. The Sokagakkai and Mass Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Yamada, Naoki. 2004. Sōka Gakkai to wa nani ka [What is Sōka Gakkai?]. Tokyo: Shinchōsha. Yamaguchi Jirō, ed. 1997. Renristu seiji: Dōjidai no kenshō [Coalition politics: A contemporary investigation]. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha. Yamazaki Masatomo. 1994. Zange no kokuhatsu: Watashi dake ga shitteiru Ikeda Daisaku/Sōka Gakkai no shōtai to inbō [Confession of repentance: The true character and conspiracy of Ikeda Daisaku/Sōka Gakkai that only I know]. Tokyo: Nisshin Hōdō. ———. 2001a. “Gekkan Pen” jiken: Umoreteita shinjitsu [The “Gekkan Pen” incident: The buried truth]. Tokyo: Daisan Shokan.

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———. 2001b. Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō no hanzai hakusho [White paper on Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō crimes]. Tokyo: Daisan Shokan. ———. 2004. Sōka Gakkai to “Suikokai kiroku” [Sōka Gakkai and the “Suiko Association Record”]. Tokyo: Daisan Shokan. Yano Jun’ya. 2009. “Kuroi techō”: Saiban zen kiroku [“Black Book”: Complete record of lawsuits]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. ———. 2010. “Kuroi techō”: Sōka Gakkai “Nihon senryō keikaku” no zen kiroku [“Black Book”: Complete record of Sōka Gakkai’s “Japan occupation plan”]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Periodicals

Sapio is a semimonthly magazine published by Shogakukan. The publisher promotes Sapio as an “International Information Magazine.” Average circulation in 2008/2009 was 120,000. Available at www. digital-zasshi.jp/info/sapio. Accessed January 2014. Shūkan Daiyamondo is a weekly magazine focusing on business- and work-related issues. According to the ABC Report, circulation was a little over 100,000 in 2011. Available at http://mediadata. diamond.ne.jp/static/admin/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/ DWmediadata20122.pdf. Accessed January 2014. Shūkan Posuto is a weekly gossip magazine that contains stories about politics, celebrities, sport, sex, and more. It is published by Shogakukan in Tokyo. Reliable information on the magazine’s circulation is difficult to obtain; estimates run from 300,000 to 500,000.

Part II: The Context

Two

Religious Groups in Japanese Electoral Politics

Axel Klein and Steven R. Reed

Introduction The key to electoral success is the ability to organize and mobilize people. Religious groups are well designed to perform these tasks. One should thus not be surprised to learn that some of the most successful parties in Western Europe have been Christian Democratic parties (Kalyvas 1996; Kselman and Buttigieg 2003). In the case of Japan, however, Toyoda and Tanaka observe that “religion in contemporary postwar Japanese society is viewed by most observers to be politically irrelevant or, at most, on the political periphery” (2002, 269). The standard wisdom among political scientists is that Japan has no religious cleavage. Watanuki states the case best: “Of the four types of social cleavages usually associated with voting behavior—​regional or ethnic divisions, religious divisions, agrarian-­ industrial divisions, and class divisions—​Japan was basically exempt from the first two and has been so throughout the modern period” (1991, 49). Furthermore, “in addition to the limited number of believers, there is no sharp cleavage between those that believe in some religion and those who do not” (75). We find no reason to doubt the standard wisdom with respect to voting behavior. There is no religious cleavage in Japanese voting behavior, let alone anything analogous to the Catholic-Protestant cleavage that has played such a large role in Western European electoral politics. With respect to political parties, however, Kōmeitō challenges the standard wisdom. Since its first general election in 1967, it has been one of several small opposition parties in a party system dominated by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and, in that sense, Kōmeitō might have been considered peripheral during that period. However, even during the era of LDP dominance, the party won around 10 percent of the vote and was no more peripheral than the Japan Communist Party (JCP; Nihon Kyōsantō)

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or the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP; Minshū Shakaitō). At least since the 1990s, however, Kōmeitō has become a pivotal player in Japanese politics. One cannot understand Japanese politics after 1993 without understanding Kōmeitō. However, Kōmeitō is the only religious party to challenge the standard wisdom. Only one other religious party, Ittōen, has ever won a single seat in a national election, and that party won one seat in 1947 and withdrew from electoral politics soon thereafter. Religious parties are indeed peripheral, except for Kōmeitō. With respect to supporting candidates nominated by other parties, the standard wisdom seriously underestimates the influence of religious groups in electoral politics. Religious groups have long been important sources of what politicians call the “organized vote” (soshikihyō) (Hori 1985; Klein 2012). The vote-mobilization capacity of religious groups is greater than the construction industry, the medical professions, and agricultural cooperatives, each of which is usually considered a powerful actor in Japanese politics. Religious groups have thus played a much bigger role in politics than the standard wisdom suggests, though that participation has taken a low-visibility mode. Again, however, Kōmeitō towers over other groups. Sōka Gakkai, the religious group that forms the electoral base of Kōmeitō, mobilizes three or four time more votes than all other religious groups taken together and is by far the largest single source of organized votes in Japan. Religious Political Parties We define a religious party as a party whose primary organizational and voting support comes from a religious group. We define a religious group simply as any group registered with the government as a “religious corporation” (shūkyō hōjin). The criteria for official assignment of this legal status are laid down in the Religious Corporations Law (Shūkyō Hōjinhō). It defines “religious groups” (shūkyō dantai) as those whose main purpose is to spread a “religious creed” (kyōgi), “conduct ceremonies” (gishiki), and “educate believers” (kyōka ikusei). If such a group also has a place of worship, it can apply for the status of shūkyō hōjin. So defined, it has proven difficult to study religious parties in Japan. Most have been small and ephemeral, attracting little attention from political scientists or the press. Some have not advertised their religious affiliations, possibly to avoid the stigma of the involvement of religion in politics noted in chapter 1. Openly admitting to be supported by a religious organization carries the danger of losing votes from those that oppose the mixing of religion and politics. The best place to look for religious parties is the upper tier of the Upper House (House of Councilors), the national election that attracts the

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largest number of ephemeral parties. In this tier, the electoral threshold (the minimum required to win one seat) is only about 1 percent of the vote nationwide. This tier is home to a large number of parties that field candidates despite having no realistic hope of winning a seat, though several clearly harbored unrealistically high expectations of victory. Many of these parties are nothing more than a vehicle for a single candidate. Others are dedicated to spreading a single message. Messages include world peace, environmental protection, and gay rights. The need to protect the peace constitution is as well represented as the need to respect the emperor and revise the constitution. Others think it crucial that voters understand the importance of education, welfare, or UFOs. Farmers, women, and the elderly are all represented. Some seem designed to promote their business interests. Lawyers, doctors, and hotel managers are well represented. Those parties that continue fielding candidates in the face of repeated and dismal failures are obviously running for some purpose other than gaining votes, seats, or influence over policy, the set of goals political scientists normally attribute to political parties (Müller and Strøm 1999). One might thus call them “nonelectoral political parties.” Sifting through the myriad minor parties that have run in the upper tier of the Upper House between the first postwar elections in 1947 and 2013, we have been able to identify ten religious parties other than Kōmeitō. We will first introduce all of the groups for which we were able to find sufficient information. We will then discuss three newer parties that have run primarily in the Lower House (House of Representatives). Viewed from the perspective of the political parties usually studied by political scientists, the religious parties we introduce may seem very strange indeed. In the context of the other ephemeral parties that run in the upper tier of the Upper House, however, the religious parties do not seem at all out of place. The Women’s Party (Joseitō; known as the Atarashii Jidai o tsukurutō from 1993 to 1996 and not to be confused with the Japan Women’s Party, Nihon Joseitō) gives no public indication of its religious character. Most people (including ourselves) are surprised to learn of the religious group that backs it (Wahōtai no kai, founded by one-time Sōka Gakkai member Nishiyama Eiichi) and further surprised to learn that the group runs a hotel and a cosmetics company (Aisutaa) (AERA, 7 August 1995, 15). Many of the party’s candidates list their occupation as “employee of a cosmetics firm.” The group seems to combine door-to-door sales with campaigning both for votes and for converts. Though campaigning has not won them many votes, the synergy among these three activities seems clear. The Women’s Party, organized around cosmetics firms, thus seems similar to the Liberal Alliance (Jiyū Rengō), which was based on a nationwide

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network of hospitals and clinics (Weiner 2003). The party won only one seat, but their organizational base allowed them to run candidates nationwide. Most Liberal Alliance candidates listed their occupations as doctor or nurse. Nishida Tenkō, the founder of Ittōen (mentioned earlier), a religious group based on Pure Land Buddhism (Jōdo Shinshū) and devoted to a form of self-cultivation, won a seat in the first Upper House election in 1947 (Asahi, 27 May 2007). He ran again when his term was up in 1953 but lost with less than half of his previous vote. One loss convinced the group that politics was not for them. The religious group continues to function but no longer participates in elections. This party does not appear to be particularly important, but no religious party other than Kōmeitō has won a seat in any national election since 1947. In this narrow sense, Ittōen is the second most successful religious party in postwar Japanese politics. Single-candidate parties are common in the upper tier of the Upper House and some of them have a religious tint. Some religious parties have served as vehicles for a single candidate with a message. For example, Itō Yoshitaka, a Buddhist priest from Honganji (Jōdo Shinshū), ran unsuccessfully three times between 1956 and 1962 for a Buddhist party. Another such party was the Japan Christian Party (Nihon Kirisutokyōtō) founded by Mutō Tomio, a Manchurian bureaucrat purged after the war. His candidacy in 1977 caused some confusion because the Christian Political Union (Kirisutosha Seiji Renmei) was supporting a Socialist candidate at the time (Asahi, 22 April 1977, evening edition). Several religious parties have been more persistent, if no more successful. The Society to Develop True Constitutionalism (Rikken Yōseikai) bears some resemblance to Sōka Gakkai. It was founded by Tanaka Chigaku and was based on his ideas of Nichiren Buddhism. The party was also banned in the prewar period (Kokushi Daijiten 1995, 562). It enjoyed some success at the local level but has never come close to winning a seat at the national level. The World Spirit Cleansing Society (Seikai Jōreikai) ran candidates for the national tier of the Upper House between 1983 and 1995 and has fielded candidates in the prefectural constituencies as well. It seems clear that their purpose was less to win votes than to win converts (through candidate questionnaires; Asahi, 30 June 1986). Before the 1998 election, however, public subsidies were cut and the election deposit was raised, making it more costly for small parties to run. The World Spirit Cleansing Society was one of several that dropped out of electoral politics due to the increased cost of running (Chūnichi, 17 July 1995). In the 2001 election, Shirakawa Katshuhiko formed the New Party Freedom and Hope (Shintō Jiyū to Kibō). Shirakawa had just left the LDP after fighting against the coalition with Kōmeitō since 1999 (see chapter 5) and

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losing his seat in Niigata in the 2000 general election. As an anti-Kōmeitō activist and campaigning as the only party to fight “Sōka Gakkai’s political power,” he acquired the support of Sōka Gakkai’s religious rival, the Risshō Kōseikai (RKK). Although RKK endorsed (suisen) him, the group’s support was not exclusive (Yomiuri, 4 February 2001). RKK also endorsed a democratic candidate, leaving too few votes to secure Shirakawa’s electoral victory in the 2001 Upper House election.1 Although from RKK’s perspective the group was endorsing a candidate from another party, RKK was the primary organizational support for the party. The New Party Freedom and Hope thus fits our definition of a religious party. It also shared the fate of most other religious parties as it won no seats and disbanded immediately after the 2001 election. Another religious party of some note is the one formed by Aum Shinrikyō. Aum established Shinritō (Truth Party) shortly before the 1990 general election. Shinritō ran eighteen candidates in Tokyo and seven in neighboring prefectures. The party’s campaign was focused on Tokyo’s fourth district, whence ran the group’s founder, Asahara Shōkō. His election campaign featured campaigners dressed in yellow-red elephant costumes with wings, singing the “Guru March” (“Sonshi māchi”) and listening to Asahara declaring that in order to establish the Land of Utopia soon, religious salvation had to be accompanied by political reform. In other districts, the campaign consisted of little more than posters of candidates that carried their religious names in huge characters. None of the candidates came close to winning a seat. Asahara gained less than 3 percent of the vote (2.69%). The party had gathered only a little more than six thousand votes in total (Shūkan Asahi, 31 July 2009, 30). The rumor was nurtured within the group that authorities had tampered with the votes and stolen Asahara’s victory.2 Electoral failure is believed to have been one factor that led Aum to change tactics and implement the terrorist attack on Tokyo’s subway system in 1995. Eight of the party’s candidates and Asahara were accused in 1996 of having planned and/or participated in the attack (Asahi, 20 April 1996). Police also discovered plans for a coup d’état (Asahi, 24 May 1995, evening edition; see Hughes 2001). Finally, a new religious party was founded in May 2009. Ōkawa Ryūhō, the spiritual leader and founder of the Science of Happiness (Kōfuku no Kagaku), established the Happiness Realization Party (HRP; Kōfuku Jitsugentō). The religious group had been supporting LDP candidates but the North Korean missile that flew over Japanese territory in early 2009 1 

Personal interview with Shirakawa Katsuhiko, 28 September 2010, Tokyo. Interview with Aum’s former spokesperson Joyu Fumihiro in Shūkan Gendai (12 September 2009). 2 

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triggered the establishment of its own party.3 The HRP ran in two elections in July 2009, the Sendai mayoral election and the Tokyo prefectural assembly elections. In Sendai, the party’s candidate won 0.75% of the vote. In Tokyo, the HRP campaigned on the slogan that those voters who wanted to become poor should vote for the LDP, those who wanted to be killed by North Korean missiles should vote for the oppositional Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ; Minshutō), and those who wanted to go to hell should vote for Kōmeitō (Shūkan Asahi; 31 July 2010). The HRP nominated ten candidates, all of whom finished last in their respective districts, gaining a total of 13,401 votes (0.73%).4 Such dismal results did not prevent the party from finding 337 members willing to run in the general election of August 2009, only three months after the party’s formation. Ōkawa himself joined the race at the top of the party’s proportional list in the Kinki bloc. In spite of a massive financial investment and mobilizing a huge number of volunteers, the party did not win a single seat. Political observers concluded from the one million votes the party had won that the Science of Happiness claim of having eleven million members was wildly exaggerated. Although religious groups (and political parties) regularly exaggerate their membership, few religious groups are able to mobilize their followers. In addition, HRP politicians stress the fact that, in contrast to Sōka Gakkai, they would not put pressure on the members of their religious mother organization to vote for the HRP (Klein 2011).5 The HRP also ran candidates in the 2010 and 2013 Upper House elections as well as in the 2012 Lower House election but on average won only about one-fifth of the votes needed to gain a seat. In April 2010 it temporarily secured one seat when Ōe Yasuhiro, a former Liberal Democrat, former Democrat, and former member of the Reform Club (Kaikaku Kurabu), joined the HRP. After only six months, however, Ōe left the party again because of differences regarding the HRP’s stance on the governor’s election in Okinawa.6 While Ōe had suggested supporting the conservative candidate Nakaima Hirokazu in his race against socialist Iha Yoishi, HRP leaders insisted on fielding their own candidate (who then won 2 percent of the votes). But despite this and other unsuccessful attempts to gain some political relevance, the HRP has displayed remarkable staying power and continues to field candidates in most elections. 3 

Personal interview with Satomura Eiichi, 7 October 2010, Tokyo. Tokyo Metropolitan Government website: www.senkyo.metro.tokyo.jp/data/data01. html#h21togisen (accessed Jan. 2014). 5  Personal interview with Tanaka Junkō, 20 October 2009, Tokyo. 6  Personal interview with Ōe Yasuhiro, 15 February 2011, Tokyo. 4 

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In short, except for Sōka Gakkai, religious groups have not had much success with their own political parties. Except for Kōmeitō, religious political parties are indeed peripheral to Japanese politics. Sōka Gakkai, on the contrary, has been hugely successful, with Kōmeitō often capturing over 10 percent of the vote in national elections and becoming the thirdlargest political party in Japan. It has been one of the few minor parties to survive the new two-party system that has evolved after the political reform of 1994, and it is the most successful of those survivors (Reed 2013). In 1999, Kōmeitō joined a coalition government with the LDP, providing the LDP with both the seats needed to control the Upper House and the votes needed to win a majority of the single-member districts in the following general elections. With the exception of the period of DPJ rule from 2009 to 2012, a religious party has thus been part of the government coalition until the present day. Supporting Candidates Running for Other Political Parties With the exception of Sōka Gakkai, religious groups have not founded successful political parties. What religious groups have done, however, is support candidates nominated by other parties. From a political party’s point of view, religious groups are a potential “organized vote.” Instead of campaigning for the votes of individual voters, one vote at a time, the party seeks the support of an organization in the hope that it will deliver a bloc of votes. Organizational support ranges from simple endorsements, in which the organization expresses a preference for one candidate or party, to sponsorship, in which the organization takes responsibility for electing a particular candidate. Sponsored candidates are the easiest to analyze so we shall begin with examples of this extreme case of electoral support. Sponsoring Candidates from Other Parties The strategy of using an organization to sponsor a candidate was pioneered by the British Labour Party. When it was building its party organization from scratch, the party hit upon the idea of having a particular union sponsor a particular candidate. If the district party branch chose a candidate from the union, usually an official of that union, the union would help finance the candidate and her campaign (Muller 1977). In Britain, the campaign was run by the constituency party organization. In Japan, however, sponsoring a candidate means that the party subcontracts the election campaign to the sponsoring organization. Japanese socialist parties and the DPJ also subcontract campaigns to labor unions and the LDP subcontracts to a wide variety of groups, including religious groups.

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Again the strategy is clearest in the upper tier of the Upper House. For example, doctors, dentists, nurses, and pharmacists have sponsored and usually elected a candidate from their respective organizations under the LDP label. Although the electoral threshold is only 1 percent of the vote nationwide, that translated into 127,000 votes in 1947 and 642,000 votes in 1980. Thus, only very large groups can contemplate sponsoring a candidate. For those groups, however, sponsorship is an attractive mode of participating in electoral politics. First, sponsoring a candidate allows the group to campaign primarily, or even exclusively, among its own members. Second, the group can sponsor one of its own and take pride in the fact that it has members in the Diet. Both labor unions and religious groups have used sponsorship in a national election as a step in their internal promotion system. Vote mobilization also tends to be easier with inside candidates. Finally, whether a member of the group or not, the elected politician provides a direct voice into the policy-making process. For example, Shinshūren, the umbrella organization of most New Religions, stopped sponsoring candidates when the electoral system used in the upper tier of the Upper House changed to force voters to vote for parties instead of candidates but found that it had trouble getting its voice heard in the policy-making process without a sponsored candidate to speak for the group (Shinshūkyō, 25 February 2007). The group started running candidates again after the electoral system was re-reformed to allow voters to vote for candidates as well as for parties. Sponsored candidates also offer several advantages to researchers because information on them and their party affiliation is more readily available. First, the topic of “the organized vote” is part of the standard mass media story line for Upper House elections, and religious groups are covered with as much detail as any other type of group. Second, whereas religious candidates and religious groups usually keep a low profile, it is hard to sponsor a candidate in secret. Most obviously, one must let group members know whom the group supports. In some cases it is possible to get reliable information from the groups’ own newsletters. Thus, we can describe several of the groups that successfully sponsored candidates. Though it is easier to analyze candidates who are sponsored than those who are merely endorsed, the line between the two categories is not always clear. We have tried to restrict the analysis to clear cases of sponsorship and to include all cases of sponsorship, but our data should be considered no more than a first step in the direction of a more accurate classification. Tenrikyō sponsored candidates from the first Upper House election in 1947 through 1960. None of these candidates ran for a major party but rather as independents or for nonparty groups like the Green Breeze

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Society (Ryokufūkai). About half of their candidates were elected, but some of their campaigns got in trouble for election law violations. The group concluded that “running candidates in elections necessarily produces contradictions” (Asahi, 22 December 1977) and withdrew from politics after the 1968 election. Jōdo Shinshū started backing candidates in the first election of 1947 with a fifty-fifty success rate through 1953. In the three elections between 1956 and 1962 Itō Yoshitaka, a priest from Nishi Honganji, the head temple of the sect Jōdo Shinshū Honganji-ha, ran unsuccessfully for a Buddhist Party (Bukkyō Minwatō). With the founding of the LDP, two Jōdo Shinshū groups, Higashi (Eastern) and Nishi (Western) Honganji, each sponsored candidates, electing 78 percent of them between 1956 and 1968. Their candidates were all clerical officials from inside their respective organizations. In 1968, the vote was badly skewed in favor of one of the two candidates, leaving the second candidate without a seat. In 1971, the group backed a single candidate, the loser from 1968, but the total group vote dropped by over half and proved insufficient to elect him. Another candidate lost almost as badly in 1974. The group then decided to support an outside candidate, Fujii Hirohisa from the Ministry of Finance, who was duly elected in 1977 and again in 1983. These events are clearly visible in the aggregate data but were not covered by the national newspapers or in the party newsletters. Other information, perhaps from interviews with knowledgeable insiders, would be required to understand these events. Jōdo Shinshū stopped backing candidates between 1986 and 1998, presumably due to the introduction of the electoral system that forced voters to choose a party instead of a candidate. Once the system was changed to open-list proportional representation in 2001, allowing voters to vote for either a candidate or a party, the group started sponsoring clerical officials as candidates again and with great success. The only black mark on their record occurred in 2007 when they backed two candidates and elected only one. The newcomer from the DPJ won while the incumbent from the LDP lost. Another relatively successful group was Seichō no Ie. It campaigned to revise the constitution to make the emperor the state’s chief executive, to outlaw abortion, and to abandon the Western calendar for the years of the emperor’s reign (Asahi, 8 January 1979). The group was the major voice opposing abortion, its councilor debating with a doctor elected to the Upper House by the obstetrics professional association, both elected on the LDP ticket (Norgren 2001). From 1962 through 1998, the group supported LDP candidates, 60 percent of whom were elected. This calculation is, however, somewhat misleading because the group split its vote among three different candidates in 1974, all of whom lost. If the group could

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have run only two candidates, they might have elected both, and they clearly mobilized enough votes to elect at least one. None of our sources, primarily newspapers and newsletters, provide any information on these events. If we ignore the 1974 election, however, 75 percent of their candidates were elected and many of them finished near the top of the list. Most of these were internal, usually group officials. The group withdrew from electoral politics after the 1998 election. RKK sponsored an LDP candidate in most elections between 1965 and 1998. Only two individuals were so sponsored over this period, neither of them internal. Between them they won 75 percent of their elections. Shinshūren, of which RKK is the largest member group, also sponsored a candidate for the LDP who won three elections starting in 1965 but lost in 1983. In the three elections between 2001 and 2007, the RKK and Shinshūren successfully sponsored five candidates all running for the DPJ. Between 1956 (the first Upper House election fought by the LDP) and 2004, candidates sponsored by religious organizations other than Sōka Gakkai accounted for an average of just over two LDP seats per election. This puts religious groups on a par with agriculture and the construction industry, each group also electing two LDP candidates each. Political scientists may have overlooked the electoral potential of religious groups, but LDP politicians did not. As the best available measure of how many votes a group can mobilize is the ability to elect sponsored candidates to the upper tier of the Upper House, it is clear from figure 2.1 that Sōka Gakkai elects three or four times more PR (proportional representation) candidates than all other religious groups combined. Kōmeitō is vastly more successful than any other religious political party. It is also significantly more effective in sponsoring and endorsing candidates from other parties. Between 1956 and 1962, before the founding of Kōmeitō, Sōka Gakkai sponsored sixteen candidates, running with no party affiliation, electing fourteen for a success rate of 87.5%. In 1959, they elected five, and in 1962, they elected seven. Kōmeitō first ran in the 1965 election, nominating nine candidates and electing them all. This perfect record was maintained through 1980. With the introduction of closed-list proportional representation in 1983, Kōmeitō began running seventeen candidates but with no expectation of electing them all, so the success rate of under 50% should not be counted as failure.7 Under this electoral system, they elected an average of a little over seven candidates suggesting a success rate of slightly more than 80%. The election rate of candidates 7  The 1983 Upper House election was the first in which voting for individual candidates in a nationwide electoral district (zenkokuku) had been replaced by voting for a fixed party list. Kōmeitō, to attract as many voters as possible to its list, ran six candidates who were not party members but either enjoyed a certain amount of popularity or had had a position at the top of an organization.

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Figure 2.1 Candidates elected to the Upper House by religious group

Note: Kōmeitō candidates include independent and New Frontier candidates sponsored by Sōka Gakkai and those nominated by Kōmeitō. Other includes candidates sponsored by religious groups other than Sōka Gakkai. The figures for other religious groups should be considered rough estimates because it is difficult to identify all sponsored candidates. Because of changes in the electoral system over this period, it is not possible to estimate the number of votes mobilized.

sponsored by other religious groups hovered around 75%. Kōmeitō elects more sponsored candidates with greater efficiency than any other religious group, but those other religious groups are at least as effective in sponsoring candidates as economic and professional groups. (QGRUVLQJ&DQGLGDWHVIURP2WKHU3DUWLHV Information on candidate endorsements (suisen) is difficult to find. In most cases of endorsement, neither the group nor the candidate has an incentive to publicize the fact. As noted previously, reports or rumors about this kind of electoral support may turn away those who oppose the involvement of religious groups in politics. If a candidate wants to win broad support, religious backing is better kept low-key. What information we have been able to gather, however, indicates that candidate endorsement has long been as important as official sponsorship, especially in the upper tier of the Upper House. For example, in the 1977 Upper House election the LDP ran twenty-two candidates in the national district. Of

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these, fourteen were supported by religious groups, eleven of whom won seats. Of the fourteen, however, only four were directly sponsored by a religious group. The importance of religious groups sometimes rises to the surface. For example, in the 1979 general election in Tokyo’s 2nd district, Ishihara Shintarō (at the time a popular novelist who had entered politics and who later was elected governor of Tokyo) lost almost forty thousand votes from the previous 1976 election, though still managed to win re-election. The explanation given in the media was that the PL Kyōdan religious group had switched from exclusive support for Ishihara to supporting both Ishihara and Socialist newcomer Ueda Tetsu, a well-known journalist who had made his name pursuing (former) Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei’s corruption scandals (Asahi, 16 September 1979). Part of the reason this event made the news was that the story line on Tokyo 2nd already included the topic of religion in politics because it was the site of the “religious war” between Kōmeitō and Ōuchi Keigo, a candidate from the Democratic Socialist Party who was endorsed by RKK. Such stories are not uncommon but once again stories about the importance of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō support in determining election outcomes are both far more common and far more impressive. Especially since the introduction of the new electoral system featuring single-­ member districts, it is common to find statements to the effect that the key to victory in a particular district lies with Kōmeitō voters. Lower House member Hirasawa Katsuei, for example, estimated Sōka Gakkai support for LDP candidates in single-member districts in 2009 to be worth on average twenty thousand votes.8 Kōmeitō did not run under its own label in the 1996 election, having joined several other parties in forming the New Frontier Party (NFP). In that election, exit polls reveal that the most loyal NFP voters came from former Kōmeitō supporters, over 91% voting for NFP. Kōmeitō thus played its assigned role as the solid base vote for the NFP. The other components of the NFP could not do as well. In 1993, only 64% of supporters of Ozawa Ichirō’s Japan Renewal Party (Shinseitō) voted for the NFP as did 46% of the former Japan New Party (Nihon Shintō) supporters and 35% of former DSP supporters (Yomiuri, 5 November 1996). After the NFP dissolved Kōmeitō re-emerged as an independent party, now calling itself “New Kōmeitō.” Since the 2000 election, the party has endorsed LDP candidates. Kōmeitō supporters have again proved more loyal to LDP candidates than were LDP supporters (Yomiuri, 12 September 2005 and 14 September 2009; see fig. 9.2). By all accounts, Sōka Gakkai can mobilize a 8 

Personal interview with Hirasawa Katsuei, 11 November 2010, Tokyo.

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37

large number of votes not only for Kōmeitō candidates but also for candidates from other parties. A recent example of Kōmeitō organizational capacity comes from the 2010 Upper House election in Yamanashi Prefecture. The incumbent was Koshi’ishi Azuma, the leader of the DPJ in the Upper House. Koshi’ishi’s primary organizational support is Nikkyōso, the Japan Teachers’ Union, where he started his career. Nikkyōso is a powerful organization in its own right, long a mainstay of the Japan Socialist Party, now supporting the DPJ. The LDP fielded a thirty-year-old female teacher to run against the seventy-four-year-old Koshi’ishi in an effort to split the Nikkyōso organized vote. The DPJ countered this strategy in various ways, one of which was to seek support from Kōmeitō. The DPJ bartered Kōmeitō voters to Koshi’ishi in the prefectural district for DPJ voters to Kōmeitō in the proportional representation tier. Such barters have been common between Kōmeitō and the LDP (Yomiuri, 14 July 2010; cf. chapter 10 of this volume), but the LDP-Kōmeitō coalition had been defeated in the 2009 general election. The LDP had also angered Kōmeitō by running a well-known and Yamanashi-born former baseball manager in the proportional representation tier, thus reducing the number of LDP voters who might otherwise have voted for Kōmeitō in the proportional representation tier. The party thus declared a “free vote,” formally supporting no candidate, but was rumored to have directed enough votes to Koshi’ishi to ensure his victory (Yomiuri, 14 July 2010, Yamanashi edition). Discussions of the organized vote often refer to similar vote-trading bargains, but Kōmeitō bargains appear to be the most reliable. Stories like these lead to charges that Kōmeitō voters are like robots: one word from above and they all move in perfect unison. Such claims are easily refuted. First and most simply, exit polls reveal that Kōmeitō support never reaches 100%. Second, Kōmeitō dislikes snap elections. As Ehrhardt describes in chapter 5, the party has an elaborate procedure for mobilizing their voters that takes several months to complete. More than most other groups and political parties, Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō mobilize voters through grassroots campaigns that feature interpersonal contact. For example, a poll by the daily newspaper Asahi (30 August 2010) asked voters whether they had given weight to the request of an acquaintance in deciding their vote in the 2010 Upper House election. While 16% of DPJ voters and 19% of LDP voters answered in the affirmative, the figure was 69% for Kōmeitō voters. This result also fits in nicely with the findings of an international study according to which religious groups in Japan are more likely to send political messages to their members than in other countries. In a 2007 survey of the intermediation of various groups, including religious groups, Bellucci,

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Maraffi, and Segatti looked at Bulgaria, Greece, Hong Kong, Uruguay, the United States, Chile, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and Japan. Among these countries, Japanese religious groups stand out as particularly political, with 65% of their members reporting to get information about the upcoming election from the group. This is over twice as high as the figure for any other country in the study. Furthermore, 63% report that the message included support for a particular political party. At the same time, the small number of Japanese who belong to a religious group means that only 3% of voters received political information from religious groups. The United States is at the opposite extreme. Whereas only 23% of the members of religious groups received political messages from that group, they represented 12% of all respondents (Bellucci et al. 2007, 157–​160). A final and particularly convincing refutation of the robot claim is the fact that it took at least three elections after the LDP–​Kōmeitō coalition was formed before Kōmeitō support in all districts was directed toward the LDP. In 2003, three DPJ candidates were disciplined for instructing their supporters to vote for Kōmeitō in the proportional representation tier while others maintained some Kōmeitō support in less visible ways (Yomiuri, 3 December 2003). Many of the decisions are made at the local level based on relationships developed with particular candidates and cannot be changed rapidly in response to national party directions (see Fisker-Nielsen 2012). Which Candidates and Parties Do Religious Groups Support? There is no significant religious cleavage among Japanese voters as a whole, but religious groups themselves are divided along two major cleavages: first, evaluation of the prewar legacy of State Shinto symbolized by the Yasukuni Shrine and, second, the opposition of many groups to the direct intervention of Sōka Gakkai in the political arena represented by the founding of Kōmeitō. The Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo serves both as a symbol of prewar militarism and as the national shrine for honoring those who died fighting for their emperor since the Meiji period, though the majority of the almost 2.5 million dead remembered there are soldiers who died during World War II.9 The shrine became a major political and very controversial issue after the souls of fourteen culprits who were convicted as class A war criminals at the Tokyo Trials (1946–​1948) were also enshrined here (1978). From that time on, politicians visiting Yasukuni and praying there have always 9  The shrine’s official website states that 2.466 million “sacrificed their precious lives in order to protect the country” (www.yasukuni.or.jp/history/index.html; accessed Jan. 2014).

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39

drawn criticism for their alleged disregard of Japan’s war aggressions and the unconstitutional mingling of religion and state. But the controversy surrounding Yasukuni is not only about different attitudes toward Japan’s war history and the related constitutional issue, but also about the status and standing of religions in Japan. Jinja Honchō, the umbrella organization for Shinto groups, and Shintō Seiji Renmei (Shinseiren), the political arm of Jinja Honchō, support Yasukuni and contributed to the (unsuccessful) attempts by some Liberal Democrats to turn the shrine into a state-run memorial. Many Buddhist groups, in contrast, not only disagree with this particular attitude toward Japanese history but are also uncomfortable with the increase in Shinto’s role in public life. The Yasukuni issue has, in fact, occasionally prevented cooperation among religious groups. In the late 1970s, an enterprising Upper House member and former vice-chair of the policy affairs division of Seichō no Ie, Tamaki Kazuo, attempted to unify Seichō no Ie, RKK, PL Kyōdan, Jinja Honchō, and several other religious groups behind the LDP to counterbalance the influence of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō (Asahi, 22 December 1977). This effort failed because he was unable to bridge the gap between the Shinto and Buddhist groups over the Yasukuni issue (Asahi, 2 May 1983). His Study Group for Religion and Politics (Shūkyō Seiji Kenkyūkai), which officially had been formed to “cultivate politics based on religious ethics,” fell apart after Tamaki’s death in January 1987 (Asahi, 5 February 1987).10 Yet the Yasukuni Shrine issue does not prevent religious groups on opposite sides from supporting the same party. Religious groups other than Sōka Gakkai all supported LDP candidates, though not necessarily the LDP as a party, during the LDP’s long period of dominance. Since the 2000 election, Sōka Gakkai has also supported the LDP, thus supporting the same candidates as religious groups on the opposite side of the Yasukuni issue. The second issue that mobilizes religious groups concerns attitudes toward Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō. When Sōka Gakkai created a political party it violated a standard interpretation of the separation of religion and politics. Religious organizations (including Sōka Gakkai until it founded Kōmeitō) have rejected the idea of supporting a political party but approve the idea of supporting individual candidates, though the candidates were in fact mostly Liberal Democrats. We analyze this cleavage in detail in chapter 5. Here we will merely note that RKK was vehemently 10  Tamaki’s legacy reappeared in the person of the previously mentioned Ōe Yasuhiro (see the section titled “Religious Political Parties” in this chapter). Ōe had served as Tamaki’s secretary and claimed that his experience enabled him to understand the needs of religious organizations when he joined the Happiness Realization Party in 2010. Ōe left the HRP again after six months and eventually returned to the LDP.

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opposed to the formation of a religious party. The “religion and politics” cleavage thus sets Sōka Gakkai against RKK, with most other groups siding with RKK with varying degrees of enthusiasm. When Kōmeitō joined the LDP in coalition, Sōka Gakkai’s rivals shifted their support to the DPJ, though again to varying degrees. Our data on endorsements comes from the newsletters of several religious groups, which sometimes report to their members on the candidate endorsements. We were able to find the winning candidates supported by the Shinseiren for the 2000, 2003, 2005, and 2009 elections, and the same data from RKK for 2000, 2003, and 2005. The Jōdo Shinshū newsletter reported on candidates supported and group members running before the election. Adding candidates formally supported by Kōmeitō, which is public information reported in newspapers, we can ask which candidates and parties each group supported. Please note, first, that these data are about group endorsements, not individual voting behavior. We have no way of estimating how many votes are mobilized by these endorsements, though we have good reason to believe that the number is significant. Second, these are not particularly good data. We would like to know who the group supported, whether the candidate won or lost, and we would like to have the same data for each group. Third, both the source and nature of the data for Kōmeitō differs from that for the other groups. These data concern the political party Kōmeitō, not the religious group Sōka Gakkai. As official data they are more complete than the data for other groups but may also be less meaningful. Official Kōmeitō support for an LDP candidate covered a wide range of actual relationships and did not necessarily mean avid support by Kōmeitō or Sōka Gakkai. Of course, the same may hold for the endorsements of other religious groups. Ideal data not being available, we will analyze the data we have. We begin the analysis by asking whether groups support the same candidates or different candidates. The entries in table 2.1 are gamma correlation coefficients. A positive entry indicates that the two groups tend to support the same candidates while a negative entry indicates that they support different candidates. Based on the Yasukuni cleavage, we would expect to see negative correlations between Shinseiren and the Buddhist groups, but the correlations with both Kōmeitō and Jōdo Shinshū are positive. Most notable is the high correlation between Shinseiren and Kōmeitō. The two groups not only disagree on Yasukuni but Shinseiren also opposed the participation of Kōmeitō in government. The two groups take opposing positions on many other issues as well. Though divided on the issues, both groups support the LDP. Kōmeitō joined the coalition with the LDP despite the fact that the two parties disagree on many issues. As part

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Table 2.1 Do religious groups support the same candidates? Shinseiren

Kōmeitō

Kōmeitō

0.80

Jōdo Shinshū

0.23

0.56

−0.24

−0.65

RKK

Note: Entries are gamma coefficients. The n for each coefficient varies due to the data available for each group. Data for Shin­ seiren, Jōdo Shinshū, and Kōmeitō cover the 2000 through 2009 general elections. Data for RKK covers only 2003 through 2005.

of the political bargain, Kōmeitō wound up supporting candidates who take issue positions opposed by both the party and Sōka Gakkai. Similarly, Shinseiren opposed the formation of Kōmeitō but supports the same candidates because Shinseiren opposes many of the policy positions of the DPJ. Most notably, Shinseiren opposes giving foreigners the vote in local elections (a policy long supported by Kōmeitō) and allowing women to keep their maiden names after marriage. In this case, bargains struck with the LDP overrode policy differences. Based on the religion and politics issue, one would expect negative correlations between Kōmeitō support and all other groups. What we see instead is positive correlations for all but RKK. Jōdo Shinshū is much less concerned than RKK about the religion and politics issue and thus supports many LDP candidates despite opposing the coalition with Kōmeitō. Moreover, the negative coefficient between Kōmeitō and RKK is smaller than one would expect from the mass media’s portrayal of a “religious war” between the two groups. Such stories may sell newspapers, but they do not reflect the complete picture of religious groups’ involvement in politics. Our data on candidate issue positions comes from the Asahi Shinbun–​ Tokyo University survey of candidate issue position in the 2003 and 2005 elections (Kabashima and Yamamoto 2005, 2008). The survey asked several questions relevant to our topic. First, the issues of defense and Yasukuni define the cleavage that divides those who evaluate the prewar legacy positively and those who evaluate it negatively. The defense question (“Japan should strengthen its defense,” with 1 being “agree” and 5 being “disagree”) captures an important aspect of this cleavage. The Yasukuni question (“Should the prime minister visit Yasukuni Shrine?,” with 1 being “agree” and 5 being “disagree”) captures the religious aspect of

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Table 2.2 Candidate issue positions and support by religious groups

Defense

Yasukuni

Foreign Voting

Shinseiren

Kōmeitō

Jōdo Shinshū

LDP+DPJ

−0.31

−0.42

−0.05

LDP

−0.05

−0.15

0.00

DPJ

–​

–​

LDP+DPJ

−0.42

−0.69

0.15

LDP

−0.05

0.27

0.29

DPJ

–​

–​

0.44

LDP+DPJ

0.46

0.42

0.11

LDP

0.18

−0.15

0.04

DPJ

–​

–​

0.20

−0.02

Note: Entries are gamma coefficients.

the issue but, unfortunately, was asked only in 2005. Finally, both surveys asked whether foreign residents should be allowed to vote in local elections (with 1 being “agree” and 5 being “disagree”). Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō have long supported this proposal while Shinseiren finds the idea unacceptable. We first analyze LDP and DPJ candidates together to determine whether issue positions explain the choice of which party to endorse and then analyze the LDP and DPJ separately to determine whether issue positions explain the choice of candidates within party. The results are reported in table 2.2. Analyzing the LDP and DPJ candidates together leads to the conclusion that both Kōmeitō and Shinseiren support candidates who favor a stronger defense and the prime minister visiting Yasukuni, and who oppose local voting rights for foreigners. These stances are consonant with Shinseiren issue positions but violate the stated positions of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō. Kōmeitō thus supports LDP candidates, even those who take opposing issue positions, but, when choosing from among LDP candidates, the party is somewhat less likely to support LDP candidates who favor prime ministers visiting Yasukuni. The coalition with the LDP takes priority over policy considerations but policy makes some difference when choosing which LDP candidates to support.

Religious Groups in Japanese Electoral Politics

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RKK appears to oppose the positions of Shinseiren and Kōmeitō but that is simply because RKK supports more DPJ than LDP candidates. RKK does not appear to have a consistent position on Yasukuni or foreign voting, but this is due primarily to prioritizing the religion and politics cleavage over those issues. Jōdo Shinshū endorses both LDP and DPJ candidates and thus appears to take no stance on any issue but, within the LDP and particularly within the DPJ, the group tends to endorse candidates who oppose the prime minister visiting Yasukuni. The interaction between policy preferences and party support is complex, but our data clearly indicate that, for Kōmeitō, Shinseiren, or RKK, the candidates’ party affiliation is more important than their policy positions. The issue of Yasukuni does indeed divide Shinto from Buddhist groups but in neither case does it serve as a litmus test for endorsement. Similarly, the issue of religion and politics does indeed divide Sōka Gakkai and RKK but few other religious groups take this cleavage as seriously as does RKK. Issues play a role in deciding which candidate to support but the decision of a group to endorse a candidate never means that the group agrees with each and every issue position taken by that candidate or the candidate’s party. Rather, it means that the group and the candidate agree on enough to commit to a relationship. That relationship will involve both agreement and disagreement but, more importantly, trust and compromise. Thus, when Kōmeitō first entered the government in August 1993 as part of the short-lived Hosokawa coalition, it was flexible enough to agree to the list of policies set up by Hosokawa as a precondition for participation and apparently never put forward any original policy proposal of its own while in the coalition.11 When Kōmeitō entered into coalition with the LDP, it again committed to supporting candidates whose issue positions differed significantly from its own. In sum, we find that neither of the cleavages that systematically divides religious groups from each other prevents them from supporting the same party or the same candidate. Politics involves compromise. Many religious groups, including Sōka Gakkai, prove remarkably adept at compromise. Those groups, religious or otherwise, which find it difficult to compromise either remain small and irrelevant or soon exit the political arena. Why Do Religious Groups Get Involved in Electoral Politics? Political parties and candidates want the support of religious groups because they hope to receive a reliable organized vote. But why do religious 11  Personal interview with Takemura Masayoshi, 18 May 2010, Tokyo. For the view of Kōmeitō, see Ichikawa 2014.

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groups want to be involved in electoral politics? Our investigations have uncovered three major sets of goals: (1) to influence public policy, (2) to defend organizational interests from the state or political opponents, and (3) to maintain or strengthen the organization itself. Some groups are concerned with public policy. Seichō no Ie was clearly concerned with the abortion issue and represented the main voice promoting that issue in Japanese politics for many years. Shinseiren is deeply worried that the future of the nation is in danger if non-Japanese are given the right to vote in local elections or if Japanese women are allowed to keep their maiden names after marriage. Since these are policies supported by the DPJ, Shinseiren supports only LDP candidates. RKK is clearly motivated by the religion and politics issue, though it was involved in politics long before this became salient. The problems of suicide, school bullying, and North Korea’s aggressive military actions seem to have motivated the Science of Happiness. Several of the older peripheral religious parties also focused on certain single issues. In each of these cases, policy preferences are a major incentive to get involved in elections. In contrast, it is hard to pinpoint a particular policy issue that motivates Sōka Gakkai or many other religious groups. These groups do, of course, have policy positions, but policy does not appear to be the primary motivation behind their involvement in politics. This is indicated most clearly in their willingness to compromise and support candidates who do not share their policy preferences. A second motivation is the defense of the group’s organizational interests. Religious groups are, after all, interest groups like any other. This motivation has a long pedigree. The first Christian parties in Western Europe were founded to combat the liberal governments that were attacking the privileges of the Catholic Church (Kalyvas 1996). In Japan, the only issue with the proven potential to mobilize and unite most religious actors is the protection of their legal privileges. After Aum Shinrikyō’s terrorist attack in March 1995, the LDP government began discussing a revision of the law on religious organizations that immediately drew protest from religious groups across the spectrum (Klein 2012). Political activity can also be used to enhance the group’s public image. Especially for groups with negative public images, friends in government can help prevent or at least soften criticism. The Unification Church support of conservative politicians seems motivated by such aims (Sakurai 2010). Finally, political scientists have overlooked one of the most important sets of reasons for a religious group to get involved in politics, because this set of motivations is not concerned with electoral politics. All organizations need to maintain group cohesion and to keep their members actively involved. Supporting a candidate running for public office can thus be

Religious Groups in Japanese Electoral Politics

45

analogous to sponsoring a festival, collecting money for disaster relief, or conducting a study group. Strengthening group cohesion was one of the most prominent reasons given when religious groups were surveyed by the daily newspaper Asahi (6 June 1971). This motivation is not limited to religious groups. Consumer groups have also been known to demonstrate with no hope of influencing policy in order to strengthen group solidarity (Maclachlan 2002, 134). As a side effect, each of these activities offers local group leaders an opportunity to check on members’ willingness to participate and to take measures if turnout appears low. Positions of prestige such as official nominee in an election, member of the local assembly, or member of the Diet become important steps in the group’s hierarchy, strengthening its organizational cohesion. Finally, as McLaughlin demonstrates in chapter 3, election campaigning in itself is regarded as a religious activity within Sōka Gakkai, and this holds for other religious groups as well. Seikai Jōreikai, for example, seemed less interested in winning votes than in winning converts. The Women’s Party seems to be simultaneously using its door-to-door activities for campaigning, sales, and proselytizing. Amending the Standard Wisdom The standard wisdom suggests that religion is peripheral to Japanese politics and that generalization needs no revision with respect to voting behavior. With respect to religious political parties and religious groups as an organized voting bloc that supports candidates from other parties, however, the standard wisdom is in need of some revision. First, the standard wisdom holds for most religious political parties but no longer applies to Kōmeitō. Since 1993, no case can be made for considering Kōmeitō peripheral to Japanese politics. A religious political party currently plays a pivotal role in Japanese politics. Second, the standard wisdom is simply wrong when it comes to the organized vote. Religious groups, including Sōka Gakkai, have been intimately involved in electoral politics for many decades, acting as an organized vote for candidates nominated by other parties. Even excluding Sōka Gakkai, religious groups have been as influential as, for example, the construction industry or agricultural cooperatives. In addition, Sōka Gakkai’s organized votes are around four or five times larger than all other religious groups combined. Sōka Gakkai represents by far the largest and most reliable organized bloc of voters in Japan today. While the size and unity of the union movement, agricultural cooperatives, and industry groups have declined in recent years, Sōka Gakkai and other religious groups have declined little if at all.

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Speaking of Japanese historians, Sheldon Garon notes, “Book after book describes the struggle of the few hundred thousand workers and tenant farmers who formed unions. Curiously enough, historians have written little about what was unquestionably the largest and fastest growing popular movement in interwar Japan: the so-called new religions” (1986, 273). Political scientists studying Japanese elections have been making the same error. If one removes one’s modernization theory and political economy blinders, politically and financially powerful religious groups come into view. These religious groups are at least as powerful as the economic groups given pride of place in political economic theory, and it is the economic groups more than the religious groups that face declining effectiveness. References Bellucci, Paolo, Marco Maraffi, and Paolo Segatti. 2007. “Intermediation through Secondary Associations: The Organizational Context of Electoral Behaviour.” In Democracy, Intermediation, and Voting on Four Continents, edited by Richard Gunther, José Ramón Montero, and Hans-Jürgen Puhle, 135–​182. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fisker-Nielsen, Anne Mette. 2012. Soka Gakkai Youth and Komeito: Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan. Japan Anthropology Workshop Series. London: Routledge. Garon, Sheldon M. 1986. “State and Religion in Imperial Japan, 1912–​ 1954.” Journal of Japanese Studies 12:273–​302. Hori Sachio. 1985. “Senkyo to shūkyō dantai” [Elections and religious groups]. Juristo 38:120–​125. Hughes, Christopher W. 2001. “The Reaction of the Police and Security Authorities to Aum Shinrkyō.” In Religion and Social Crisis in Japan: Understanding Japanese Society through the Aum Affair, edited by Robert J. Kisala and Mark Mullins, 53–​70. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ichikawa Yūichi. 2014. “Kīman ga mita ‘renritsu no kyokui’” [The “essential point of the coalition” as seen by a key person]. Kōmei 1:16–​30. Joyu Fumihiro. 2009. “Kōfuku jitsugentō o miteiru to oumu to onaji funiki o kanjiru” [Watching the Happiness Realization Party I feel the same atmosphere as Aum]. Shūkan Diamondo (Sept.):41. Kabashima Ikuo and Yamamoto Koji. 2005. “2003-nen Tōkyō Daigaku/ Asahi Shimbunsha kyōdō seijika chōsa kōdo bukku” [The 2003 Tokyo University/Asahi Shimbun survey of politicians codebook]. Nihon Seiji Kenkyū 2:184–​210.

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———. 2008. “2005-nen Tōkyō Daigaku/Asahi Shimbunsha kyōdō seijika chōsa kōdo bukku” [The 2005 Tokyo University/Asahi Shimbun survey of politicians codebook]. Nihon Seiji Kenkyū 5:283–​297. Kalyvas, Stathis N. 1996. The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Klein, Axel. 2011. “Wenn Religionsgemeinschaften zur politischen Reformation ansetzen. Der Fall der japanischen ‘Kōfuku no kagaku’” [When religious organizations take on political reformation: The case of the Japanese “Kōfuku no kagaku”]. Asien: The German Journal on Contemporary Asia 119 (April): 9–​26. ———. 2012. “Twice Bitten, Once Shy: Religious Organizations and Politics after the Aum Attack.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39:77–​98. Kokushi Daijiten [Dictionary of national history]. 1995. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan. Vol. 14. Kselman, Thomas, and Joseph A. Buttigieg. 2003. European Christian Democracy. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Maclachlan, Patricia L. 2002. Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan. New York: Columbia University Press. Muller, William D. 1977. The Kept Men? The First Century of Trade Union Representation in the British House of Commons, 1874–​1975. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Müller, Wolfgang C., and Kaare Strøm. 1999. Policy, Office or Votes? How Political Parties in Western Europe Make Hard Decisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norgren, Tiana. 2001. Abortion before Birth Control: The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Reed, Steven R. 2013. “The Survival of ‘Third Parties’ in Japan’s MixedMember Electoral System.” In Japan under the DPJ, edited by Kenji E. Kushida and Phillip Y. Lipscy, 103–​126. Stanford, CA: Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford University. Sakurai, Yoshihide. 2010. “Geopolitical Mission Strategy: The Case of the Unification Church in Japan and Korea.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 37:17–​334. Toyoda, Maria A., and Aiji Tanaka. 2002. “Religion and Politics in Japan.” In Religion and Politics in Comparative Perspective, edited by Ted Gerard Jelen and Clyde Wilcox, 269–​288. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watanuki, Joji. 1991. “Social Structure and Voting Behavior.” In The Japanese Voter, edited by Scott C. Flanagan et al, 49–​83. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Weiner, Robert. 2003. “Kagoshima: The Prefecture that Realignment Forgot.” In Japanese Electoral Politics: Creating a New Party System, edited by Steven R. Reed, 122–​139. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Periodicals

AERA, first published in 1988, is a weekly magazine published by the Asahi Shinbun with a circulation of about 134,000 in 2012. Nihon zasshi kyōkai, available at www.j-magazine.or.jp/magadata/index.php?mo dule=list&action=list&cat1cd=1&cat3cd=2&period_cd=17. Accessed Jan. 2014. Asahi (Shinbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 7.6 million; evening edition: 2.7 million) was second only to that of the Yomiuri Shinbun. Available at http:// adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Chūnichi (Shinbun) is a regional daily newspaper published by the Chūnichi group in Nagoya, which also publishes the Tōkyō Chūnichi Shimbun. Total circulation of the Chūnichi Shinbun, which is sold in the prefectures Nagano, Shizuoka, Aichi, Gifu, Shiga, and Mie, was 2.6 million in 2013. Available at www.tokyo-np.co.jp/approach/. Accessed Jan. 2014. Shinshūkyō (Shinbun) is the weekly newspaper of the umbrella organization of Japan’s New Religions. Shūkan Asahi, first published in 1922, is a weekly magazine published by the Asahi Shinbun with a circulation of about 215,000 in 2012. Nihon zasshi kyōkai, available at www.j-magazine.or.jp/magadata/index. php?module=list&action=list&cat1cd=1&cat3cd=2&period_cd=17. Accessed Jan. 2014. Shūkan Gendai is a weekly magazine published by Kodansha, the largest publishing house in Japan. It usually contains a mixture of news, gossip, and scandals from fields as diverse as politics, celebrities, golf, cooking, and sex. Weekly circulation in 2012 was about 550,000. Nihon zasshi kyōkai, available at www.j-magazine.or.jp/magadata/index. php?module=list&action=list&cat1cd=1&cat3cd=2&period_cd=17. Accessed Jan. 2014. Yomiuri (Shinbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 9.9 million; evening edition: 3.4 million) was larger than that of any other Japanese daily. Available at http://adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014.

Part III: The History

Three

Electioneering as Religious Practice A History of Sōka Gakkai’s Political Activities to 1970

Levi McLaughlin

Introduction Sōka Gakkai, though it is Japan’s largest active religion, is only one of thousands of new religious groups that flourished in Japan after the Second World War, and, as Klein and Reed outlined in the previous chapter, one of several that has engaged in postwar electoral politics. However, only Sōka Gakkai has succeeded in establishing a prominent and lasting place for itself in the Japanese political system, and only Kōmeitō has endured as an influential party founded to satisfy religious motives. Kōmeitō emerged as a component of Sōka Gakkai’s eschatological mission to realize the vision of the medieval Buddhist reformer Nichiren (1222–​1282). Nichiren’s vision was to deliver salvation for Japan by convincing all people to embrace the Lotus Sūtra and reject all other teachings, including other forms of Buddhism, as false and misleading. At the outset of Sōka Gakkai’s foray into politics, gathering votes and gaining seats in regional and national legislatures in themselves were not the principal aims within the group’s mission. Instead, political victories were merely steps toward the more profound religious victory of salvation for Japan through realizing doctrinally mandated objectives. It is not an exaggeration to state that even today, more than forty years after Sōka Gakkai officially abandoned political objectives, many ordinary members still consider Kōmeitō campaigning to be as integral to their practice as chanting the Lotus Sūtra and seeking to convert nonbelievers to their faith. Why did Sōka Gakkai’s leaders steer the religion into electoral politics, and how did Sōka Gakkai leaders convince millions of people in Japan to fuse religious propagation with political activism? In order to understand how Kōmeitō operates, and in order to make sense of its constituents and

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their actions, I will situate the party in a context that is largely unfamiliar to those who study Japanese politics: electioneering as religious mission. In this chapter, I address the question of why Sōka Gakkai entered politics by tracing the origins of the group’s political campaigns in the mandates of Nichiren Shōshū, the lineage of medieval Japanese Buddhism in which Sōka Gakkai began as a lay association. I then discuss key events from the 1950s and 1960s that shaped Sōka Gakkai as a politically engaged religious movement. After this, I briefly describe the people who drove the religious and political campaigns during the 1960s by outlining the demographic makeup of Sōka Gakkai membership in that era. Finally, I examine the series of events that led to the official split in 1970 between Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō, and I reflect on the costs and the benefits accrued by Sōka Gakkai when it conflated its religious objectives with political goals. Sōka Gakkai’s Prewar Origins and Postwar Development: Challenging Traditional Boundaries of Buddhism Today, Sōka Gakkai claims a membership of 8.27 million households in Japan and more than 1.5 million adherents in 192 countries abroad under its overseas umbrella organization Sōka Gakkai International (SGI). Recent scholarship confirms that these figures—​like those supplied by other religious groups—​are certainly inflated.1 However, it can be surmised that Sōka Gakkai members make up approximately 2 percent of the Japanese population.2 There is little doubt that Sōka Gakkai is not only Japan’s largest active religion but is most likely the largest independent Japanese organization of any kind. No other organization of any type in Japanese history has matched Sōka Gakkai’s success in building a centrally administered

1  Happy Science (Kōfuku no Kagaku), for instance, claims eleven million Japanese adherents, a figure that potentially tops Sōka Gakkai’s membership and makes Ōkawa Ryūhō’s organization Japan’s largest New Religion. However, taking into account Happy Science’s inability to elect all but one of the hundreds of candidates who have run for its political party (Happiness Realization Party; Kōfuku Jitsugentō) since 2009, and the relatively modest number of facilities the group maintains in Japan compared with thousands of Sōka Gakkai buildings, suggests that Happy Science makes membership claims that are excessive even by the inflationary standards of Japan’s religious community. See Shimada (2009); Shūkan Daiyamondo (12 September 2009); and chapter 2 in this volume. 2  The most detailed sources for Sōka Gakkai membership numbers are the group’s website (see www.sokanet.jp/info/gaiyo.html; accessed June 2012) and its own Seikatsu hōkoku (Annual report) issued by the Sōka Gakkai Office of Public Affairs at the organization’s headquarters in Shinanomachi, Tokyo. For a discussion of difficulties associated with assessing Sōka Gakkai’s membership in Japan and sources for ascertaining membership numbers, see McLaughlin (2009, 2012); for a reliable recent assessment of numbers of affiliates in all Japanese religious groups, including Sōka Gakkai, see Roemer (2009).

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group of active participants with committed members in every community, at every socioeconomic level, and in every vocational sphere. Sōka Gakkai marks its founding as 18 November 1930, when Makiguchi Tsunesaburō (1871–​1944), the first president of the group’s prewar incarnation Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai (Value Creation Education Study Association), published the first volume of Sōka kyōikugaku taikei (System of value-creating educational study), a four-volume series of essays that dealt primarily with educational reform. The group began as a small association of schoolteachers and intellectuals who gathered in Tokyo to discuss philosophy and publish periodicals that put forward ideas related to education and society. Along with his disciple and fellow elementary school teacher Toda Jōgai (later Jōsei) (1900–​1958), Makiguchi converted to the Buddhist sect Nichiren Shōshū in 1928 and turned thereafter to lay Buddhist activism. It was not until the late 1930s that Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai adopted an explicitly Nichiren Buddhist character, when the group’s leaders turned toward absolute religious commitment.3 Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai began as a lay association under the temple Buddhist denomination Nichiren Shōshū, or “Nichiren True Sect,” a minority lineage that follows the teachings of Nichiren (1222–​1282). Like many clerics in thirteenth-century Japan, Nichiren was trained primarily in the Tendai tradition, yet he broke away from established Buddhist teachings to preach that only faith in the Lotus Sūtra, held to be the historical Buddha Śākyamuni’s final teaching, and the practice of chanting the title of the Lotus in the seven-syllable formula namu-myōhō-renge-kyō (known as the daimoku) were effective means of achieving salvation in the degraded “Latter Days of the Buddha’s Dharma,” known in Japanese as mappō. Since Nichiren himself, followers of Nichiren Buddhism have combined soteriological vision with political engagement: according to Nichiren, Japan was a nation that “slandered the Dharma,” and only drastic measures by all people in Japan, particularly those in the Kamakura Bakufu (military government), to reject all other teachings in favor of exclusive embrace of the Lotus Sūtra would save Japan from calamity. Nichiren drew the ire of the authorities of his day when he lambasted other Buddhist schools as “false sects” led by “evil monks” whose teachings perpetuated Japan’s degradation in the depths of mappō. He petitioned the military government in Kamakura to abandon support of Tendai, Shingon, Pure Land, 3  For a more detailed treatment of Sōka Gakkai’s historical development, see McLaughlin (2009, 2012). The following account of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō in the early postwar years is taken from Higuma (1971), Murata (1969), Nakaba (1968), Nishino (1985), Saeki (2000), Shimada (2004), Sōka Gakkai Yonjū Shūnenshi Hensan Iinkai (1970), Sōka Gakkai Nenpyō Hensan Iinkai (1976), Tamano (2008), Tōkyō Daigaku Hokekyō Kenkyūkai (1962, 1975), and other primary and secondary sources cited later in this chapter.

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and other temples, and he otherwise challenged the established order of his day, leading the Kamakura government to exile him twice and attempt to execute him once.4 Since the thirteenth century, Nichiren has served as a model of selflessly persevering against corrupt worldly authority in defense of a divine mission. Nichiren’s exploits, particularly his episodes of kokka kangyō—​“remonstrating the state” for supporting heterodox teachings—​have provided clerics and lay followers alike with a biographical example of triumph over adversity and the benefits of adhering to one’s beliefs. Generations of Nichiren Buddhists have followed in their founder’s footsteps, contributing to a thriving, centuries-long tradition of Nichiren-based challenges to government authority. The tradition’s mandate to spread exclusive devotion to the Lotus has consistently necessitated political engagement: because Nichiren Buddhism demands the rejection of such long-standing Japanese conventions as temples tolerating their parishioners patronizing other religious organizations and sects cooperating with one another to offer services to the state, promoting orthodox Nichiren Buddhist doctrinal objectives requires challenges to the political status quo. At different points throughout the centuries, Nichiren Buddhists have distinguished themselves as political actors. For instance, from 1532, in Japan’s Sengoku (Warring Provinces) period, the imperial capital, Kyoto, was controlled for four years by Nichiren Buddhist–​affiliated militias, which battled rival sectarian forces for control of the city.5 And, at the very beginning of the Tokugawa era (1600–​1867), a group of Nichiren Buddhists who came to be known as the Fuju Fuse were some of the very few non-Christian religious practitioners to be driven underground for running afoul of the Tokugawa government.6

4  For the most comprehensive treatment in English of Nichiren’s life and teachings, see Stone (1999, 239–​355). For an authoritative yet accessible treatment of Nichiren and Nichiren Buddhism in Japanese, see Nakao (2009). 5  For an account of events associated with the period known as the Tenbun Hokke Ikki (Lotus Uprising) and its end in sectarian violence that resulted in the fiery destruction of much of Kyoto, see Imatani (1989) and Stone (1994). 6  Fuju Fuse, literally “Give Not, Receive Not,” was a branch within Nichiren Buddhism that upheld a purist doctrinal stance of forswearing the giving to or receiving of alms from those deemed slanderers of the Dharma—​a designation that came to include the new Tokugawa government. The group was declared illegal in 1630 after decades of contending with government forces. Sect priests and practitioners went deep underground and developed secret practices to protect their doctrines and communities as they continued to endure official persecution throughout the Tokugawa era, suffering censure, exile, and martyrdom. It was not until after the ban was lifted in 1876 that the sect finally emerged from hiding. For a detailed investigation of Fuju Fuse’s origins and its founder, Nichiō, see Miyazaki (1969).

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The period since the end of the nineteenth century in particular has seen Nichiren Buddhism appeal to a wide constituency as Japan transformed from a semifeudal order into a modern nation-state that offered new opportunities for political participation. Many of Japan’s most prominent New Religions, primarily lay-centered groups founded in the last two hundred years, are based in Nichiren Buddhism. These groups, which include Honmon Butsuryūshū, Kokuchūkai, Reiyūkai, Risshō Kōseikai, Nichiren Shōshū Taisekiji Kenshōkai, Nipponzan Myōhōji, and of course Sōka Gakkai, have numbered among modern Japan’s most politically active religious organizations.7 Given this history, it is perhaps fitting that Sōka Gakkai began as an organization that resisted government authority. During the Second World War, the Japanese government required all religions to uphold State Shinto mandates by enshrining talismans from the Grand Shrine at Ise as a dedication to Amaterasu Ōmikami, the sun goddess and celestial ancestor of the emperor. However, Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai members unrepentantly defended their exclusive commitment to Nichiren’s teachings and refused to enshrine the State Shinto talismans. A total of twenty-one Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai leaders, including Makiguchi and Toda, were arrested in July 1943 under the provisions of the Peace Preservation Law. Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai dispersed after the arrests, and only Makiguchi and Toda refused to recant their position. While the other group members were released, Makiguchi and Toda were incarcerated at Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison, where Makiguchi died of malnutrition on 18 November 1944. Were it not for Makiguchi’s and Toda’s conversion to Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism, the Value Creation Education Study Association would likely be remembered as an unremarkable footnote in twentieth-century Japanese intellectual history. It was the conflation of modern educational thought with Japanese Buddhism that brought the group official scrutiny, and it was Makiguchi and Toda’s battle with wartime government authority that set the stage for Sōka Gakkai’s postwar political developments. After his release on 3 July 1945, weeks before Japan’s surrender to the Allied forces, Toda reformed the organization. In May 1946 he renamed it Sōka Gakkai, and the group grew quickly in the immediate postwar years. From the early 1950s Sōka Gakkai rapidly gained a reputation as a religion of the poor; its converts at this time were primarily drawn from the millions of impoverished and socially displaced Japanese moving into urban areas seeking employment. Converts were quickly organized into a sophisticated administrative hierarchy that emulated military and 7  For more on the political engagements of Nichiren Buddhism–​based modern groups that preceded Sōka Gakkai and contend with it today, see chapter 9 of this volume.

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pedagogical models familiar to those emerging from wartime-era Japan. Young Men’s and Young Women’s Division members mustered in butai (corps) under butaichō (corps commanders), and all other adherents were organized by age, gender, location, and activity. The grassroots membership, in turn, initiated new activities offering avenues of expression and social advancement not otherwise available to many who had survived wartime devastation—​women, the uneducated, the sick, the displaced, and other disenfranchised people. Sōka Gakkai leaders encouraged members to chant namu-myōhō-renge-kyō to achieve tangible goals, including curing illness, making money, and relief from social conflict. Critics of the group denigrated members’ explicit quest for material gain as crass, while Sōka Gakkai members themselves pointed to the realization of material objectives as proof that their practice was effective. From the outset of its growth as a mass movement, Sōka Gakkai engaged its members in a wide variety of activities that exceeded parameters commonly associated with religion. Members combined Buddhism with pursuits that were much more closely allied with the group’s origins in pedagogy and self-cultivation. Grassroots-level members gathered regularly in homes in meetings called zadankai (discussion sessions), an adaptation from the seikatsu kakushin jikken shōmei zadankai (meetings for discussing proof of experiencing lifestyle innovation) convened within Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai under Makiguchi. Toda Jōsei drew on his life of teaching school and pursuing other educational enterprises as he created doctrinal study programs based on standardized systems employed in Japanese schools.8 Beginning in 1954, Sōka Gakkai organized Sports Day events for members that served as the model for later stadium events. Much larger, more visually impressive events followed as Sōka Gakkai gained in numbers. From the late 1950s, these developed into enormous “culture festivals” (bunkasai) held at stadiums across Japan, featuring casts of thousands performing songs and dances extolling the glories of Sōka Gakkai and its leaders. In the 1950s, members also began to undertake initiatives in the arts, media, and other spheres. They founded the Sōka Gakkai newspaper Seikyō Shimbun in April 1951, established marching bands for the Young Men’s and Young Women’s divisions from 1954, founded vocational suborganizations meeting the needs of workers in all occupations, and otherwise urged their fellow adherents to expand Sōka Gakkai activities into all aspects of everyday life. Therefore, beyond its relevance to the group’s doctrinal motivations, Sōka Gakkai’s move into electoral politics was apprehended by its members as a natural progression; politi8  The most detailed analysis of Toda Jōsei and his conflation of pedagogy and Nichiren Buddhism is Higuma (1971).

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cal activity was simply one other quotidian pursuit to be reframed within a Sōka Gakkai context. Doctrinal Mandates as Political Goals: A “National Ordination Platform” Becomes an Electoral Objective Sōka Gakkai expanded its membership in large part through the practice of shakubuku, the technique of proactive conversion. Shakubuku might be translated as “to break and subdue [attachment to inferior teachings],” and it was promoted by Nichiren as the only practice appropriate for countries, such as Japan, that “slander the Dharma” by embracing heterodox beliefs.9 Under Toda’s leadership, members were instructed to convert their friends, neighbors, and family, and they were aided in this task by Sōka Gakkai publications filled with techniques to persuade people to abandon other religions, such as the Shakubuku kyōten (Handbook of conversion).10 From 1951, members embarked on the “Great March of Shakubuku” (Shakubuku Daikōshin), a massive conversion campaign with the aim of ultimately realizing the Nichiren Buddhist goal of kōsen rufu, literally “declaring [the Lotus Sūtra] far and wide,” or the mission of converting all people to Sōka Gakkai. Thanks to the hard-sell shakubuku approach taken by adherents under Toda’s leadership, Sōka Gakkai’s membership grew tremendously through the years of the Great March of Shakubuku to eclipse that of all other Nichiren-based groups and indeed all other active Japanese religions. Sōka Gakkai began with approximately five thousand adherents in 1951; its membership surpassed one million households by the end of 1958, the year of Toda’s death. As Sōka Gakkai expanded, Toda focused on the realization of the sandai hihō, or Nichiren’s “Three Great Secret Dharmas.” These are, one, the daimoku, the title of the Lotus chanted as namu-myōhō-renge-kyō. Two, the daigohonzon, a calligraphic mandala with the daimoku at its center inscribed by Nichiren on the twelfth day of the tenth month of 1279, which Nichiren Shōshū followers revere as the most sacred object for the salvation of humankind. Membership in Sōka Gakkai is confirmed by the conferral of a gohonzon, a replica of the daigohonzon that members enshrine in their 9  For a discussion of shakubuku’s doctrinal origins, see Stone (1999, 255–​256). Sōka Gakkai members commonly refer to passages in Nichiren’s 1272 treatise Kaimokushō (On the opening of the eyes) to confirm shakubuku as a compassionate act of salvation. See Shinpen Nichiren Daishōnin gosho zenshū (hereafter Gosho zenshū), 252. 10  Sōka Gakkai published Shakubuku kyōten from November 1951 to May 1969. It is important to note that the group ceased publishing this highly polemical manual exactly when Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai separated into officially independent institutions. For more on the importance of Shakubuku kyōten to Sōka Gakkai in the 1950s and 1960s, see Itō (2004) and McLaughlin (2009, 2012).

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homes. And three, the honmon no kaidan, a “true ordination platform” to be constructed at a site resembling Sacred Vulture Peak, the place where the historical Buddha Śākyamuni delivered his final teaching, the Lotus Sūtra. There the daigohonzon will be enshrined and worshipped by the chanting of the daimoku upon the realization of kōsen rufu, or the conversion of all people to Nichiren’s Buddhism.11 In Nichiren’s time, an “ordination platform” was a state-sponsored facility at an influential temple site at which monks upheld Buddhist precepts. Jacqueline Stone concludes that while there are no uncontested sources that provide specific explanations as to what Nichiren’s ideal ordination platform might look like or how it might function, Nichiren most likely called for the establishment of a “state-sponsored center for the dissemination of the Lotus Sūtra, which would in turn presume official recognition of his teaching.”12 The first two of the Three Great Secret Dharmas, the daimoku and the daigohonzon, had been realized in Nichiren’s lifetime, yet the ordination platform to be constructed after conversion of the populace remained a goal beyond the institutional capacities of Nichiren-based organizations for centuries after the passing of their founder. However, as Sōka Gakkai gathered hundreds of thousands of new adherents in the first years of its Great March of Shakubuku, celebrating the conversion of the population by building an ordination platform emerged as a realistic objective. There is ample evidence that Toda envisioned Sōka Gakkai entering electoral politics almost immediately after he began reforming the organization in the postwar era, and that, from the start, Sōka Gakkai political activity emerged in the interest of securing the complete conversion of the populace by constructing the ordination platform, thereby realizing the final of the Three Great Secret Dharmas. Toda’s disciple Ikeda Daisaku (b. 1928), now honorary president of Sōka Gakkai and the group’s unquestioned authority, wrote that by early 1949 Toda postulated that kōsen rufu would not be possible without political engagement by Sōka Gakkai 11  Ideas regarding the national ordination platform rely on a passage in the Sandai hihō honjō ji, an essay otherwise known as the Sandai hihōshō (Treatise on the Three Great Secret Dharmas), a document attributed to Nichiren. In this essay, Nichiren proclaims that “when the ruler’s dharma (ōbō) becomes one with Buddha-Dharma (buppō) and the BuddhaDharma is united with the ruler’s dharma, so that the ruler and his ministers all uphold the three great secret Dharmas of the original teaching . . . then surely an imperial edict and a shogunal decree will be handed down, to seek out the most superlative site, resembling the Pure Land of Sacred Vulture Peak, and there to erect the ordination platform.” A full translation is available in Stone (1999, 289–​290). 12  See Stone (1999, 289). It should be noted that controversy over the veracity of texts on this issue form the center of some of the most heated debates over religion and politics in the Nichiren Buddhist tradition.

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(Ikeda 1971–​1994).13 The following year saw Toda publish on electoral politics for the first time; he briefly discussed the idea of ōbutsu myōgō, “the harmonious unity of government and Buddhism,” in an editorial for the monthly Sōka Gakkai study magazine Daibyaku renge (Great white lotus) of March 1950.14 By January 1952, Toda was reportedly telling members that Sōka Gakkai would have to take part in elections, but it was not until two years later that Toda explicitly linked Sōka Gakkai’s mission of proselytizing with electioneering (Nakaba 1968). The 1 January 1954 issue of Sōka Gakkai’s newspaper Seikyō Shimbun featured an editorial by Toda Jōsei titled “Until the Day of Constructing the National Ordination Platform” in which he urged members to regard 1954 as a year of preparation for the complete conversion of all people in Japan to worship of the daigohonzon, an objective that would ideally be realized within twenty-five years. The conversion of the populace to Sōka Gakkai, Toda wrote, would be marked a quarter century hence by the construction of an ordination platform decreed by a majority within the Lower House (House of Representatives).15 From 1 August 1956, Toda issued an essay titled “Ōbutsu myōgō ron,” “On the Harmonious Union of Government and Buddhism,” as a serial in Daibyaku renge. In this essay, Toda (1956, 204) wrote that “we [Sōka Gakkai] are concerned with politics because of the need to realize kōsen rufu, the spreading of the sacred phrase namu-myōhō-rengekyō, one of the Three Great Sacred Dharmas. In other words, the only purpose of our going into politics is the erection of the kokuritsu kaidan.” Toda described the honmon no kaidan in terms of a “national ordination platform,” or kokuritsu kaidan, a modern revision of the Nichiren Buddhist idea that appears in the teachings of Tanaka Chigaku (1861–​1939), founder of Kokuchūkai, an ultra-nationalist Nichirenist group.16 In an essay titled “Shūmon no ishin” (Restoration of the sect), Tanaka ([1901] 1919) 13  Ikeda relays his mentor’s words in Ningen kakumei 3:156–​157, and he indicates that Toda had made similar comments as early as 1948. Discussed in White (1970, 133). 14  Toda’s essay, titled “Ōbō to buppō,” from 10 March 1950 is available in Toda Jōsei zenshū 1:26–​29. Cited in Stone (2003a, 217) and analyzed in Shimada (2004, 76–​77). Ōbutsu myōgō derives from the Sandai hihō honjōji; see note 11. Sōka Gakkai members turn to the Nichiren document in Gosho zenshū, 1062. For a full translation of this passage and a discussion of controversy surrounding the Sandai hihō honjōji, see Stone (1999, 444–​445n213; 2003a, 196). 15  Seikyō Shimbun (1 January 1954), reproduced and discussed in Kawada (1980, 14–​15). 16  Though Kokuchūkai never grew to dominate the Japanese religious world in the manner of Sōka Gakkai, Tanaka wielded influence through his many publications, energetic proselytizing, lecturing across the Japanese empire, and through his disciples, including the author and critic Takayama Chogyū (1871–​1902); famed writer Miyazawa Kenji (1896–​1933); and the Imperial Japanese Army officer Ishiwara Kanji (1889–​1949), who is most renowned for his role in the 1931 Mukden Incident that led to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. For detailed discussions of Tanaka Chigaku and Kokuchūkai, see Ōtani (2001) and Iguchi (2006).

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had urged that all Nichiren Buddhists unite as one tradition to dominate the nation’s economy and infrastructure. The mandate for the ordination platform was to come from the Imperial Diet; by converting a majority of the Japanese population to Nichiren Buddhism, both Diet houses would be able to vote in a kokuritsu kaidan, a national ordination platform that would serve as the seat of power in a “great Dharma battle,” after which the whole nation would embrace the Lotus and the establishment of the honmon no kaidan, the “true ordination platform,” would be announced. Toda appears to have been influenced by Tanaka’s modernist revisions of the Nichiren Buddhist ordination platform, despite the fact that neither he nor his mentor Makiguchi counted among Tanaka’s followers; indeed, as a victim of wartime Japanese nationalist authority, Toda was opposed to Tanaka’s vision of conflating Buddhist and imperial rule through ōbutsu myōgō.17 Toda adopted Tanaka’s terminology ōbutsu myōgō and kokuritsu kaidan, and he promoted the ideal of erecting a nationally sponsored ordination platform following a majority vote in the National Diet. However, Toda’s modern take on Nichiren’s utopian vision omitted Tanaka’s ultranationalist ideology of conflating the Lotus Sūtra with the person of the emperor and Japan’s kokutai, or “national essence.”18 When Toda ascended to the position of second Sōka Gakkai president on 3 May 1951, he urged members to hold themselves personally responsible for realizing Nichiren’s ideal of absolute orthodoxy. In his inaugural address, Toda stated, “Today, kōsen rufu means that each of you must grapple with false teachings and convert the people in this country through shakubuku one by one, having everyone receive the gohonzon. Only then will the true ordination platform be established.”19 However, as Sōka Gakkai candidates began to score election victories, Toda’s vision of circumstances surrounding the construction of the kaidan became more pragmatic. During a question-and-answer session held after a study meeting at the Nichiren Shōshū head temple Taisekiji, in response to a query 17  Makiguchi attended several lectures by Tanaka in 1916 at the Kokuchūkai headquarters in Tokyo, yet he never joined the group. In contrast to his disciple, Makiguchi was not concerned with constructing a “national ordination platform,” but in one Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai pamphlet from 1935 Makiguchi made a passing reference to the honmon no kaidan, the “true ordination platform,” avoiding Tanaka’s nationalist revision of this Nichiren Buddhist objective. See Shimada (2004, 84). 18  For discussions of how Toda’s views of the ordination platform issue contrasted with those of Tanaka Chigaku, see Nishiyama (1975) and Stone (2003a, 2003b). 19  Toda Jōsei Zenshū Henshū Iinkai, ed., Toda Jōsei zenshū, 3:430. Translation adapted from Stone (2003a, 205–​206). The “shogunal decree” (mikyōsho), understood in Nichiren’s time as a written pronouncement issued by the Kamakura Shogun’s government, was interpreted by modern Nichiren Buddhists such as Tanaka Chigaku and Toda Jōsei as a document issued by Japan’s National Diet.

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from a member in regards to why Sōka Gakkai was fielding candidates in the 1956 Upper House election, Toda referred to the “Treatise on the Three Great Secret Dharmas,” noting that the “imperial edict and shogunal decree” to construct the ordination platform would mean permission from elected officials in the National Diet. This is not a matter of waiting until everyone in Japan chants namu-myōhō-rengekyō, Toda cautioned. “No matter how sincerely you say you’ve carried out kōsen rufu, Christianity and Amidism [Pure Land Buddhism] will not have disappeared completely . . . it is only through an ‘imperial edict and shogunal decree’ that we must mobilize in response to Great Sage Nichiren’s commands, so it is good if the true ordination platform is built” (Toda 1963, 189). In this way, Toda departed from orthodox Nichiren Buddhist interpretations that require the complete conversion of the populace to Lotus worship as a precondition for the construction of the kaidan; he was, in effect, calling for the construction of the ordination platform before the realization of kōsen rufu. As the leader of history’s largest-ever association of Nichiren Buddhists, a religious group that was navigating uncharted territory in Japanese parliamentary politics, Toda was proposing new and pragmatic concessions that challenged Nichiren Buddhist doctrinal orthodoxy. Toda’s promotion of political engagement based on Nichiren Buddhist doctrinal mandates fed into a growing popular perception that Sōka Gakkai was at odds with the norms of postwar democratic Japanese society, and that the group sought to impose theocratic rule rather than embrace the guarantees of a strict division of religion and government called for in the 1947 Constitution. Article 20 of the Constitution states, “No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority” and “The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.” Additionally, Article 89 reads: “No public money or other property shall be expended or appropriated for the use, benefit or maintenance of any religious institution or association or for any charitable, educational benevolent enterprises not under the control of public authority.” Sōka Gakkai’s entrée into electoral politics was widely interpreted as a direct violation of Article 20’s prohibition of the exercise of political authority by a religious organization, despite the existence of constitutional guarantees of freedom of association and religious belief. Second, Sōka Gakkai’s objective to mark the conversion of Japan to Lotus worship by establishing a “national ordination platform” by Diet decree appeared to threaten protections outlined by Article 89, which prevents the Japanese state from funding any religious enterprise. By the time Toda died, Sōka Gakkai was climbing steadily toward a membership of one million households, and there was no end of growth

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in sight. Toda Jōsei battled serious illness from January 1957, and he died at Nihon University hospital of liver disease on 2 April 1958 at fifty-eight years of age. An official funeral was held on 20 April in Aoyama, Tokyo, and an estimated 250,000 members of Sōka Gakkai lined the streets of Tokyo to mourn their leader as his hearse passed. Sōka Gakkai’s political importance was great enough by this time to compel the nation’s leading politicians to pay their respects to Toda: Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke and Minister of Education Matsunaga Tō offered incense at the Aoyama Funeral Home to Sōka Gakkai’s deceased leader. Transcendence through Politics: Early Sōka Gakkai Electoral Campaigns and the “Osaka Incident” Sōka Gakkai initially framed political engagement as a form of “cultural activities” (bunka katsudō), a mode of interfacing with mainstream society in ways that were not immediately related to Buddhist practice. Sōka Gakkai established a Culture Division (Bunkabu) on 22 November 1954, which it presented as a necessary supplement to shakubuku activities. In a Seikyō Shimbun article, Sōka Gakkai announced that the Culture Division would serve the same role that Makiguchi Tsunesaburō’s research into education had done in supplementing Nichiren Buddhist practice in the previous era.20 Under Toda’s pragmatic leadership, “culture activities” meant “political activities.” The Culture Division mobilized grassroots members to support candidates affiliated with Sōka Gakkai, mostly senior members of the organization’s administration who were running for office in several local races in 1955. Sōka Gakkai initially forswore the creation of a Sōka Gakkaitō, a “Sōka Gakkai Party,” urging members to instead support group administrators running for office, no matter if they ran for the Socialist Party (Shakaitō), Liberal Party (Jiyūtō), or the Democratic Party (Minshutō). Even if they support Sōka Gakkai candidates running for the Communist Party (Kyōsantō), a Seikyō Shimbun article declared, election activities of members do not support politics simply for the sake of politics but politics for the sake of kōsen rufu.21 “It is only by placing Gakkai members in the Diet that the government will reach a consensus to construct a national ordination platform.”22 20 

Seikyō Shimbun (28 November 1954), reproduced in Hori (1999, 11). Reproduced in Hori (1999, 21). In the first local elections in 1955, six Gakkai candidates ran in local councils: five for the Japanese Democratic Party (Nippon Minshutō), and one for the left-wing Uha Shakaitō, the precursor to the Socialist Party. See Shimada (2007, 36). Further details appear in Hori (1999, 21–​32). 22  Seikyō Shimbun (3 April 1955), in Hori (1999, 14–​15). 21 

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However, for the election held on 8 July 1956, Sōka Gakkai abandoned the strategy of seeding other political parties and mobilized the Culture Division in support of six Sōka Gakkai administrators running as independent candidates for the Tokyo and Osaka Upper House by-elections and in the fourth election of the Upper House of the National Diet, three of whom were successfully elected.23 Despite election successes, the first few years of Sōka Gakkai’s political career were beset with difficulties. Because engagements with electoral politics were conceived as part of a transcendent religious mission, Sōka Gakkai’s leaders imbued their electoral campaigns with profound religious significance, and local-level members engaged in politics with the same zeal that they brought to their proselytizing. Members were propelled by the conviction that electioneering contributed directly to the establishment of the ordination platform and the realization of kōsen rufu. Gakkai members first faced indictment in June 1956, charged with soliciting support for Gakkai candidates through “house-to-house campaigning” (kobetsu hōmon), an activity forbidden by Japanese election law. The Asahi Shimbun and other newspapers reported on this scandal on successive days, adding to the rising negative public image in the press regarding the “dangers” of the “newly arisen religion” (shinkō shūkyō) Sōka Gakkai.24 Reports of this nature fed the high-pitched rhetoric employed by the mainstream media describing Sōka Gakkai’s successful campaigns, such as the declaration “masa ka” ga jitsugen (the “unspeakable” has come true) as a headline announcing Sōka Gakkai official Shiraki Gi’ichirō’s victory in the 1956 Osaka Upper House by-election.25 In an interview, a veteran Sōka Gakkai adherent who took part as a youth in this campaign for Shiraki described how ordinary members treated electioneering as an extension of their intense shakubuku proselytizing. “It [electioneering] was religious activity. We carried out shakubuku as we shouted ‘Shiraki! Shiraki!’ right up to the election. Within Sōka Gakkai at this time, members 23  Shimada (2007, 36–​38). Sōka Gakkai candidates garnered more than 990,000 votes nationally, while the organization itself only claimed approximately 420,000 members. See Suzuki (1970, 270). 24  See Asahi (28 June 1956) for a list of charges laid on Sōka Gakkai members in Aomori, Miyagi, Saitama, and other prefectures. Around the same time, the Asahi reported that groups of Sōka Gakkai members traveled through neighborhoods from May 1956 distributing osatsu (name tags or paper talismans) displaying the name of the group’s administrator running for office. Campaigning members reportedly instructed people receiving the candidate name talismans to enshrine them as offerings in their home Buddhist or Shinto altars and to be sure to vote for the candidates; if you fail to support the Sōka Gakkai candidates, the members told them, you will become ill. See Asahi (25 June 1956). 25  Reproduced in Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki Henshū Iinkai, ed., Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki, 1:11.

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engaged ceaselessly in Buddhism-related activities, such as shakubuku, lectures on Nichiren’s writings, and study sessions . . . we worked electioneering (senkyo katsudō) into shakubuku.”26 The shakubuku style of vote gathering yielded electoral success and brought in new converts; however, this approach also led to the rise of Sōka Gakkai’s reputation as a group transgressing constitutionally mandated divides between religion and government. In an effort to counter negative public sentiment, Sōka Gakkai wholeheartedly urged its members to embrace an ethic of “clean elections” (kōmei senkyo) as they engaged in support for their candidates in 1957 campaigns. Kōmei senkyo and the adjective kōmei (clean) remained central slogans in Sōka Gakkai politics when the group inaugurated the Clean Government Political Assembly (Kōmei Seiji Renmei) in 1962 and the Clean Government Party (Kōmeitō) in 1964.27 However, it appears as though not all members immediately adopted the “clean elections” principle. In an event since dubbed the “Osaka Incident” (Ōsaka jiken), a total of forty-five Sōka Gakkai members were indicted in June and July 1957 by the Osaka Public Prosecutor’s Office for violating the public elections law in the campaign for Nakao Tatsuyoshi, who was running in an Osaka by-election for a seat in the Upper House. Late on the night before the 23 April 1957 by-­election, a group of Young Men’s Division members spread out over an Osaka neighborhood to distribute packs of cigarettes and caramels at several hundred supporters’ residences. Each box contained a 100-yen bill and a note urging support for Nakao. These members were charged with houseto-house canvassing and also with attempting to buy votes.28 The Osaka public prosecutors secured confessions from some of those indicted who claimed that their actions had been directed by the central Sōka Gakkai leadership in Tokyo, and they used these confessions as grounds to arrest Koizumi Takashi, Sōka Gakkai’s rijichō (head of the Board of Directors), and Ikeda Daisaku, who, as Youth Division chief of staff, was responsible for the young men.29 Koizumi was detained in Osaka on 2 July 1957, and Ikeda was jailed on 3 July. Both men were held and interrogated by Osaka prosecutors until their release on 17 July. While the young leaders were in prison, Sōka Gakkai organized massive rallies in their support; tens of 26  Interview with a female veteran adherent, Osaka, 28 November 2007. All interviewees in this chapter are anonymous. 27  The official translation of Kōmei Seiji Renmei, commonly known as Kōseiren, was “League of Fair Statesmen.” See White (1970, 133–​134). 28  Asahi (3, 4, and 7 June 1957). 29  The Seikyō Shimbun of 21 July 1957 includes an essay by Hōjō Hiroshi, future fourth president and then Sōka Gakkai’s shunin sanbō (chief officer) decrying the actions of the young Sōka Gakkai men who were arrested.

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thousands of members gathered on 17 July 1957 in the pouring rain outside the Osaka Kōkaidō, a public hall where the assembled membership celebrated their young members’ release from jail and their triumph over what they characterized as an attempt by sinister forces in the government to suppress Sōka Gakkai’s religious mission. Koizumi and Ikeda were indicted on 29 July 1957 for violating election law. Ikeda appeared in Osaka court forty-eight times before he was cleared of all charges on 25 January 1962, after the court found no material evidence that he had ordered members to carry out the house-to-house visits.30 The arrests, rather than stifling Sōka Gakkai’s political ambitions, served to galvanize the organization to greater efforts in electoral campaigning and proselytizing. Gakkai members continue to draw inspiration from the example put forward by Ikeda of boldly facing down opponents. Since Ikeda’s ascendance to the Sōka Gakkai presidency in May 1960, the group has portrayed the events surrounding the Osaka Incident not as a litany of legal difficulties but as a shining example of the heroism of Sōka Gakkai and Ikeda Daisaku.31 In Ningen kakumei, or The Human Revolution, a dramatic, twelve-volume novelization of Sōka Gakkai history that members treat as a text possessing de facto scriptural authority, Ikeda (as the novel’s protagonist Yamamoto Shin’ichi) is compared to the Count of Monte Cristo and is confirmed in the account of the Osaka Incident as the sole and rightful heir to Toda Jōsei (Ikeda 1971–​1994).32 Additionally, Sōka Gakkai maintains a small yet highly prized exhibition at its Osaka headquarters called the Onshi Kinenshitsu (Revered Teacher’s Commemoration Room) that preserves items collected from the courthouse where Ikeda appeared on 3 July 1957. Part of the iron door to the cell where Ikeda was held, the chair where he sat facing the judge, the witness stand where he declared his innocence, the microphone into which he spoke, the leather shoes he wore on 3 July 1957, and even light fixtures from the courthouse and the marble sign that was affixed to the front of the building (the Ōsaka Kōchisho, or Osaka Detention Center)—​in other words, all salvageable 30  Ikeda and Koizumi were the only members to be cleared of charges. In all, twenty members were given fines of between 3,000 and 10,000 yen; of these, ten also had their civil (voting and electioneering) rights suspended for three years, and seven for two years (see Yomiuri, 25 January 1962). The sentence was also reported on the front page of the Seikyō Shimbun on 27 January 1962, under the headline “Mujitsu no tsumi hareru: Sabakareta kenryoku no ōbō” (False charges cleared: Tyranny of oppressive power indicted). 31  Ikeda served as the third president of Sōka Gakkai from May 1960 until April 1979, when conflicts between him and the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood resulted in his stepping down to take the titles Honorary President of Sōka Gakkai and President of Soka Gakkai International, posts he holds today. 32  In particular, see Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:311.

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items connected in some fashion with Ikeda Daisaku’s person—​appear alongside a dramatic account of the Osaka rally in the exhibition’s text.33 This exhibition and other means by which Sōka Gakkai memorializes the Osaka Incident demonstrate that as Sōka Gakkai members politicized their religious mission in the 1950s, they also imbued their political activities with transcendent religious meaning. For members, Ikeda’s arrest was not a mundane matter of legal wrangling; it was an opportunity to celebrate their leader as the rightful heir to Toda Jōsei and his mentor Makiguchi Tsunesaburō, who proved themselves as inheritors of Nichiren’s legacy when they persevered against government tyranny in Sugamo Prison. When members take part in a Kōmeitō campaign today, they can turn to the Osaka Incident to connect their seemingly modest activities to a model of Nichiren Buddhist martyrdom that transcends the concerns of a specific candidate or election. The Founding of Japan’s First Successful Religious Political Party The 1957 Osaka Incident and Toda’s death in 1958 did nothing to stall Sōka Gakkai’s political development. On 3 May 1960, Ikeda Daisaku was declared the organization’s third president, and under his leadership Sōka Gakkai continued to expand its political activities. In November 1961, Sōka Gakkai established the Kōmei Seiji Renmei, commonly known as Kōseiren, which successfully ran nine candidates for the Upper House in the January 1962 election, bringing the total number of Sōka Gakkai politicians in the Upper House to nineteen. These councilors formed the Kōmeikai (Clean Government Association) within the Upper House in July 1962. Though Sōka Gakkai maintained that Kōseiren was an independent political organization, Kōseiren politicians and publications announced that they considered their activities to be part of Sōka Gakkai’s mission to convert Japan. In October 1962, Kōseiren published the inaugural installment of a periodical called Kōmei. The issue began with an essay by Ikeda extolling Kōseiren as the promise of salvation for the Japanese people from factional strife in the Diet, and included a transcript of an address to the first Kōseiren general assembly by its chief, Harashima Kōji (1909–​1964), who stated that “we were able to achieve a glorious victory in the Upper House election to serve as the beginning of kōsen rufu.”34 Kōseiren turned out to be a stepping-stone to a more high profile and lasting political entity. On 3 May 1964, Ikeda Daisaku abolished the politics 33 

Author observations from 18 June 2008. Harashima, “Daiikkai taikai ni nozomu.” Kōmei, October 1962, 6. Kōmei preceded the party newspaper Kōmei shimbun, which continues to serve as Kōmeitō’s principal media outlet. 34 

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department of the Culture Bureau at Sōka Gakkai’s twenty-seventh general meeting. At this meeting, Ikeda also announced that henceforth Sōka Gakkai would become a “purely religious organization” devoted to Buddhist activities and proselytizing; politics would be left to Kōmei politicians who would operate freely, while Sōka Gakkai would serve as an organization dedicated to their support and promotion (Nakano 2003, 179). On 17 November, at a ceremony held at the hall Nippon Kōdō in Tokyo, Ikeda Daisaku officially announced the dissolution of Kōseiren and the establishment of Kōmeitō, or the “Clean Government Party.” In his inaugural speech, Ikeda quoted from Nichiren’s Risshō ankokuron (Treatise on establishing the right [teaching] and bringing peace to the land)—​a memorial that Nichiren submitted in 1260 to the Hōjō regency, the political authorities in Kamakura—​as he declared Kōmeitō a party “founded in the principles of a harmonious fusion of Buddhism and government (ōbutsu myōgō) and Buddhist democracy (buppō minshūshugi).”35 Sōka Gakkai’s imperative to realize Nichiren Buddhist objectives through its new political party are stressed in Kōmeitō’s official founding statement: Now, when the world is in a state of chaos, tensions are rising to the highest state. Meanwhile, the nation remains in the doldrums, and irresponsible politicians who are indifferent to the wishes of the people are elected time and again. Shall we leave this situation unattended? Japan is a nation that is profoundly anxious about being sacrificed in a fierce confrontation between East and West. As Great Sage Nichiren, the great enlightened thinker born to the world in Japan, wrote in Risshō ankokuron: “After all, a world at peace and tranquility in the lands of the country are what sovereign and commoner alike desire, and the country’s prosperity depends on the Dharma, which is revered by all people.” We hold the firm conviction that it is only through the singular path of the Buddhist philosophy of absolute pacifism—​that is, the superior ideal of a harmonious fusion of government and Buddhism [ōbutsu myōgō]—​that the world will attain salvation from the horror of war. Here, we announce to all present and to everyone beyond the founding of the Clean Government Party. The Clean Government Party, through founding ideals of a harmonious fusion of government and Buddhism and Buddhist democracy [buppō minshūshugi], will fundamentally cleanse Japan’s political world, confirm the basis of government by parliamentary democracy, put down deep roots in the masses, and realize the well-being of the common people. Furthermore, from the broad position of world nationalism [wārudo 35  Shimada (2007, 58). Nichiren delivered Risshō ankokuron to the regent Hōjō Tokiyori (1227–​1263), then the most powerful figure in the Kamakura military government. In this treatise, Nichiren warns that miseries will befall Japan unless it protects the True Dharma, the Lotus Sūtra. Risshō ankokuron has historically been invoked by Nichiren Buddhists seeking an alliance between Buddhism and the state (see Stone 1999, 249–​251).

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Kōmeitō prepared to run candidates in both the Upper and the Lower House in the Japanese Diet. Up to this point, Ikeda had maintained Toda’s line on electoral politics, insisting that Sōka Gakkai would only engage in elections as part of a larger campaign to build support for its religious mission. “We will not get into the Lower House,” Ikeda promised on 3 May 1961, when he announced the expansion of political activities with the elevation of the Culture Division (Bunkabu) to a Culture Bureau (Bunkakyoku). “We will send out people to the Upper House and local legislatures—​the areas which have no political color.”37 Ikeda’s pledge was echoed by Sōka Gakkai politicians; in April 1963, Kōseiren leader Ryū Toshimitsu declared, “We are at present not in the least interested in running for the Lower House.”38 The founding of the separate political party Kōmeitō perhaps functioned in part as a means of working around earlier promises that Sōka Gakkai itself would not become involved in the Lower House. Also, by May 1964 Sōka Gakkai claimed in excess of 3.8 million households, arguably a large enough constituency to demand representation at all levels of government (Sōka Gakkai Yonjū Shūnenshi Hensan Iinkai 1970, 325). In the January 1967 general election, Kōmeitō ran one candidate in each of thirty-two multiple-member constituencies. Twentyfive were elected, making Kōmeitō the third-largest opposition party in the Diet. By June 1969, Kōmeitō had 2,088 members in city councils, prefectural legislatures, and other local governments. Who Were the Early Kōmeitō Voters? Who joined Sōka Gakkai, and what led people to take part in the organization’s political campaigns during the 1950s and 1960s? In the late 1960s, several scholars undertook surveys of Gakkai members and Kōmeitō supporters to address these questions in order to learn about demographic characteristics and motivations of Gakkai converts. The most persuasive quantitative data on local-level Gakkai adherents in the 1960s were presented by three researchers. The first was Japanese sociologist Suzuki Hiroshi, who analyzed survey data gathered in 1962 on Sōka Gakkai members in Fukuoka, first in several articles and finally in a chapter in his 1970 36  Transcript of Kōmeitō’s inauguration, 17 July 1964. The ambiguous notion of “world nationalism” also appeared in Ikeda’s writings on politics from the 1960s. 37  Reproduced in Murata (1969, 164). 38  Mainichi (19 April 1963), quoted in White (1970, 136).

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book Toshiteki sekai (The urban world). The second was American sociologist James W. White, who, in his 1970 book The Sōkagakkai and Mass Society, relied to some extent on Suzuki’s findings, which he combined with data gleaned from other surveys and his own research on members and Sōka Gakkai leaders. The third was Hori Yukio, who wrote Kōmeitō ron (On Kōmeitō), first published in 1973 and then reissued in 1999. Hori was a reporter for the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun who based his book to a large extent on survey data gathered in February 1969 throughout Tokyo at the request of the Japanese government by Central Research Services (Chūō Chōsajo). In a more recent article, Sōka University sociologist of religion Nakano Tsuyoshi synthesizes data from these early sources and identifies key features that emerge in these important early studies of Sōka Gakkai/ Kōmeitō participants (Nakano 2010). First, the people who took part in Sōka Gakkai’s massive religious and political mobilization up through the 1960s fit a specific demographic profile: the typical member was born in rural Japan, poorly educated, socially adrift in urban Japan before joining Sōka Gakkai, and likely to be a woman in her thirties or forties. Second, the data from these 1960s surveys revealed that there was a considerable socioeconomic gap between the largely disenfranchised Sōka Gakkai membership and the rest of the Japanese populace, and that there were also identifiable class differences within the religion itself. The majority of the membership may have been poor, middle-aged women raised in the countryside, yet Sōka Gakkai leaders were mostly young, and they, along with Kōmeitō politicians, were almost exclusively men with a higher level of education than the Sōka Gakkai average. One of the most striking aspects of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō has been the persistence of the gender profile established in the religion’s formative years. The Sōka Gakkai leadership has continually characterized its Young Men’s and Young Women’s divisions as the vanguard of the group; today, the Sōka Gakkai website lists YMD and YWD numbers below the tally for its entire membership and does not give figures for any other subdivision.39 However, as I have observed in over a decade of fieldwork with ordinary members, and as Ehrhardt explores in chapter 8, it is the Fujinbu, the Married Women’s Division, that consistently powers Sōka Gakkai today. The data in the studies by Suzuki, White, and Hori demonstrate that, even in its nascent stages, Sōka Gakkai depended primarily on the dedication of women adherents. The prosperity of adherents has improved overall since the 1960s, yet the female membership continues 39  Information available on the Sōka Gakkai homepage (www.sokanet.jp/info/gaiyo. html; accessed Oct. 2011).

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to occupy a markedly lower educational and socioeconomic bracket than that of the group’s administrative leaders. Additionally, Sōka Gakkai continues to bar women from almost all leadership positions beyond the local level and posts in the Young Women’s and Married Women’s Divisions: of the more than five hundred Sōka Gakkai vice presidents, not one is a woman. Nakano notes that socioeconomic and gender gaps between leaders of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō and their supporters have not narrowed; in fact, they have increased.40 Suzuki surveyed several hundred members in Fukuoka between July and September of 1962, a window of time in the midst of Sōka Gakkai’s explosive growth, just after the formulation of a coherent political identity through the founding of Kōseiren. He found that women outnumbered men by a factor of three to two, and that more than 30 percent of the respondents were in their forties; women between thirty and forty-nine were particularly numerous. Suzuki noted that while scholars and journalists tended to project an image of Sōka Gakkai as a religion of young laborers, the data he gathered in Fukuoka indicated that they were largely women employed in low-wage occupations.41 Based on respondents’ answers to questions regarding their birthplace, education, occupation, and other key demographic identifiers, Suzuki concluded that Sōka Gakkai of the 1960s, despite its prevailing popular image as an organization of the urban poor, could be more accurately characterized as a religion of people, primarily women, born in small agricultural communities who moved to the city to work mainly in home-based businesses or small companies in the service, manufacturing, or retail sectors. White confirmed Suzuki’s appraisal: “They are the mobile, the deprived, the voiceless; the ones who suffered in defeat and struggled unsuccessfully during reconstruction, and who have failed to win a share of the new affluence” (1970, 61). He found that Sōka Gakkai families of the mid-1960s earned approximately 40% less than the national average and 40  Nakano (2010, 120). Nakano supplements his account of data gathered in the 1960s with surveys of Sōka Gakkai members undertaken in the mid-2000s by Nishiyama Shigeru and Ōnishi Katsuaki, which indicate a measurable trend toward downward social mobility among ordinary adherents. This is determined by factors such as young members in the 2000s tending to gain university entrance and lucrative employment at a lower rate than their parents. For a detailed analysis of these data, see Ōnishi (2009), especially chap. 5. 41  Suzuki (1970, 270–​274). Suzuki contradicted statements made by Saki Akio and Oguchi Iichi, whose (1957) book Sōka Gakkai: Sono shisō to kōdō was the first monograph-length scholarly account of Sōka Gakkai; Saki and Oguchi contended that, unlike other New Religions, whose members tend to come from upper-class backgrounds, Sōka Gakkai was primarily poor, young, and male. Suzuki also challenged the results of an Asahi Shimbun survey conducted after the 1962 Upper House election in which respondents characterized Sōka Gakkai as mostly male laborers in their twenties to their forties. See Asahi (4 July 1962).

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were most likely to live in lower-class neighborhoods. In the nine surveys that he analyzed, White found that the mean proportions for the membership in the 1960s were 42% men and 58% women, compared with 49% men and 51% women for Japan as a whole. He cited a 1967 survey carried out by the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun in which Sōka Gakkai members were among the least educated constituency: 55% had completed their education with junior high school, and only 4% had attended college, while a survey of Kōmeitō voters found that 65% had stopped at junior high school, and none had completed postsecondary education. White pointed out that the few well-educated members tended to be male and in leadership positions: 70% of the young leaders in the late 1960s had completed college, along with a majority of the Kōmeitō representatives in the Diet (White 1970, 65). Hori’s analysis of survey data gathered in Tokyo underlined the social and geographical displacement of Sōka Gakkai members and Kōmeitō supporters in the 1960s. When they were asked about their parents’ occupation, the largest percentage (just fewer than 40%) of respondents were found to have come from farming and fishing families. More than 60% of Kōmeitō supporters in Tokyo had come to the city from rural areas such as Tōhoku, Kyūshū, and Hokuriku (Hori 1999, 190–​191). As Nakano emphasizes, Sōka Gakkai emerged as something more complex than an urban phenomenon. It can more accurately be described as an organization of “lower class citizens born in farming villages who flowed into the cities” (2010, 117). The strong implication of these findings is that Sōka Gakkai provided a crucial support network to a large constituency of the new urban poor. Bereft of the social infrastructure and family ties that provided them stability in their youth, Sōka Gakkai members relied on the solidarity fostered within the religion’s social networks and tightly organized subgroups. In the 1960s, poorly educated women and men in their thirties and forties would have been the people in Japan most deeply affected by World War Two and its grueling aftermath. They had been denied an education during Japan’s mobilization for total war in the 1930s. Because of their sex, their lack of schooling, or their upbringing outside the metropole, they had missed out on opportunities to contribute to and benefit from Japan’s miraculous postwar recovery. For them, Sōka Gakkai was a venue in which to realize not only transcendent goals but also this-worldly educational, economic, and political aspirations. As one veteran member, a widow of a city assembly-level Kōmeitō politician near Osaka summarized for me, with a wistful mix of pride and defensiveness: “castaways made Sōka Gakkai” (suterareta hito wa Sōka Gakkai o tsukutta).42 42 

Interview with widow of Kōmeitō politician, Osaka, 25 November 2007.

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Yet even as Sōka Gakkai inspired its early postwar converts with the promise of improving their lives through religious and political participation, the organization did little to address inequality within its own ranks, choosing instead to replicate gender and educational imbalances that prevailed in Japanese society. The stark division of women as Sōka Gakkai’s stalwart grassroots activists and men as its elevated administrators, politicians, and religious visionaries was a pattern set in the mid-twentieth century that endures to this day. From Doctrinal Ideals to Political Realities: The I Denounce Sōka Gakkai Scandal In the Upper House elections of 1956, 1959, 1962, 1965, and 1968, Sōka Gakkai candidates captured 3.5%, 8.5%, 11.5%, 13.7%, and 15.5% of the popular vote.43 As Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō made these rapid political gains, the religion’s doctrinal justifications for entering electoral politics became increasingly problematic. Toda’s writings on ōbutsu myōgō, the “harmonious fusion of government and Buddhism,” and his call for the construction of a kokuritsu kaidan, a “national ordination platform,” appeared highly idealistic when he first put them forward in the mid-1950s. However, a mere ten years after Sōka Gakkai’s initial foray into electoral politics, the specific goals to build a kokuritsu kaidan and transform Japan into a “Buddhist democracy” burgeoned as real possibilities. Given the rise in voter support with each successive election, Sōka Gakkai in the late 1960s could project support for the kaidan from a majority in the Diet to a year perhaps not so distant from the target of 1979 put forth by Toda Jōsei on New Year’s Day, 1954. As Sōka Gakkai came to dominate Japan’s religious landscape and establish Kōmeitō as a major player in the Diet, it also solidified its status in the popular Japanese imagination as one of the country’s most sinister threats to postwar democracy. To counter this negative image, Ikeda began to redefine some key terms in its Nichiren Buddhist lexicon and play down some of the absolutist rhetoric he and Toda had promoted in the early stages of Sōka Gakkai’s growth. From the mid-1960s, Ikeda began to caution members to avoid excesses in their shakubuku efforts. On 3 May 1966, Ikeda announced a downward reassessment of Sōka Gakkai’s total membership from 5.6 million to 5 million households to make up for overestimations made by members who had been overly hasty in bringing in new converts who quickly abandoned their faith; by February 1968 Ikeda was describing shakubuku as “a heartwarming interflow of trust and 43  Detailed data on Sōka Gakkai voter support during the 1950s and 1960s is available in White (1970, 310–​321, appendix D).

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mutual understanding” that emerges between a Sōka Gakkai adherent and a potential convert, a far cry from the assault on “false teachings” called for during the Great March of Shakubuku.44 At the same time, Ikeda began to qualify the parameters of kōsen rufu, the imperative to “declare far and wide the spread of the Dharma.” Under Toda, kōsen rufu was a straightforward idea: convert all people in Japan to Sōka Gakkai. When Sōka Gakkai began to attract millions of new converts, and especially when Kōmeitō began to make steady gains, the exact definition of kōsen rufu took on a practical religious and political significance that it had not possessed previously. In July 1965, in a speech to the Youth Division, Ikeda announced the new theory of kōsen rufu called Shae no san’oku, or “three hundred thousand of Śrāvastī,” a phrase derived from the Chinese Buddhist classic Dazhidulun (Treatise on liberation through great wisdom). According to this text, Śākyamuni preached for twenty-five years in the Indian kingdom of Śrāvastī, at the end of which as many as three hundred thousand of the nine hundred thousand people in the kingdom had never heard of or seen the Buddha. If one-third of Japan converted to Sōka Gakkai, another third supported Kōmeitō, and the remaining third opposed both organizations, Ikeda maintained, the practical equivalent of kōsen rufu would be achieved. Despite tremendous gains, Sōka Gakkai was nowhere near converting all of Japan, and Kōmeitō was not in a position to secure a majority in the Diet to call for a state-­sponsored construction of the honmon no kaidan. Ikeda’s reevaluation based on Buddhist principles is a clear indication of the complete interpenetration of Sōka Gakkai’s religious and political activities at this time. This conflation of Buddhist and political aspirations that shaped Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō in the 1960s is also apparent in Ikeda’s writings from that decade. After Kōmeitō’s founding, Ikeda reinterpreted ōbutsu myōgō in a manner consistent with the priorities of the postwar internationalist order. In 1965, he published a book later reissued in extended form in 1969 called Seiji to shūkyō (Politics and religion) in which he declared that ōbutsu myōgō would not be an act of Sōka Gakkai imposing its will on the Japanese state to install Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism as the national creed. Sōka Gakkai, through Kōmeitō, would instead guide Japan to a new, democratic world order, a “Buddhist democracy” (buppō minshu shugi) combining the Dharma with the best of the Euro-American philosophical tradition to focus on social welfare and humanistic socialism. In an age of nuclear proliferation, we must not focus on nation versus nation, Ikeda cautioned. We must instead foster all of humanity within a single, unified “world nationalism” (wārudo nashonarizumu; Ikeda 1969). 44 

Reproduced in Murata (1969, 164).

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The year 1969, when Seiji to shūkyō was republished, was a heady one in Japan. The country was in the midst of a meteoric rise in economic prosperity and industrial development, and it was being rocked by the kinds of rapid social change that were sweeping through the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world at that time. Young Japanese people were moved to take up new ideas and participate in new movements through a spirit of revolution. Students, socialists, and other demonstrators closed down the campuses of the University of Tokyo and Waseda University to protest the impending renewal of the U.S.–​Japan Security Treaty and the Japanese government’s complicity with the American invasion of Vietnam. Sōka Gakkai leaders capitalized on this groundswell of social consciousness to mobilize members and recruit new devotees to the group’s religious practices and political campaigns. On 3 May 1969, Ikeda Daisaku stood before members to announce Sōka Gakkai’s protests of the renewal of the U.S.–​Japan Security Treaty as a “third way” (daisan no michi); Sōka Gakkai, which Ikeda projected would grow from 7.2 million to 7.5 million households by May 1970, would smash through barriers between the left and the right, and the group’s Student Division (Gakuseibu) would lead as a “third power” (daisan seiryoku) overcoming Japan’s political and social imbalances.45 On 19 October 1969, Sōka Gakkai launched the Shin Gakusei Undō (New Student Alliance), or Shingakutō, as the organization’s answer to Japan’s Student Movement. Sōka Gakkai’s Student Division organized a gathering of more than seventy thousand members representing students from 168 universities in Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park, who rallied against the U.S.–​Japan Security Treaty, against Prime Minister Satō Eisaku, and for the repatriation of Okinawa (Yomiuri, 20 October 1969; Sōka Gakkai Yonjūnenshi Henshū Iinkai 1970, 481). Later that year, Ikeda Daisaku appeared at the head of a rally for Sōka Gakkai’s Student Division wearing the combat helmet and neck towel that had been adopted as the commonly accepted uniform of Japanese student protestors.46 Ikeda was no doubt enjoying his status as leader of Japan’s largest mass movement. In 1961, one year after Ikeda became third president, Sōka Gakkai had reached two million households, and only a year later it reached three million, the target he had set for 1964. Kōmeitō fielded seventy-six candidates in the December 1969 Lower House election, and forty-seven were elected; Sōka Gakkai’s party claimed 10.9% of the popular vote, and Kōmeitō moved into the spot of third-biggest party in the Diet. In January 1970, Sōka Gakkai announced that its worldwide membership stood 45 

Covered in Yomiuri (4 May 1969). Interview with veteran Gakkai member and Shingakutō organizer, Tokyo, 3 September 2007. 46 

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at 7.55 million, ahead of Ikeda’s prediction the previous year. The growth in total membership appeared to be tapering off slightly at this point, but at the beginning of 1970 the group could still claim giant leaps in Young Men’s and Young Women’s Division membership, a record 1.85 million members of its Doctrine Division, and considerable advances in its membership overseas.47 At the end of the 1960s, Sōka Gakkai appeared to be riding an unstoppable wave, exerting itself as a dominant force in religion, government, and social change. However, the end of this decade marked an abrupt halt to Sōka Gakkai’s stratospheric rise. Matters came to a head in 1969 with events surrounding the publication of a book titled Sōka gakkai o kiru, which came out one year later in English as I Denounce Sōka Gakkai. The fiasco has since been labeled genron shuppan bōgai mondai, or “problem over obstructing freedom of expression and the press.”48 Unsurprisingly, I Denounce Sōka Gakkai is a venomous condemnation of Sōka Gakkai’s perceived aspirations to dominate Japan, autocratic control of the group by Ikeda, and the political ambitions of Kōmeitō. The author, Fujiwara Hirotatsu (1921–​ 1999), was a well-known left-leaning Meiji University professor and radio and television commentator. He compared Sōka Gakkai to the Nazis and the Italian Fascists and otherwise painted a lurid portrait of Sōka Gakkai as a menace to Japanese democracy. This book would most likely have been relegated to historical obscurity as yet another addition to the quickly growing pile of anti–​Sōka Gakkai literature were it not for measures taken by the highest echelons of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō to attempt to forestall its release. News of this attempt first broke in the Japanese Communist Party newspaper Akahata, and Fujiwara subsequently publicized a number of attempts to dissuade him from publishing his book, including multiple anonymous threatening phone calls and a visit by a Kōmeitō politician named Fujiwara (no relation), who put forward a request that he remove all mention of Ikeda Daisaku from the manuscript.49 Before the book went on sale in November 1969, 47 

These developments are chronicled in detail in McLaughlin (2009, 2012). This incident is covered in Fujiwara (1972), Tōkyō Daigaku Hokekyō Kenkyūkai (1975), Sugimori (1976), Murakami (1978), Shimada (2007), Tamano (2008), and most other sources from the 1970s onward that discuss Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō history. 49  I Denounce Sōka Gakkai was not the first book that Sōka Gakkai sought to block. Prior to the Fujiwara scandal, Japanese Communist Party (JCP) leader Miyamoto Kenji brought another case to the attention of the Diet: he charged that in May 1969 Hōjō Hiroshi, then assistant Kōmeitō party chief, had urged publishers of the author Naitō Kunio’s new book Kōmeitō no sugao: Kono kyodai na shinja shūdan e no gimon (The true face of Kōmeitō: Some doubts about this giant group of believers) to refrain from advertising the book, and that pressure from Kōmeitō had prevented all but its limited release. In August 1969, Tsukamoto Saburō of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) charged that Kōmeitō representatives had 48 

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Fujiwara Hirotatsu released a statement claiming that he had received an early morning telephone call from a “famous politician” who passed on a strong request from Takeiri Yoshikatsu (b. 1926), then leader of Kōmeitō, that he, Fujiwara, pull Sōka gakkai o kiru from publication. Though this famous politician never gave his name, Fujiwara claimed that he recognized him through his voice as Tanaka Kakuei (1918–​1993), then secretary general (kanjichō) of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and later prime minister of Japan. Kōmeitō spokespeople flatly denied Fujiwara’s claims at the time, yet statements in later years reveal that Takeiri did indeed avail himself of what was then a deepening relationship with Tanaka and the LDP to seek help in convincing Fujiwara to cease plans to publish I Denounce Sōka Gakkai and to prevent the issue from being discussed on the floor of the Diet.50 Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō suffered greatly from the scandal, and their opponents made gains. Fujiwara and his publisher, Nisshin Hōdō, took full advantage of the publicity the scandal inspired to sell one million copies of Sōka gakkai o kiru within a year of its publication. Sōka Gakkai’s grassroots members were accused by the media of being agents seeking to install a theocracy led by Ikeda Daisaku, and shakubuku attempts by members in local areas were rebuffed by potential converts even more strongly than before. On 3 May 1970, the tenth anniversary of his appointment as third Sōka Gakkai president, Ikeda devoted a portion of his address to the thirty-third general meeting of the religion to a formal apology to the people of Japan for the trouble that the incident caused. He also used the occasion to announce a new policy of seikyō bunri, or the “separation of politics and religion.” Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō were declared to be separate organizations. The religion renounced its plans to construct a broken into the Nagoya offices of his publisher and defaced the manuscript for his new book Kōmeitō o shakubuku shiyō (Let us shakubuku Kōmeitō), and then pressured the DSP to forestall its publication. These confrontations led JCP and DSP Diet members to come together to form the “Panel for Freedom of Expression and Publication” (Genron/Shuppan no Jiyū ni Kan Suru Kondankai). The formation of this panel is regarded by many scholars and journalists as the official beginning of genron shuppan bōgai mondai (see Yomiuri, 17 January 1970). However, Fujiwara and his book received the most public attention, and events surrounding I Denounce Sōka Gakkai fomented the official split between Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō. 50  In a 1998 interview with the newspaper Asahi, Takeiri expressed his lifelong gratitude to Tanaka for intervening on his behalf with Fujiwara. The statements appear in a serialized interview in the Asahi Shimbun on 26 August and 18 September 1998. Friendship between Takeiri and Tanaka deepened in subsequent years, and Takeiri joined Tanaka Kakuei in the early 1970s after the LDP leader became prime minister in visits to the People’s Republic of China to take part in negotiations that led to normalized China-Japan diplomatic relations in September 1972. Journalistic investigations later revealed that Tanaka intervened on Takeiri’s behalf in gratitude for the Kōmeitō politician’s aid in deflecting attention away from a growing scandal surrounding Tanaka’s affairs outside marriage (see Etō 2003, 98–​102).

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national ordination platform and eliminated the the terms kokuritsu kaidan and ōbutsu myōgō from its lexicon. A new set of internal regulations for Kōmeitō were also drawn up in which all Buddhist doctrinal terminology was eliminated and replaced with a pledge to uphold the 1947 Constitution. Furthermore, Kōmeitō members resigned from all positions within Sōka Gakkai, and Sōka Gakkai removed itself from administering Kōmeitō and renounced decision-making capacities for the party’s personnel, finances, and candidacy. Conclusion: The Costs and Benefits of Religious Political Activism After the official separation from Kōmeitō, Sōka Gakkai members continued to engage enthusiastically in elections—​a practice that has endured unabated up to today. However, the fallout from the 1970 incident was a blow to the party’s fortunes in the polls. As Abe and Endō detail in the next chapter, Kōmeitō dropped from forty-seven to twenty-nine elected Diet representatives in the 1972 elections, and the party slipped to fourth place in the Diet. The party regained its position as Japan’s third party with fifty-six elected officials in 1976, and by 1983 it had gained fifty-nine seats, the largest number it has ever held. However, Kōmeitō never again experienced the massive swell in support that it enjoyed during the first five years after it was founded. One reason why Sōka Gakkai rose to unprecedented growth as a religious movement, and a key reason that it expanded to dominate Japan’s religious world, was the distinctive appeal of its political mission to the socially disenfranchised. In the 1950s and 1960s, Sōka Gakkai was an organization made up primarily of poor and marginalized women and men hungry for material success and social legitimacy. As both a religious and political movement, Sōka Gakkai afforded people who had been subject to the deprivations of war and whims of government authority the chance to shape political power to their advantage as they pursued both Buddhist objectives and this-worldly goals. No other organization proved as attractive as Sōka Gakkai in promising religious transcendence and upward social mobility, and the explosive growth of Sōka Gakkai after it began its political activities speaks to the compelling nature of its fused aspirations. Sōka Gakkai lost more than power among the electorate when it severed official ties with Kōmeitō and renounced goals to build a national ordination platform, it lost its momentum as a mass movement. It must be noted that Sōka Gakkai’s growth in membership was already beginning to slow by the end of the 1960s. However, when it moved away from its initial objective of converting all of Japan and constructing the national ordination platform, Sōka Gakkai suddenly lost much of the energy that

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had driven its combined religious and political dynamism up to 1970. The group claimed over 7.5 million households in 1970, a ten-fold jump from thirteen years earlier. After 1970, Sōka Gakkai made only modest gains. The group reached 7.62 million in 1974, and since the early 1980s, it has claimed a membership that hovers just above eight million households. Thus 1970 marks a watershed moment in Sōka Gakkai’s history, the point when the group began to shift from a headlong rush toward the goal of national dominance and international expansion into a new era of conserving its gains and turning to the needs of the families of adherents it had attracted in the first decades after the war. Just as Japan’s postwar baby boom generation was turning to the needs of its children who were beginning to come of age in the early 1970s, Sōka Gakkai also began to look inward toward cultivating the wave of children born into the movement. The 1970 split brought about an existential crisis for Kōmeitō. The clashes of the late 1960s that forced Sōka Gakkai to forswear its ordination platform goal and accompanying links to government called Kōmeitō’s raison d’être into question. As the next chapter describes, from 1970 Kōmeitō essentially wandered in a political wilderness, spending years shifting from one troubled alliance to another at all extremes of Japan’s political spectrum, and it was only in the 1990s that the party found a comparatively solid political footing. Today, when a Kōmeitō electoral campaign begins, be it a race for a Diet seat or a local city assembly, Sōka Gakkai members near and far volunteer countless hours to contact hundreds of friends, relatives, coworkers, and distant acquaintances to get out the vote. All other Sōka Gakkai activities—​such as local zadankai (study meetings), practices for the Ongakutai (Music Corps), and doctrinal study sessions—​are demoted to secondary importance as members encourage one another to devote themselves fully to electioneering, especially during races for the Lower or Upper Houses. At any local meeting, information about a Kōmeitō candidate may be shared and help solicited from attendees to take part in home visits and phone campaigns. In other words, even though Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō officially parted ways in 1970, ordinary members of the religion continue to include political activism as a priority within their regular religious practice. This continued conflation of political and religious goals is a legacy inherited from the exuberant period of Sōka Gakkai’s explosive growth in the 1950s and ’60s, and members today continue to look back on this period as a golden age. While its early political activism inspired controversies and culminated in abandoned plans to usher in a new Buddhist political order, Sōka Gakkai’s initial fusion of religion and politics also inspired millions of people to commit themselves to an organization that grew into Japan’s largest-ever mass movement.

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References Etō Shunsuke. 2003. Jimintō/Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō: Kokumin fuzai no renritsu seiken/hisshi [The hidden history of the absence of the populace from the Liberal Democratic Party/Sōka Gakkai/Kōmeitō Coalition Government]. Tokyo: Gakushū no Tomo Kai. Fujiwara Hirotatsu. 1969. Kono Nihon o dō suru 2: Sōka Gakkai o kiru [Whither this Japan? 2: I denounce Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Nisshin Hōdō Shuppanbu. ———. 1970a. I Denounce Sōka Gakkai. Translated by Worth C. Grant. Tokyo: Nisshin Hōdō. ———. 1970b. Sōka Gakkai o kiru/zoku [I denounce Sōka Gakkai/ continued]. Tokyo: Nisshin Hōdō. ———. 1972. Shin/Sōka Gakkai o kiru [New/I denounce Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Nisshin Hōdō Shuppanbu. Higuma Takenori. 1971. Toda Jōsei/Sōka Gakkai. Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ōraisha. Hori Yukio. [1973] 1999. Kōmeitō ron [On Kōmeitō]. Tokyo: Nansōsha. Iguchi, Gerald Scott. 2006. “Nichirenism as Modernism: Imperialism, Fascism, and Buddhism in Modern Japan.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego. Ikeda Daisaku. 1969. Seiji to shūkyō (shinpan) [Politics and religion (new edition)]. Tokyo: Ushio Shinsho. ———. 1971–​1994. Ningen kakumei [The human revolution]. 12 vols. Tokyo: Seikyō bunko. Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki Henshū Iinkai, ed. 2004. Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki [Ikeda Daisaku’s path]. Tokyo: Ushio Shuppansha. Vol. 1. Imatani Akira. 1989. Tenbun hokke no ran: Buso suru machishū [The Lotus Revolt of the Tenbun era: Militarized townspeople]. Tokyo: Heibonsha. Itō Tatsunori. 2004. “Shakubuku kyōten kōshō” [Historical investigation of the Shakubuku handbook]. Gendai Shūkyō Kenkyū 38 (March): 251–​275. Kawada Takashi. 1980. Shin Kōmeitō-ron [New discourses on Kōmeitō]. Tokyo: Shin Nippon Shuppansha. Kōmeitō, ed. 1964. Printed transcription of inaugural statement. McLaughlin, Levi. 2009. “Sōka Gakkai in Japan.” Ph.D. diss., Princeton University. ———. 2012. “Sōka Gakkai in Japan.” In Brill Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religion, edited by Inken Prohl and John Nelson, 269–​307. Leiden: Brill. Miyazaki Eishū. 1969. Fuju fuse-ha no genryū to tenkai [The origins and development of the Fuju Fuse sect]. Kyoto: Heirakuji Shoten.

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Murakami Shigeyoshi. 1978. Gendai shūkyō to seiji [Contemporary religion and politics]. Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Shuppankai. Murata, Kiyoaki. 1969. Japan’s New Buddhism: An Objective Account of Sōka Gakkai. Foreword by Daisaku Ikeda. New York: Walker/Weatherhill. Naitō Kunio. 1969. Kōmeitō no sugao: Kono kyodai na shinja shūdan e no gimon [The true face of Kōmeitō: Some doubts about this giant group of believers]. Tokyo: Ēru Shuppansha. Nakaba Tadakuni. 1968. Nihon no chōryū: Sōka Gakkai hatten to ayumi [Changing tides in Japan: The development and progress of Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Yūki Shobō. Nakano Tsuyoshi. 2003. Sengo Nihon no seiji to shūkyō [Politics and religion of postwar Japan]. Tokyo: Daimeidō. ———. 2010. “Minshū shūkyō to shite no Sōka Gakkai: Shakaisō to kokka to no kankei kara” [Sōka Gakkai interpreted as popular religion: From the perspective of relations between social class and the state]. Shūkyō to Shakai 16 (June): 111–​142. Nakao Takashi. 2009. Nichiren. Osaka: Sōgensha. Nishino Tatsukichi. 1985. Denki Toda Jōsei [Biography of Toda Jōsei]. Tokyo: Daisan Bunmei. Nishiyama Shigeru. 1975. “Nichiren Shōshū Sōka Gakkai ni okeru ‘honmon kaidan’-ron no hensen: Seijiteki shūkyō undō to shakai tōsei” [Transformations in Nichiren Shōshū Sōka Gakkai’s discourses on the true ordination platform: A political religious movement and social regulation]. In Nichirenshū no shomondai [Various issues in Nichiren Buddhism], edited by Nakao Takashi, 241–​275. Tokyo: Yūzankaku. Ōnishi Katsuaki. 2009. Honmon Butsuryūkō to Sōka Gakkai no shakaigakuteki kenkyū [Sociological research on Honmon Butsuryūkō and Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Ronsōsha. Ōtani Eiichi. 2001. Kindai Nihon no Nichiren-shugi undō [Nichiren-ist movements of modern Japan]. Kyoto: Hōzōkan. Roemer, Michael. 2009. “Religious Affiliation in Contemporary Japan: Untangling the Enigma.” Review of Religious Research 50:298–​320. Saeki Yūtarō. 2000. Toda Jōsei to sono jidai [Toda Jōsei and his age]. Tokyo: Mainichi Shimbunsha. Saki Akio and Iichi Oguchi. 1957. Sōka Gakkai: Sono shisō to kōdō [Sōka Gakkai: Its thought and activities]. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten. Shimada Hiromi. 2001. “Sōka Gakkai wa dono yō ni kenkyū saretekita no ka” [How has Sōka Gakkai been researched?]. Fukujin 6:183–​199. ———. 2004. Sōka Gakkai. Tokyo: Shinchō Shinsho. ———. 2007. Kōmeitō vs. Sōka Gakkai. Tokyo: Asahi Shinsho.

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———. 2009. Yoku wakaru! Nihon no shinshūkyō [Now I understand! Japan’s new religions]. Tokyo: Kasakura Shuppansha. Sōka Gakkai, ed. 1952–​2013. Shinpen Nichiren Daishōnin gosho zenshū [New edition of the great sage Nichiren’s collected writings]. Tokyo: Sōka Gakkai. Sōka Gakkai Hōkokushitsu, ed. 2012. Sōka Gakkai hōhoku [Sōka Gakkai annual report]. Tokyo: Sōka Gakkai. Sōka Gakkai Kyōgakubu, ed. 1951–​1969. Shakubuku kyōten [Shakubuku handbook]. Tokyo: Sōka Gakkai. Sōka Gakkai Nenpyō Hensan Iinkai, ed. 1976. Sōka Gakkai nenpyō [Sōka Gakkai chronology]. Tokyo: Seikyō Shimbunsha. Sōka Gakkai Yonjū Shūnenshi Hensan Iinkai, ed. 1970. Sōka Gakkai yonjū shūnenshi [History of Sōka Gakkai’s forty years]. Tokyo: Sōka Gakkai. Stone, Jacqueline I. 1994. “Rebuking the Enemies of the Lotus: Nichiren Exclusivism in Historical Perspective.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 21, nos. 2/3:231–​259. ———. 1999. Original Enlightenment and the Transformation of Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. ———. 2003a. “By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree: Politics and the Issue of the Ordination Platform in Modern Lay Nichiren Buddhism.” In Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptions of an Ancient Tradition, edited by Steven Heine and Charles Prebish, 193–​219. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2003b. “Nichiren’s Activist Heirs: Sōka Gakkai, Risshō Kōseikai, Nipponzan Myōhōji.” In Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism, edited by Christopher Queen, Charles Prebish, and Damien Keown, 63–​94. London: RoutledgeCurzon. Sugimori Kōji. 1976. Kenkyū/Sōka Gakkai [Research/Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Jiyūsha. Suzuki Hiroshi. 1970. Toshiteki sekai [The urban world]. Tokyo: Seishin Shobō. Tamano Kazushi. 2008. Sōka Gakkai no kenkyū [Research on Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Tanaka Chigaku. [1901] 1919. Shūmon no ishin [The restoration of the sect]. Tokyo: Shishiō Bunko. Toda Jōsei. 1956. Kantōgenshū [Collection of prefatory notes]. Tokyo: Sōka Gakkai. ———. 1963. Toda Jōsei sensei shitsumon kaishū [Collection of questions addressed by Toda Jōsei-sensei]. Tokyo: Sōka Gakkai. Toda Jōsei Zenshū Shuppan Iinkai, ed. 1981. Toda Jōsei zenshū [Collected works of Toda Jōsei]. Tokyo: Sōka Gakkai.

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Tōkyō Daigaku Hokekyō Kenkyūkai, ed. 1962. Nichiren Shōshū Sōka Gakkai. Tokyo: Sankibō Busshorin. ———. 1975. Sōka Gakkai no rinen to jissen [Sōka Gakkai’s mission and practice]. Tokyo: Daisan Bunmeisha. Tsukamoto Saburō. 1969. Kōmeitō o shakubuku shiyō: Seiji to shūkyō o rikai suru tame ni [Let us shakubuku Kōmeitō: To understand government and religion]. Nagoya: Meinan Keizai Shinkōkai. White, James Wilson. 1970. The Sōkagakkai and Mass Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Periodicals

Akahata (Shimbun) is the daily newspaper of the Japan Communist Party. Its circulation has decreased considerably over the last few years and was about 240,000 in 2013. Available at http://sankei.jp.msn.com/ politics/news/130811/stt13081107000000-n1.htm. Accessed Jan. 2014. Asahi (Shimbun) is a daily newspaper with a circulation of 7.7 million per day, the second-highest circulation in Japan. Available at http://adv. yomiuri.co.jp/m-data/english/mediadata/circulation01.html#tab1. Accessed Jan. 2014. Daibyaku renge [Great White Lotus] is Sōka Gakkai’s monthly study magazine. The organization claims a circulation of 2.8 million copies per month. See Sōka Gakkai Annual Report (2012), 20. Kōmei was a short-lived periodical that preceded Kōmei Shimbun. Kōmei Shimbun is the daily party newspaper of Kōmeitō with a circulation of 800,000. Editors’ communication with newspaper headquarters in June 2013. Mainichi (Shimbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 3.4 million; evening edition: 1.0 million) was third in Japan, following Yomiuri and Asahi Shimbun. Available at http://adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Seikyō Shimbun is Sōka Gakkai’s newspaper with a circulation of 5.5 million. Available at www.seikyoonline.jp/seikyo/index.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Shūkan Daiyamondo is a weekly magazine focusing on business- and work-related issues. According to the ABC Report, circulation was a little over 100,000 in 2011. Available at http://mediadata. diamond.ne.jp/static/admin/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/ DWmediadata20122.pdf. Accessed Jan. 2014. Yomiuri = Yomiuri Shimbun is a daily newspaper with a circulation of 9.9 million per day, the highest circulation in Japan. Available at http://adv.yomiuri.co.jp/m-data/english/mediadata/circulation01. html#tab1. Accessed Jan. 2014.

Four

Kōmeitō’s Uncertain Decades between Religion and Politics

Yuki Abe and Masahisa Endo Introduction After 1970, Kōmeitō found itself lost with no clear purpose or direction.1 As McLaughlin described in the previous chapter, Kōmeitō began as little more than an organizing structure for Sōka Gakkai political action. Public outcry over Sōka Gakkai’s use of political influence to suppress publication of anti-Gakkai books led Kōmeitō to cut ties with its religious parent and declare itself ostensibly secular and independent. The abandonment of Sōka Gakkai theocratic goals left Kōmeitō with political power, yet without a clear set of goals to pursue. Fast-forward twenty-three years and Kōmeitō found itself a member of the anti–​Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ruling coalition; another six years and Kōmeitō joined its old enemy, the LDP, in government. How did these changes come about? From 1970 until 1993, the party struggled to establish a clear and compelling identity. Those twenty-three years were the party’s crucial formative period, an era that might be termed Kōmeitō’s adolescence, when the party learned its place in the secular political world. Understanding Kōmeitō’s actions today requires a firm grasp of what happened in the 1970s and 1980s. Studies to date offer little insight into these formative years. Although there was a great deal of research undertaken in the late 1960s in response to Kōmeitō’s explosive growth, relatively few studies explore the party after 1970. In addition, when research on Kōmeitō resumed to an extent in the 1990s, it focused on Kōmeitō’s role in government, not its transformations throughout the preceding decades. In this chapter, we examine Kōmeitō’s historical record to shed light on the party’s time in the “wilderness,” its formative years in the 1970s and 1980s, to uncover the story 1 

We would like to thank Aiji Tanaka for his invaluable comments on earlier drafts.

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of a party struggling to find its political way. This is a story marked by a process of evolution, as Kōmeitō first leaned toward one political direction, then toward another, first cooperated with one party, then with another. During the 1970s, Kōmeitō sought a coalition with other “progressive” opposition parties, the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) and the Japan Socialist Party (JSP)—​to both wipe out the public distrust caused by Sōka Gakkai scandals and establish a new image as a defender of the common people. At that time, not only did Kōmeitō stress social welfare, but it also made advances toward labor unions to expand its support base beyond Sōka Gakkai, while simultaneously questioning the legal basis of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (Jieitai). From the late 1970s onward, however, Kōmeitō made an abrupt turn to the political right, adopting more pragmatic views on security and defense issues, such as officially acknowledging the legitimacy of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. This rightward turn was a critical decision the party leadership made to ensure Kōmeitō’s survival.2 Three factors, we argue, played a crucial role in this policy reorientation. First, the changing power balance in parliamentary politics in the late 1970s led Kōmeitō leaders to adjust their policies rightward to secure their political survival. Despite long-­standing negotiations, opposition party cooperation came to a standstill due to irreconcilable views held by the DSP and the JSP. At the same time, the ruling LDP approached Kōmeitō offering a possible coalition, as the LDP’s dominance was waning. Facing both a stalemate and an opportunity, Kōmeitō leaders gradually moved closer to the LDP by redefining its security and defense policy. Second, Kōmeitō was about to reach the limit of possible voter mobilization, as Sōka Gakkai membership peaked in the mid-1970s. Struck by this internal problem, the party elites sought a place outside the religious context where they could enjoy governing status and thereby attract more support from non-Sōka Gakkai voters. Third, the changing socioeconomic background of Sōka Gakkai members gave party elites room to maneuver in policy space. Traditionally, Sōka Gakkai members were characterized by a somewhat fuzzy duality in their preferences, attracted by socialist policies as lower-income workers but also to conservative policies as migrants from the countryside. However, by the time Kōmeitō made its right turn, the living conditions of Sōka 2  Although Kōmeitō’s politicians and supporters may not identify themselves within the ideological categories of left or right, we use them when discussing its security policy. Because security policy had long divided Japanese parties in the postwar era (Otake 1999), applying this categorization enables us to trace how Kōmeitō defined its position in relation to other parties and how it evolved. Concerning Kōmeitō’s nuanced views not only on security, but also on economy and welfare, see chapter 10 of this volume.

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Gakkai members had improved, and these improved material conditions diluted their attraction to socialist ideas. Changing demographics of Sōka Gakkai members thus mitigated a backlash from the party’s grassroots supporters. In the following five sections, we trace Kōmeitō’s gradual evolution away from its origins as an explicitly religious party. In the first section, we discuss how the leaders’ early estimates of its chances of survival in the Diet led them leftward to cooperate with the DSP and the JSP. The second section explores the three key reasons behind Kōmeitō’s rightward shift: (1) the party elites’ interaction with other parties in the Diet, (2) the limits of Kōmeitō’s religious base, and (3) Sōka Gakkai members’ changing socioeconomic profile. Using all of these observations, the third section traces Kōmeitō’s parliamentary history of reshuffling its cooperation strategy, while the fourth section elucidates how the leveled-off Sōka Gakkai membership shaped the party leaders’ future prospects. By analyzing the demographics of Sōka Gakkai members, the fifth section shows how this policy change led to a long-term shift toward the LDP in both policy and electoral terms. Based upon the implications drawn from this chapter, the concluding section considers Kōmeitō’s steering in the turbulent years of the 1990s and the rocky relationship between politics and religion inherent within the Kōmeitō–​Sōka Gakkai connection. Kōmeitō as a “People’s Party” Kōmeitō Leans toward the Left

After the official split from Sōka Gakkai, the eighth National Convention of Kōmeitō, in June 1970, removed all explicitly religious terms appearing in the party program (see chapter 3). Instead, the party declared its intention to become a “people’s party” (kokumin seitō) based on the principle of “centrism” or “middle path-ism” (chūdō shugi). The notion of centrism had first been used somewhat vaguely in 1965 by Ikeda Daisaku, then third president of Sōka Gakkai, reflecting a Buddhist principle of taking the middle path (Ikeda 1965). However, after religious goals were disavowed, Kōmeitō had to fill these terms with policy content. Kōmeitō was initially without allies in the Japanese Diet after the split, and it endured severe criticism from political rivals provoked by the scandals surrounding Sōka Gakkai. Wiping out this public distrust was the first task for Party Chief Takeiri Yoshikatsu and Secretary General Yano Jun’ya. At that moment, they decided to tilt the course of the party from the middle to the center-left to redefine the party’s position as progressive and opposed to the LDP. They siezed the opportunity to do this when DSP Chairman Nishimura Eiichi suggested that Kōmeitō could join an

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opposition coalition formed by his own party and the JSP.3 For Nishimura, who was even considering a possible unification of the DSP with Kōmeitō, this would have been a significant step toward political realignment. For Kōmeitō, which was seeking a way to restart as an independent party in the Diet, the progressive coalition with other opposition parties was a desirable objective to pursue. Kōmeitō’s first forays into secular policy correspondingly emphasized social welfare.4 Moreover, in line with what the party called “the most important agenda after the separation of politics and religion” (Yomiuri, 4 May 1972), Kōmeitō looked to labor unions in order to stretch the spectrum of its voters beyond Sōka Gakkai members and thus establish the public image of a people’s party supported by a broad range of voters (Yomiuri, 2 May 1972). To show sympathy toward the labor movements, the party leaders participated in traditional organized-labor May Day activities for the first time in 1972 (Kōmei Shimbun, 2 May 1972). Moreover, with regard to foreign policy—​an important fault line between left and right in postwar politics in Japan—​Kōmeitō also made its progressive identity clear. In contrast to conservatives, at its eleventh National Convention, in 1973, Kōmeitō questioned the legality of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces and instead promoted the idea of “Territorial Defense Guards” (Kokudo Keibitai). Furthermore, the party shifted leftward on the issue of whether Japan should continue its alliance with the United States, strengthening its position from “the abrogation by gradual stages” of the U.S.–​Japan Security Treaty to “immediate abrogation” (Kōmei Shimbun, 5 September 1973). One of the policies in this progressive line is Kōmeitō’s activity in the normalization of diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, in which the Japan Socialist Party originally had been actively involved. Kōmeitō decided to adopt a One China policy, thus recognizing the Communist Party of China as the only legitimate government, and renounced recognition of the Treaty of Taipei in 1971. Takeiri flew to Beijing in consultation with Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei to meet Chinese officials in June of that year. As he built diplomatic relations, he became more enthusiastic about this agenda, traveling to China again amidst the Upper House election in 1971 and sometimes going further in his close relations with the Chinese government than Tanaka, who had to come to terms 3  Takeiri revealed that it was Sōka Gakkai, as well as Kōmeitō, that approached the DSP secretly to start these negotiations in order to recover from the Sōka Gakkai scandals in 1970. From an interview with Takeiri on 3 September 1998, published as part of a serial featured in the Asahi Shimbun between 26 August and 18 September 1998. 4  Social welfare had been one of its main policies since its creation (see, e.g., Kōmeito 1964), but the party brought it to the fore after its separation from Sōka Gakkai.

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with pro-Taiwan LDP members (see Shimada and Yano 2010, 142–​152; interview with Takeiri in Asahi, 9–​12 September 1998; Hori 1999, 116–​129). Eventually his conversations with Zhou Enlai, premier of the Chinese Communist Party, led to the so-called Takeiri memorandum, which became the basis of the official announcement of Japan-China diplomatic normalization in September 1972. As shown earlier, when Kōmeitō attempted to locate itself in the political realm without official religious ties during the early 1970s, it moved toward the progressive camp, finding hope in the DSP’s call for a rally to oppose the giant LDP. Kōmeitō set forth concrete policies along this line as it struggled to establish its foothold within the Diet as an independent party. Political Objectives versus Religious Objectives

Normalizing Japan-China diplomatic relations not only represented the party’s leaning toward the progressive camp, but also illustrated the growing distance between Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai. It gradually became evident that Kōmeitō’s independent action as a political entity could cause friction with Sōka Gakkai because their interests diverged. The party’s diplomatic success became a cause of disagreement between Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō over whether the credit should go to Ikeda or Takeiri. The idea of normalization itself was initially broached by Ikeda at a meeting of the Sōka Gakkai Student Division on 8 September 1968 as an ideal way to build a cooperative relationship between Japan and China, although Ikeda’s readiness to relinquish ties with Taiwan was unclear. Negotiations with China, however, required a pragmatic approach that included abandoning Taiwan. Takeiri publicly denied Ikeda’s influence on forming the principle of the separation of politics and religion, which contributed to growing tension between the religious and political leaders (Shimada and Yano 2010, 145). Potentially conflicting with Sōka Gakkai, Kōmeitō’s position was still constrained by its religious organization. In 1972, the first Lower House election after the split from its religious organization reminded Kōmeitō leaders of the importance of religious support. The election result devastated Kōmeitō, and its seats in the Diet declined from fortyseven to ­twenty-nine. Secretary General Yano explained that this was due less to the damage caused by the Sōka Gakkai scandals two years earlier and more to the lukewarm mobilization of Sōka Gakkai members in the election campaign (Asahi, 11 December 1972). The separation of politics and religion cooled the commitment of Sōka Gakkai adherents to political engagement, and even triggered discussion of a gradual withdrawal of Kōmeitō from the Diet. Confronted with this dismal election result, Kōmeitō leaders had to beg Sōka Gakkai for its support in future

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elections (Shimada and Yano 2010, 122–​124, 131–​132). At the same time, however, they also felt compelled to expand the scope of their target voters so that they could expect solid support irrespective of Sōka Gakkai’s opinions. The tension between the political party and the religious organization peaked when the “Accord on Agreement in Views” between Sōka Gakkai and the Japanese Communist Party became public. Without consulting the party headquarters, Sōka Gakkai had concluded a secret accord with the JCP agreeing to mutual noninterference for the next ten years. This accord was established in December 1974 and officially made public in July 1975. At the time, Sōka Gakkai stated that the accord “was meant to put an end to head-on battles [between party members] on the street in every election” (Asahi, 30 July 1975). Meanwhile, others speculated that “Ikeda sought an understanding with the JCP in order to facilitate Sōka Gakkai’s future expansion into Communist countries [such as] the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union” (Hrebenar 1992, 178). In an interview published in 2010, however, Yano offered yet another account: Ikeda wanted to improve Sōka Gakkai’s position relative to its parent religious authority Nichiren Shōshū, which Ikeda thought benefited unfairly from Sōka Gakkai’s financial contributions.5 He thus sought a ceasefire with the JCP so that he could focus on his religious objectives. In any event, the JCP’s relentless criticism during the publicizing of the secret accord became a lesson for Ikeda to avoid unnecessary conflict with the JCP when engaging in other sensitive issues (Shimada and Yano 2010, 158–​173).6 This accord shocked Kōmeitō leaders, who had been kept in the dark until it was concluded, and they resisted it vehemently not only because “Kōmeitō ha[d] taken a firm anti-communist stance as one of its fundamental principles,” but also because Kōmeitō and the JCP had competed for the same constituency, namely “lower-class urban voters” (Hrebenar 1992, 160; Matsumoto 1981, 41; Watanuki 1977, 83–​84).7 In fact, one of the reasons the party sought cooperation with the DSP and the JSP was to 5  On Ikeda’s attempt to promote Sōka Gakkai over Nichiren Shōshū at this juncture, see Shimada (2007, 112–​114) and McLaughlin (2012). 6  Concerning Sōka Gakkai’s independence from Nichiren Shōshū, Ikeda’s attempt ended in failure and, taking the responsibility for this, he stepped down as president in 1979, when he was inaugurated as Sōka Gakkai’s honorary president. During a second conflict with the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood from late 1990 into 1991, Sōka Gakkai gained full independence when it was excommunicated from Nichiren Shōshū. See Shimada (2007, 145–​146) and McLaughlin (2012). 7  Contrary to the JCP, other left parties were backed by labor organizations of civil servants, as well as teachers (JSP supporters) and workers for big companies (DSP supporters).

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exclude the JCP from the opposition alliance and keep it isolated in the Diet (Hori 1980, 87). Kōmeitō leaders utilized the principle of the separation of politics and religion as a rationale to unilaterally declare that Sōka Gakkai had nothing to do with party policy. After intense negotiations between Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō,8 the two organizations issued a joint statement, made by Yano and Sōka Gakkai’s vice president (later fifth president) Akiya Einosuke, saying that the accord promoted only “coexistence” between Sōka Gakkai and the JCP, not a “joint struggle,” and that therefore the religion would not affect Kōmeitō’s policy (Asahi, 29 July 1975; also see Matsumoto 1981, 41). In Takeiri’s words, Kōmeitō was able to “virtually eviscerate” the political significance of the accord (Asahi, 17 September 1998). The accord was canceled four years later, in 1979, when Sōka Gakkai’s wiretap on the house of JCP Chairman Miyamoto Kenji was discovered (see Hrebenar 1992, 159). Kōmeitō and the JCP are both mass parties that rely on mobilizing their supporters in elections. The Sōka Gakkai–​JCP accord, however, clearly shows a difference between the two parties: the JCP has its own internal organization while Kōmeitō relies upon support from a group that is administratively and, to an increasing extent, ideologically separate. Kōmeitō, despite its dependence upon its parent organization, acted autonomously based on political rather than religious considerations. Policy Adjustment for Survival in the Diet: An Abrupt Turn to the Right During the late 1970s, Kōmeitō made a sudden turn to the right. At its fifteenth national convention, held in January 1978, Party Chairman Takeiri announced the party’s support for the maintenance of the U.S.–​Japan Security Treaty and recognized the legality of the Self-Defense Forces, thereby reversing Kōmeitō’s earlier policy. Both policies were officially adopted during the nineteenth national convention in 1981. Dropping some of its core progressive policies, the party thus moved closer to the LDP. Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo welcomed this decision and even sent a congratulatory telegram to the Kōmeitō headquarters (Asahi, 25 March 1978), while LDP Secretary General Ōhira Masayoshi called Kōmeitō a “friendly party” (Yomiuri, 11 January 1978). Furthermore, Takeiri visited Seoul in August 1981 and stated that South Korea under the Chun DooHwan military regime had “incomparably greater freedom than North 8  A detailed description of how Sōka Gakkai members were troubled by strong resistance from Kōmeitō is given by Matsumoto Seichō (1980), a famous novelist who also mediated the Sōka Gakkai–​JCP accord.

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Korea” (quoted in Kunigami 1981, 252). After Takeiri’s return, the party joined the Japan-Korea Parliamentarians’ Union, to which the LDP and the DSP already belonged. This marked a departure from alliance with the JSP, which maintained ties with North Korea. What made Kōmeitō leaders steer the party closer to the LDP?9 The first key to understanding this change in course lies in the Kōmeitō elites’ strategic interaction with national-level politics from the mid-1970s onward. The progressive alliance was failing due to irreconcilable views between the DSP and the JSP. At the same time, the possibility of a coalition with the LDP was opening as the LDP searched for ways to extend its dominance. The second key is the party leaders’ insight that the number of votes it could rely upon Sōka Gakkai members to attract was limited. Kōmeitō leaders had already witnessed the end of the dramatic increase in Sōka Gakkai membership—​meaning that as long as the party relied solely on a religious support base, it was destined to be a small party, at best having around fifty to sixty lawmakers in the Lower House. They reasoned that by becoming a governing party the organization would gain a chance to attract a broader range of voters—​not only Sōka Gakkai members and nonmember supporters—​and allow it to become a true “people’s party.” The last key to understanding Kōmeitō’s political shift is understanding why their supporters accepted this reorientation. As their living conditions improved in the 1980s, survey data reveal that the preferences of Kōmeitō supporters (understood primarily to mean Sōka Gakkai members) regarding security and defense issues had become more diverse, allowing Kōmeitō flexibility in choosing a political direction. It was these three key elements that facilitated Kōmeitō’s relatively swift move toward the political right, one that proceeded without significant backlash from its constituents. The following sections explore each of these three key elements in detail. Stuck in the Left, Pulled from the Right Kōmeitō’s shift in policy was an elite-driven enterprise aimed at political survival. In the early 1970s, Kōmeitō and the DSP both nurtured connections with the JSP, based on personal relationships between Kōmeitō secretary General Yano, vice chairman of the DSP Sasaki Ryōsaku, and Eda Saburō, a moderate socialist from the JSP. These three set up an interparty group called “Visions of a New Japan” (Atarashii Nihon o Kangaeru kai) in 1976, with a view to facilitating anti-LDP cooperation. However, the 9  Kōmeitō’s rightward turn in the 1970s and 1980s can also be substantiated through content analysis of legislative speeches (Procksh, Spalin, and Thies 2011).

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cooperation ended before it produced results. In December 1976, their JSP partner Eda lost his seat in the election, which triggered an eruption of fierce criticisms from socialist members and supporters of his “centrist” approach. Eda left the JSP in disappointment and organized the Socialist Citizen’s Federation; however, he passed away soon after this, in May 1977. His death made negotiations for cooperation among the opposition parties more difficult, since the main JSP leaders stuck to their cooperation with the JCP (Maeda 1995, 152, 162). Furthermore, it became evident that it was difficult to bridge ideological divisions between the DSP and the JSP—​the former upheld the U.S.–​ Japan Security Treaty and the legal status of the Self-Defense Forces, while the latter denied both of them and instead supported unarmed neutral diplomacy (Hori 1980, 89). The 1980 double election of the Upper and Lower Houses became a critical moment for Kōmeitō, as Takeiri concluded that confrontation between these two socialist parties ruined their chances of defeating the LDP (interview in Asahi, 2 September 1998; also see 5 May 1981). Kōmeitō’s seats were reduced from fifty-five to thirty-three in the House of Representatives. Although this loss was due more to the unpreparedness for this snap election and Prime Minister Ōhira’s sudden death, which inspired LDP members to campaign together, Takeiri argued that ongoing mutual criticisms between the DSP and the JSP over security and defense issues added to the LDP’s landslide victory. He described this experience as accruing what he called “high tuition fees” that he wished “never to pay again” (Asahi, 5 May 1981). After this election, the opposition cooperative lost momentum. The situation in the conservative camp also facilitated Kōmeitō’s policy shift. The long-term downturn of LDP votes in the late 1970s led the LDP to consider a possible coalition with Kōmeitō. After the Lockheed bribery scandals in 1976, the LDP lost seats in the election of that year, and again in the 1979 election. Internal discord within the LDP intensified after the 1979 election as a considerable number of LDP members called for Prime Minister Ōhira’s resignation for the defeat, initiating a period know as the “forty-days’ struggle.” Confronted by enormous pressure from factions within his own party, Ōhira approached Kōmeitō chairman Takeiri with an informal coalition proposal in late 1979 (Asahi, 27 August 1998).10 They did not reach agreement—​not only because Ōhira found it difficult to convince his party to accept Kōmeitō’s demand for a ban on corporate donations, but also because Takeiri realized that differences between the two 10  Since Fukuda was prime minister and Ōhira was secretary general, they had talks with Kōmeitō as well as the DSP for partial coalition. See Asahi (24 February 1979).

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parties were too great to allow them to form a coalition, particularly one concerning sensitive issues such as security and defense (interview with Takeiri in Asahi, 27 August 1998). After the 1980 election, Takeiri made the offer from Ōhira public, announcing that “it is not reasonable for Kōmeitō to stay in opposition permanently” and “we will not miss the next chance [to join a government]” (Asahi, 5 May 1981). At the local level, Kōmeitō had already partnered with the LDP in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly since 1979; through this experience, the party realized the potential of a partnership with the ruling LDP at the national level. Working with the LDP in the 1981 metropolitan assembly election in Tokyo, which took place one year after Kōmeitō’s massive defeat in the national elections, Kōmeitō won all seats for its candidates. This result demonstrated that the status of a ruling party “made it easy to gain support from various interest groups” and that, if the same scenario were to be repeated at the national level, “it would help their election campaign significantly” (Asahi, 8 September 1981). In addition, as Hori (1982, 217–​ 218) argues, it seemed that local Kōmeitō politicians working with the LDP wanted the party to redress the uncomfortable situation of maintaining the progressive cooperation at the national level and, simultaneously, forming an LDP-Kōmeitō cooperation at the local level. Kōmeitō cooperation with the LDP was a nationwide trend in ­prefectural-level politics. From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, Kōmeitō expanded its support for governors who were also supported by the LDP.11 Figure 4.1 shows to what extent Kōmeitō and other opposition parties supported the same governors that the LDP supported. The figure reveals that Kōmeitō had been antagonistic to the LDP in the early 1970s. However, in 1978, after Takeiri shifted position on the role of the U.S.–­ Japan Security Treaty and the legality of the Self-Defense Forces, the party began to cooperate with the LDP. The DSP, which stood closer to the LDP than any other opposition party, had been more or less working with the LDP since the early 1970s. The JSP, because of Kōmeitō’s subsequent shift, was left with no other option but to follow suit. Instead of fielding its own candidates, who had little chance of winning, the JSP adopted the “balanced ticket” (ainori) strategy for gubernatorial elections. Kōmeitō’s shift to the right changed the political landscape of the Diet. The party contended that its policy was redefined for the purpose of becoming a reliable alternative to the LDP, but obviously it was considering 11  The governors’ partisanship data were collected and edited by Sunahara Yosuke, and published on his website (www.geocities.jp/yosuke_sunahara/; accessed Jan. 2014). We would like to thank him for sharing these data.

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Figure 4.1 The percentage of governors supported by the LDP and Kōmeitō (1969–1993)

Source: Data taken from the governors’ partisanship data as published by Sunahara Yosuke on www.geocities.jp/yosuke_sunahara/ (accessed Nov. 2013). Note: 100% in the figure means that a party supported all of the governors backed by the LDP.

a possible coalition. Major obstacles between Kōmeitō and the DSP were removed since the two parties shared virtually the same positions on security and defense policy, which culminated in the issue of the “vision of a middle path coalition government” (chūdō rengō seiken kōsō) in December 1979. JSP leaders approached Kōmeitō from fear of isolation and reiterated their desire for cooperation in January 1980. However, Kōmeitō leaders no longer needed JSP cooperation, except for preventing it from moving closer to the JCP (Matsumoto 1981, 44). Kōmeitō came to occupy the median position in the Diet, commanding attention from both conservatives and progressives. 7KH&RVWVDQG%HQHÀWVRID5HOLJLRXV%DVH The benefit of having religious roots was that the party could rely on solid support from its parent religious group, but a downside was that its religious affiliation made it difficult to collect non–Sōka Gakkai votes—much

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Figure 4.2 Kōmeitō’s seats in the Lower House (1967–1993)

Source: Data taken from Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Statistics Bureau (2006).

more so from those with an antipathy to Sōka Gakkai. Dealing with this trade-off became a challenge for Kōmeitō leaders, particularly after the Sōka Gakkai’s rapid growth ended. In the late 1970s, party leaders realized that the rise in Sōka Gakkai membership had slowed down. The membership reached 7.62 million households in 1974 and eight million in the early 1980s.12 Since the expansion of Sōka Gakkai resulted chiefly from the incorporation of rural migrants new to urban areas, the increase in new party members was also blunted by the end of rapid urbanization and economic growth (Shimada 2009, 82; Nakano 2010). Therefore, although Kōmeitō gained fifty-five seats in the election of the Lower House in 1976, its political leaders were aware that the party was nearing its maximum number of votes based on Sōka Gakkai mobilization (Matsumoto 1981, 42). Historical records confirm the deadlock of Kōmeitō’s seats in the Lower House, where the increase stopped just before reaching sixty (see figure 4.2). The percentage of Kōmeitō voters among all eligible voters in the nationwide constituency (the Proportional Representative [PR] system from 1983) of the Upper House provides a more reasonable indicator of this point (see figure 4.3). The party’s gain stopped after peaking at 10.1% in 1968. Thus, when stagnant growth became obvious, the challenge of extending the scope of its voters beyond those mobilized by its religious base became a more serious problem than ever before. Party leaders sought to free Kōmeitō 12

See chapter 3 in this volume. Also see Hrebenar (1992, 156).

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Figure 4.3 Percentage of eligible voters casting their ballot for Kōmeitō in the National Constituency/PR tier of the Upper House (1956–​1992) Source: Data taken from Ishikawa and Yamaguchi (2010, appendix).

from its limitations as a religious party, and thereby increase the number of non–​Sōka Gakkai votes, by gaining access to government. Yano stated: “Kōmeitō’s seats had hit a peak [from 1980 to 1985]. Shady rumors about the lack of separation of politics and religion and the monopoly of the party (by Sōka Gakkai) would disappear if the party integrated into a coalition government” (Asahi, 19 May 1989).13 That is to say, party leaders consciously chose the avenue of a coalition with the LDP in order to expand their constituency. Takeiri and Yano intervened in an LDP party leader election in 1984, supporting its vice president Nikaidō Susumu in order to prevent Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro’s re-election. The so-called Nikaidō incident started when some LDP politicians, including former Prime Minister Suzuki Zenkō, plotted to bring down the incumbent leader. Suzuki talked to Takeiri, who was upset for religious reasons by Nakasone’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, and asked for cooperation in establishing a Nikaidō 13 

Parenthetical comment in the original. Also see Asahi (8 September 1981).

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government; Suzuki anticipated a need for help from Kōmeitō, as a split in the LDP would be inevitable following the unseating of Nakasone. After careful contemplation, Kōmeitō leaders decided to unofficially support Nikaidō, in spite of Takeiri’s close relationship with Tanaka Kakuei, who was behind Nakasone.14 For Kōmeitō, this change in support had a special meaning beyond Suzuki’s speculation. Yano accounted for the party’s decision for two reasons: one was simply to “bring a breath of fresh air” into LDP-dominated politics, while the other was to “regenerate the party” by forming a coalition (Yano 1993, 96). As Takeiri also emphasized at that time, “in order to dilute the Sōka Gakkai tinge [of the party], a coalition was necessary” (in Yano 1993, 105). Cooperation with the LDP would have allowed Kōmeitō to expand its opportunities while reducing its dependence on Sōka Gakkai voters. This coup failed, however, because Nikaidō and his associates could not collect enough votes within the LDP, as they were blocked by such influential figures as Tanaka and Gotōda Masaharu. This incident should be understood against the backdrop of the power struggle within the LDP; nevertheless, Kōmeitō had its own take on the situation. Yano recalled: “We made various attempts to split the LDP because otherwise we could not join the government; but, after all, it did not split” (Shimada and Yano 2010, 249). Reactions from the Support Base Evolving Kōmeitō Demographics

Kōmeitō’s rightward turn was accepted by the party’s loyal supporters. Neither the religious leaders nor the believers raised strong objections to the party’s abrupt changes in policy or its new political alliances. The Sōka Gakkai cadre acquiesced in this reorientation even though the new Kōmeitō alignment contradicted the party’s founding pacifist worldview.15 One possible explanation for this acquiescence is the fact that Sōka Gakkai was occupied with its own problems from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Notable among these were the confrontation with Nichiren Shōshū from 1977 to 1979; the revealed wiretap of the JCP chairman’s house; allegations of Ikeda’s personal affairs with women that were disclosed by a monthly journal called Gekkan Pen and followed by lengthy libel suits from 1976 to 1984; land transaction problems in the city of Fujinomiya 14  Interview with Takeiri in Asahi (29 August 1998); also see Yano (1993) as well as Shimada and Yano (2010, 249). 15  Concerning questions about the pacifist worldview of Sōka Gakkai adherents, see Kisala (1999).

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(Shizuoka Prefecture) in the late 1970s to 1980s; and allegations of corrupt internal affairs within Sōka Gakkai made by its former lawyer Yamazaki Masatomo, who parted company with Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō in 1977.16 The rightward shift did cause some friction with grassroots-level supporters. Objections were raised, mainly by the Youth Division of Sōka Gakkai, which had begun leading antiwar and pacifist activities in the 1970s. These “rebels” formed a voluntary group to oppose Kōmeitō’s political shift, but it did not gain momentum throughout the organization, and their voices soon faded (Hori 1982, 218). The supporters’ consent to the party elites’ decision can be explained by the upward mobility in the socioeconomic profile of Sōka Gakkai members. Nationwide random sample surveys reveal that until the mid-1970s, Sōka Gakkai members remained mostly rootless city residents with lower levels of education, very much in accord with the prevailing image of the Sōka Gakkai community (see table 4.1).17 In 1976, Sōka Gakkai members were more likely to be women, people of low education, and city residents who were less likely than the average to be permanent residents. The family income among Sōka Gakkai members was slightly below average, although the difference is not statistically significant. Seven years later, in 1983, most of the once distinctive demographic and socioeconomic factors—​gender, education, and the size of residential city—​no longer characterized Sōka Gakkai membership. The tendencies remained but could not be confirmed statistically. Socioeconomically, Sōka Gakkai members had almost caught up with people outside the religious 16  On Sōka Gakkai’s scandals during the 1970s, see, for example, Hori (1981, 33), Hrebenar (1992, 159–​160), and Shimada and Yano (2010, 168). 17  Few studies relied on survey data based on a national random sample in investigating the background and behavior of Sōka Gakkai members. Hori (1999) introduced the results of a survey conducted by Center Research Services (Chuō Chōsa Sha) in 1969; however, this was conducted only in Tokyo. For a review of studies on Sōka Gakkai based on surveys, see Nakano (2010, appendix). In the current study, we utilize three national election surveys: the JABISS conducted in 1976, JES in 1983, and JES II in 1993 to 1996. We thank the principal investigators of these three surveys, the Leviathan Data Bank, and G-COE GLOPE II project at Waseda University for making the data available to us. The former two surveys contain responses to a question asking to which religious group respondents belonged. Although the number of respondents who expressed their faith in Sōka Gakkai might be too small for analysis, it is still worthwhile to explore who Sōka Gakkai members were based on these nationwide random-sampled surveys. In 1973, 3.0% of all respondents (40 out of 1,332) said they were Sōka Gakkai members. In 1983, 3.6% of respondents said so (64 out of 1,769). The Sōka Gakkai membership of around 3% corresponds with the figure in Nakano’s review (2010, appendix). This figure suggests that Sōka Gakkai is an influential denomination in Japan, taking into account that, in both 1976 and 1983, only 9% of the sample (9.3% and 9.8%, respectively) answered that they were affiliated with any religious groups. Sōka Gakkai thus occupied about one-third of self-identified religious group membership in Japan.

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Table 4.1 Demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds of Sōka Gakkai members 1976

1983

Sōka Gakkai Non-SG Sōka Gakkai Non-SG Sex** Male

20.0%

42.3%

43.8%

48.9%

Female

80.0%

57.7%

56.3%

51.1%

20-29

17.5%

20.4%

12.5%

14.8%

30-39

27.5%

24.1%

15.6%

24.6%

40-49

20.0%

22.5%

28.1%

22.8%

50-59

10.0%

16.6%

17.2%

17.6%

60-69

17.5%

11.1%

17.2%

12.0%

70-79

7.5%

4.6%

7.8%

7.0%

80 or Older

0.0%

0.7%

1.6%

1.2%

Junior High School

70.0%

46.1%

48.4%

38.6%

High School

27.5%

40.2%

37.1%

41.7%

2.5%

13.6%

14.5%

18.6%

32.5%

30.1%

39.1%

42.8%

Self Management

2.5%

17.5%

9.4%

16.6%

Family Business

5.0%

9.7%

3.1%

6.5%

Student

0.0%

1.9%

0.0%

1.1%

Housewife

45.0%

30.7%

31.3%

20.4%

Not Working

15.0%

9.4%

15.6%

12.4%

0.0%

0.8%

1.6%

0.4%

Age

Education**

College Occupation Employee

Other

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1976

1983

Sōka Gakkai Non-SG Sōka Gakkai Non-SG Family Income First Quantile

34.5%

28.6%

31.9%

27.5%

Second Quantile

37.9%

27.5%

34.0%

33.4%

Third Quantile

17.2%

21.1%

23.4%

21.5%

Fourth Quantile

10.3%

22.8%

10.6%

17.6%

Large Cities

27.5%

18.0%

18.8%

18.5%

Cities (More than 0.1M residents)

50.0%

33.4%

48.4%

33.8%

Cities (Fewer than 0.1M residents)

12.5%

20.7%

15.6%

18.1%

Villages and Towns

10.0%

27.9%

17.2%

29.6%

Fewer than 3 years

27.5%

14.2%

17.2%

9.7%

Fewer than 10 years

27.5%

24.6%

21.9%

18.7%

Fewer than 15 years

7.5%

6.9%

10.9%

10.8%

More than 15 years

32.5%

28.5%

42.2%

35.2%

5.0%

25.8%

7.8%

25.6%

Community Size**

Length of Residence**

Since birth

Note: ** = statistically significant at the .05 level by the chi-square test. Sources: JABISS (1976) and JES (1983).

community by the 1980s. The only exception is the length of residence, as Sōka Gakkai members still tended to stay in the same place for a shorter period than the national average. Policy Preferences of Supporters

Ambiguous policy preferences among Kōmeitō supporters allowed the party to alter its strategies. Ideologically, Kōmeitō supporters perceived themselves as the moderate left—​positioned between the JSP and the DSP

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1983:

1993:

Figure 4.4 Ideological positions of party supporters Sources: JES (1983) and JES II (1993).

in 1983, they moved even further left in their self-identified locations when surveyed in 1993 (see figure 4.4).18 In general, for Kōmeitō’s supporters, the JSP, the second leftist party, was closest to them in the Diet in 1983 and 1993. However, these self-identified ideological locations do not match the policy shifts of Kōmeitō toward the right, in particular with regard to national security issues. An investigation of specific policy positions reveals a more nuanced picture of party alignment during this period. In postwar Japanese party politics, security issues rather than social welfare issues shaped the ideological spectrum (Otake 1999). In particular, there is a line between conservative and progressive stances concerning the two prominent security policies regarding the Self-Defense Forces and the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty. The attitudes toward these two issues should correlate if policy preferences were formed along ideological lines. However, Kōmeitō supporters had inconsistent preferences with regard to national security: they were on the left regarding the Self-Defense Forces and on the right regarding the U.S.–Japan security issue (see figure 4.5).19 18 Questions on the respondents’ ideological position were included in the JES data in 1983 and JES II data in 1993, but not in the 1976 survey. Figure 4.4 shows the averages of self-identified ideological positions among each party’s supporters on a five-point scale. The spectrum encompasses the JCP on the left side and the LDP on the right. Kōmeitō was moderate left (2.68) in 1983 and then moved leftward (2.22) in 1993. In 1993, the answers to the question were mapped on a ten-point scale, but were remapped on a five-point scale for easier comparison. 19 The surveys in 1976 and 1983 featured the same questions on a variety of policies. With regard to the topic of security, the respondents were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statements that “Japan’s defense force should be strengthened” and that “Japan should strengthen the U.S.–Japan security arrangement.” In 1993, with regard to Japan’s international contribution, the respondents were asked which of the following two statements

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Probing for specific policy questions in surveys revealed that, with regard to Japan’s defense force policy, Kōmeitō supporters moved left. Kōmeitō supporters who stood on the moderate left position along with the DSP in 1976 moved even further toward the left, almost sharing the JSP’s position (marked “A” in figure 4.5). At the same time, with regard to the U.S.–​ ­Japan security issue, Kōmeitō supporters took a step to the right, although only a slight one (marked “B” in figure 4.5). Interestingly, in 1976 Kōmeitō supporters were on the center-left position, hoping for a strengthening of the U.S.–​Japan security alliance even more than DSP supporters, whereas in 1983 they moved to the center-right position and thus closer to the LDP. These two policy preferences are contradictory and demonstrate that Kōmeitō supporters were not consistent ideologues. The foreign policy issues that emerged after the end of the Cold War also reflect the inconsistency of Kōmeitō supporters’ preferences concerning security. As for Japan’s international contribution, Kōmeitō supporters were more likely in 1993—​even more likely than LDP members—​to subscribe to the idea that Japan would need to be involved with military matters in order to make an effective international contribution (marked with a “C” in figure 4.5). Because of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, sending the Self-­ Defense Forces overseas, especially to places where it might be involved in military actions, was a sensitive issue in Japanese politics. Kōmeitō and the DSP cooperated with the LDP, which at the time lost its majority in the Upper House, in order to pass the PKO (Peacekeeping Operation) Cooperation Bill in June 1992. The law allows the government to send the Self-Defense Forces overseas to engage in United Nations peacekeeping operations, but only in places where the Self-Defense Forces would not need to use firearms. This legislative behavior of the leaderships might have led Kōmeitō and DSP supporters to take positive positions. Their opinions, however, were beyond the policy position of leaders, who were not willing to accept having the Japan Self-Defense Forces be involved in military operations. These analyses of policy preferences suggest that Kōmeitō supporters failed to form ideologically consistent positions, in particular with regard to security issues. The party’s dovish rhetoric, rooted in Sōka Gakkai principles, might have made Kōmeitō supporters perceive themselves as standing on a position close to the leftist parties. However, when it came was closer to their own opinion: (1) “If Japan sticks to only nonmilitary matters, I don’t think it is possible to make a significant international contribution” and (2) “Even if Japan limits itself to only nonmilitary matters, I think it is possible to make a significant international contribution.”

A. Japan’s defense forces should be strengthened (1 = “Disagree”; 5 = “Agree”) 1976:

1983:

B. Japan should strengthen the U.S.–Japan security arrangement (1 = “Disagree”; 5 = “Agree”) 1976:

1983:

C. Japan’s International Contribution (1 = “Should stick to nonmilitary matters”; 4 = “Should not”).

Figure 4.5 Policy positions in security of party supporters Sources: JABISS (1976), JES (1983), and JES II (1993).

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to security issues, including the U.S.–​Japan security alliance and international contributions, they did not share opinions with socialists and communists, and instead joined the right-wing camp. This inconsistency concerning policy positions on security widened the range of party strategies, allowing party elites to move Kōmeitō to the right. Kōmeitō Voters’ Partisanship

Examining the structure of Kōmeitō supporters’ partisanship reveals that the party’s rightward movement was not a mass-driven phenomenon. Although Kōmeitō leaders considered the possibility of forming a coalition with the LDP in the 1980s, Kōmeitō supporters clearly preferred the DSP and the JSP (see table 4.2).20 During the period between 1976 and 1993, Kōmeitō supporters reported the highest levels of sympathy with the DSP, while in the 1990s they grew distant from the JSP. Consistent with party behavior, Kōmeitō supporters had shown the least degree of attachment to the JCP throughout this period. From the late 1970s to early 1990s, the governing LDP became more unpopular among Kōmeitō supporters. This structure of party support among Kōmeitō supporters—​that is, supportive of the DSP and JSP, and opposed to the LDP and JCP—​­becomes even clearer when one looks at the survey question on “a party you would never support” (kyohi seitō). Table 4.3 shows that very few Kōmeitō supporters rejected the DSP and that the rejection of the JSP reached only to around 10 percent at most, while the LDP and JCP, already unpopular among Kōmeitō supporters in the 1970s, became even more unpopular in the 1980s and 1990s.21 This trend of having more antagonistic attitudes toward the LDP even after the party’s policy shift clearly contradicted the mass-driven perspective, which emphasized the support base’s role in guiding the party’s rightward turn in policies. It was the elite, not the support base, that drove the policy shift. Another striking finding here is the rapid increase in respondents who refused to support the JCP. In the 1980s and 1990s, two-thirds said that the JCP was the last party they would support.22 This structure of partisanship 20  Derived from the Feeling Thermometer method, table 4.2 shows the averages of “feeling” among Kōmeitō supporters toward other parties. The respondents were asked to rate their affect toward parties on a scale ranging from 0 (the coldest feeling) to 100 (the warmest feeling), with 50 being neutral. The higher values on the table indicate higher levels of attachment toward another party. 21  The respondents could choose multiple parties. 22  In turn, Kōmeitō was unpopular both among other party supporters and among independents, with JCP supporters disliking it most. This tendency can be confirmed for the mid-1990s (see Kabashima and Reed 2000). The proportion of JCP supporters who would never support Kōmeitō increased from 18% in 1976 to 38.3% in 1983 and to 46.9% in 1993.

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Yuki Abe and Masahisa Endo Table 4.2 Feeling thermometer degrees toward other parties among Kōmeitō supporters (average) 1976

1983

1993

LDP

36.4

33.3

25.2

JSP

42.5

40.4

30.3

DSP

44.0

47.1

41.4

JCP

23.3

20.1

16.3

Sources: JABISS (1976), JES (1983), and JES II (1993).

Table 4.3 “A party you would never support” among Kōmeitō supporters 1976

1983

1993

LDP

23.4%

26.7%

29.4%

JSP

0.0%

9.3%

8.3%

DSP

0.0%

2.7%

2.8%

JCP

38.3%

62.7%

67.0%

Sources: JABISS (1976), JES (1983), and JES II (1993).

reflects the fate of the Sōka Gakkai–​JCP accord in the 1970s. From the 1970s to the 1990s, Kōmeitō came into serious conflict with the JCP. As discussed earlier, the Sōka Gakkai–​JCP accord was made public and then rejected by Kōmeitō leaders in 1975. Kōmeitō could not accept the accord since in their electoral campaigns Sōka Gakkai members were competing against the JCP organization for common target votes. However, the revelation of the Sōka Gakkai–​JCP accord in 1975 did not seem to trigger antagonism among JCP supporters. The reason might be that even after the unilateral abandonment on the Sōka Gakkai–​Kōmeitō side, the JCP refrained from criticizing Sōka Gakkai until 1979 (Shimada and Yano 2010). In 1976, Kōmeitō supporters disliked the JCP but to a relatively low degree, while JCP supporters did not show strong antagonism. In 1983, however, they quarreled harshly with each other due to the wiretap scandal in 1979. After this revelation, the JCP launched political attacks against Sōka Gakkai

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and Kōmeitō, and since then supporters of the two parties have expressed public loathing of each other, making cooperation impossible. Kōmeitō’s rightward turn brought the attempt to gain governing status to fruition in 1993, when it became one of the ruling parties for the first time in its history. This non-LDP eight-party coalition was formed as a consequence of several groups of LDP politicians having left the party while making an agreement with other opposition parties, except for the JCP, to set up a new government. For Kōmeitō, which had associated with some like-minded LDP members since the 1980s, the LDP split posed a chance to bring about a change in the Diet, more or less as it had conceived, while keeping the JCP out of the government. Conclusion The current public image of Kōmeitō rests upon two pillars: it is a religious outsider party and a coalition partner of the LDP. The former image dates back to the 1960s, when Kōmeitō was under direct control by the Sōka Gakkai leadership and maintained a clear religious goal and ambiguous political objectives. The second image developed four decades later, when the then outsider took a seat of power as a good friend of the long-term governing LDP. This turnabout becomes comprehensible when light is shed on how Kōmeitō, after the split from its religious parent organization, Sōka Gakkai, gradually adjusted its political strategies between 1970 and 1993. This chapter has investigated how Kōmeitō, which dropped its religious goals after declaring a separation of politics and religion in 1970, evolved its political strategies through a search for its raison d’être in politics. At the outset, the party headed for a progressive alliance with the DSP and the JSP in an attempt to redefine itself as a people’s party in opposition to the LDP and an effort to recover from the public distrust caused by Sōka Gakkai’s scandals. However, these attempts did not bear fruit because Kōmeitō failed to coordinate with other opposition partners. Kōmeitō then turned to the right in hope of creating a possible coalition with the LDP—​an arrangement that would allow the party to exert influence over debates in the Diet. Given that Sōka Gakkai membership had hit a ceiling and that Kōmeitō therefore could not expect a drastic increase in supporters mobilized by Sōka Gakkai members, this was a reasonable decision for the party to make. A rightward shift could allow it to play a decisive role in policymaking, and the upward mobility of Sōka Gakkai members worked in favor of Kōmeitō’s political steering. The party’s move to the right not only brought about informal cooperation with the LDP and the DSP from 1989 to 1993 but also contributed to

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their being in power as part of the non-LDP eight-party coalition, in which the JSP on the left and the Renewal Party (RP; Shinseitō) on the right coexisted. After the coalition’s collapse in 1994, Kōmeitō sought a way of adapting to the new electoral system, a combination of the single-member districts and the proportional representative system, and thus established the New Frontier Party (NFP; Shinshintō), a merger of other small parties including the RP, the Japan New Party, and the DSP, for the purpose of becoming an alternative to the LDP in the anticipated two-party system.23 However, due to internal divisions, the NFP divided in 1997 and Kōmeitō returned thereafter to the Diet.24 In 1999, Kōmeitō regained government status by entering into coalition, this time with the LDP and the Liberal Party (Jiyutō). Evolving electoral cooperation kept the LDP-Kōmeitō coalition in power until 2009, and the LDP-Kōmeitō coalition was reelected to government (without any other parties) in December 2012. Since critics strongly condemned what they called the party’s greedy desire for power while reinvoking its inextricable connection with Sōka Gakkai, this generated an impression that Kōmeitō jumped for this opportunity to gain ministerial posts. Nevertheless, taking Kōmeitō’s past activities into account reveals that the party had been gearing up for a coalition with the LDP since the 1980s. Certainly, the fact that it was founded originally as a religious and antisystem party necessitated a long transformation process. Kōmeitō’s participation in government in 1999 did not occur all of a sudden but should be seen against the backdrop of Kōmeitō’s decades-long track record. From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, Kōmeitō not only reworked its policy positions but also transformed fundamentally from a branch of a religious organization to a political party backed by a religious organization. Kōmeitō’s development in the 1970s and 1980s provides insight into how political logic deviates from religious logic. As the instance of the “Accord on Agreement in Views” concluded between Sōka Gakkai and the JCP illustrates, religious interests are not always compatible with political goals and, when they collided, Kōmeitō utilized the principle of a division between politics and religion to reject its parent organization’s interventions. 23  After the collapse of this non-LDP regime, the party reorganized itself as New Party Kōmei (Shintō Kōmei) and immediately participated in the New Frontier Party in December 1994 under Ozawa Ichirō’s initiatives, while setting up a party known as Kōmei only for local politicians as well as for Upper House members who had uncontested seats over the upcoming election. 24  The NFP’s dissolution led former Kōmeitō members to create a party called New Party Peace (Shintō Heiwa) for Lower House members and the Reimei Club for Upper House members. The reunion of all parties descended from former Kōmeitō was delayed until late 1998 when they launched New Kōmeitō.

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For the two Kōmeitō party founders, Takeiri and Yano, contention between political and religious leadership eventually became irreconcilable. In a serialized interview published in Asahi Shimbun, Takeiri complained outspokenly that “more than 80 percent of my energy was consumed in addressing Sōka Gakkai’s demands. The relation between Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai was not one that connected each through a loop line, but one that radiated unilaterally [from Sōka Gakkai]” (interview with Takeiri in Asahi, 17 September 1998). This statement ignited furious criticism from Sōka Gakkai against Takeiri, who was labeled an “idiot” and “swindler” in Gakkai publications.25 Finally, the relationship ended with Takeiri’s excommunication from the religious organization. Yano took a similar path, making critical remarks about Sōka Gakkai in the media after his retirement from Kōmeitō. Ultimately, he voluntarily left the religious organization and filed several lawsuits against it.26 Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai’s case thus reveals that friction ensues when politics and religion are associated closely. References Hori Yukio. 1980. “Kōmeitō: Oitsuzuketa shakōmin rosen” [Kōmeitō: Its pursuit of JSP–​Kōmeitō–​DSP cooperation]. Keizai Hyōron 29, no. 5:83–​92. ———. 1981. “Ukeika rosen ni tenkanshita Kōmeitō: Jieitai Gōken-ron o unda taishitsu o tsuku” [Kōmeitō’s rightward shift: Its nature to recognize the self-defense force as legal]. Ekonomisuto 59, no. 50:30–​34. ———. 1982. “Kōmeitō no rosen tenkan to Heiwa Undō” [Kōmeitō’s policy shift and its peace movement]. Sekai 435:217–​220. ———. 1999. Kōmeitō ron [A study on Kōmeitō]. Tokyo: Nansōsha. Hrebenar, Ronald J. 1992. Japan’s New Party System. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview. Ikeda Daisaku. [1965] 1969. Seiji to shūkyō (shinpan) [Politics and religion (new edition)]. Tokyo: Ushio Shinsho. Kabashima, Ikuo, and Steven R. Reed. 2000. “Voter Reaction to ‘Strange Bedfellows’: The Japanese Voter Faces a Kaleidoscope of Changing Coalitions.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 1, no. 2:229–​248. 25  From 28 September to 6 November 1998, the party newspaper Kōmei Shimbun published criticism of Takeiri in almost every issue. 26  Certainly, this consequence cannot be generalized as a typical relation between politics and religion because diverse and idiosyncratic factors are involved in the Kōmeitō–​Sōka Gakkai relationship. In particular, it was Takeiri and Yano’s long-term reign that strengthened their control over the party enough to compete with religious intervention (1967 to 1986, whereas Yano succeeded in the party chairman post until 1989).

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Kisala, Robert. 1999. Prophets of Peace: Pacifism and Cultural Identity in Japan’s New Religions. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Kōmeitō. 1964. Taishū fukushi o mezashite: Kōmeitō no seisaku [Toward public welfare: Kōmeitō’s policy]. 2 vols. Tokyo: Kōmeitō. Kunigami Nobuo. 1981. “Takeiri Hōkan to Kōmeitō no sentaku” [Takeiri’s visit to South Korea and Kōmeitō’s decision]. Sekai 432:252–​256. Maeda Yukio. 1995. “Rengōseiken kōsō to chijisenkyo: Kakushin jichitai kara sōyotōka e” [Gubernatorial elections and coalition politics: From progressive local governments to grand coalitions]. Kokkagakkai Zasshi 108, nos. 11/12:121–​182. Matsumoto Seichō. 1980. “Sōka Gakkai Nihon Kyosantō 10-nen kyōtei no shinjitsu” [The truth about the ten-year accord between Sōka Gakkai and the Japan Communist Party]. Bungei Shunjū 58:92–​131. Matsumoto Shirō. 1981. “Kōmeitō: Jūnana-nen no kiseki” [Kōmeitō: Its seventeen-year trajectory]. Sekai 433:36–​44. McLaughlin, Levi. 2012. “Sōka Gakkai in Japan.” In Brill Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religion, edited by Inken Prohl and John Nelson, 269–​308. Leiden: Brill. Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Statistics Bureau, ed. 2006. Shinban Nihon chōki tōkei sōran dai 5-kan [New edition historical statistics of Japan, volume 5]. Tokyo: Japan Statistical Association. Nakano Tsuyoshi. 2010. “Minshū shūkyō toshite no Sōka Gakkai: Shakaisō to kokka no kankei kara” [Sōka Gakkai as a popular religion: A perspective of the social strata–​state relationship]. Shukyo to Seiji 16:111–​142. Otake Hideo. 1999. Nihon seiji no tairitsujiku: 93-nen ikō no seikai saihen no naka de [The competition axis in Japanese politics: Inside political realignment since 1993]. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Sha. Procksh, Sven-Oliver, Jonathan B. Spalin, and Michael F. Thies. 2011. “Party System Dynamics in Post-War Japan: A Quantitative Content Analysis of Electoral Pledges.” Electoral Studies 30:114–​124. Shimada Hiromi. 2007. Kōmeitō vs. Sōka Gakkai. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha. ———. 2009. “Kokumin seitō ni dappi dekinakatta Kōmeitō to Sōka Gakkai” [Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai’s unsuccessful attempt to be a people’s party]. In Hendō suru Nihon seiji: 90-nendai ikō no “Henkaku no Jidai” o yomitoku [Japanese politics transforming: Understanding the “Era of Change” since the 1990s], edited by Mikuriya Takashi, 75–​100. Tokyo: Keisō Shobō. Shimada Hiromi and Jun’ya Yano. 2010. Sōka Gakkai: Mō hitotsu no Nippon [Sōka Gakkai: Yet another aspect of Japan]. Tokyo: Kōdansha.

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Suzuki Hiroshi. 1970. Toshiteki sekai [Urban world]. Tokyo: Seishin Shobo. Watanuki, Jōji. 1977. Politics in Postwar Japanese Society. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Yano Jun’ya. 1993. “‘Ozawa–​Ichikawa’ tetsu no kizuna wa ikani tsukuraretaka: Seikai shikakenin gokuhi memo zenkōkai” [How the iron bond between Ozawa and Ichikawa was made: Secret memorandum by a fixer in politics]. Bungei Shunjū 71, no. 10:94–​126. Periodicals

Asahi (Shinbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 7.6 million; evening edition: 2.7 million) was second only to that of Yomiuri Shinbun. Available at http://adv. yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Kōmei Shinbun is the daily party newspaper of Kōmeitō with a circulation of 800,000 (personal communication with newspaper headquarters in June 2013). Yomiuri (Shinbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 9.9 million; evening edition: 3.4 million) was larger than that of any other Japanese daily. Available at http://adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014.

Part IV: The Structure

Five

How Kōmeitō Politicians Get Elected

George Ehrhardt

Introduction Though many Japanese religious groups have entered politics, none have succeeded like Sōka Gakkai. As recounted in chapter 2, groups such as Tenrikyō and Shinshūren have sponsored the election of individual politicians under the umbrella of a major political party, but none have created a viable political party. Kōmeitō’s success in parlaying Sōka Gakkai support into its position as the third-largest party in the Diet, and a swing bloc on key issues, deserves an explanation. How do they do it? Predictably, this success has engendered a backlash, not only from other religious groups (see chapter 9), but from writers as well, and this question of how Kōmeitō mobilizes votes is a key point in the debate. While legally separate, rank-and-file Sōka Gakkai members connect Kōmeitō partisanship to their religious beliefs, and Kōmeitō electioneering to their religious practice (see chapter 3). Critics argue that this invocation of religious beliefs for political mobilization violates believers’ freedom of choice: members of Sōka Gakkai vote Kōmeitō because they are unable to do anything else (Etō 2003; Yamada 2004, 134). Journalists writing about Sōka Gakkai are prone to hyperbolic accusations of mind control, but even cooler-headed academic writers have little to offer on this point. Initial analyses claimed that Sōka Gakkai members reliably voted Kōmeitō because they had subsumed their identity into an isolated mass movement, but White (1970) had disproved this by the end of the 1960s. Contemporary English-language textbooks like Curtis’s (1999) and Hrebenar’s (2000) assert that Sōka Gakkai members support Kōmeitō but don’t explore why. In the Japanese-language literature, Hori (1985) asserts that religious leaders determine followers’ votes by asking them to sign party registration cards—​as if that is all that one needs to know in order to explain their actual vote. What’s missing in the literature

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is any sense of process—​how, exactly, does Sōka Gakkai membership lead one to support Kōmeitō? In the wider world of comparative politics outside Japan, however, scholars have looked at diverse examples of successful religiously oriented political mobilization. Some well-known examples include Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe, black churches’ role in the U.S. civil rights movement, Islamic parties in Algeria and Turkey, and the success of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu party in India. One theme in this research is the importance of organization. Religious organizations give members the opportunity to practice the skills of political life; they strengthen social networks, they maintain efficient channels for distributing information, and they facilitate political participation. Applied to the Japanese case, the comparative literature disenchants the Sōka ­Gakkai–​ Kōmeitō connection and demands we look at actual organizational behavior to understand how Kōmeitō politicians get elected. To do that, this chapter provides an inside look at the party’s Upper House campaign of 2010. That summer, I observed campaigns by Kōmeitō candidates in Tokyo (Takeya Toshiko) and Saitama (Nishida Makoto). My observation included both party activity and separate Sōka Gakkai organizational activity. This time allowed for lengthy, albeit informal, discussions with Kōmeitō party officials, campaign staff, and volunteers, which supplemented my earlier fieldwork with Sōka Gakkai in 2007. Both candidates ran in prefectural multimember districts. Takeya, a first-time candidate, was one of twenty-four candidates (eight from major parties) competing for five seats, while Nishida, an incumbent, was one of ten (eight from major parties) running for three seats. One consequence of these numbers was the near absence of LDP-Kōmeitō electoral cooperation. In Tokyo especially, where the LDP was trying to win two of the five seats, it lacked the votes to send any to Kōmeitō candidates. Only one LDP candidate ran in Saitama, but even so, according to campaign staff I spent time with, there was no official cooperation. They suggested there might be occasional cases of cooperation at a local level, but nothing at a party level. In the end, both Takeya and Nishida secured seats in the Diet with second-place finishes.1 Based on this experience, I argue that Kōmeitō’s success is not just a matter of the Sōka Gakkai’s commitment or size. It is a function of how efficiently Sōka Gakkai social networks are integrated into Kōmeitō electioneering. Considered separately, neither Kōmeitō nor Sōka Gakkai is unique: Kōmeitō campaigns like a “normal” political party, and many 1  In another case of competition between Kōmeitō and the JCP, Takeya’s victory was accompanied by the defeat of the JCP’s incumbent, Koike Akira.

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other religious groups encourage political participation. Considered together, however, they reveal the potential synergies between a political party and a religious organization. Electoral law forces Kōmeitō to structure its electioneering like that of other Japanese parties: three-week-long campaigns and a near-prohibition on advertising make it impossible to treat issues in any great depth during the election, or even do little more than meet as many voters as possible. This divides the campaign into two distinct stages: a long preelection period during which the party and candidates attempt to persuade voters to become partisans, and a short but intense official campaign season when they attempt to mobilize their supporters. This conceptual division comes from studies of American politics. Research suggests that early campaigning has little effect on turnout or vote shares independent of partisanship, but it does appear to build partisanship and make it relevant (Finkel 1993; Gelman and King 1993). This stage (persuasion) is primarily one-way: parties provide voters with information. This makes it easier for voters to participate in politics because it takes less effort to learn about the candidates, but it also tilts them in the direction of what the party wants them to know, rather than what a wholly rational voter should know. However, as the election nears and attitudes harden, campaigns lose their ability to create new partisans and focus instead on mobilizing supporter turnout (Shaw 1999; Holbrook and McClurg 2005). While the structure of Kōmeitō electioneering resembles that of other parties, its integration with Sōka Gakkai creates three noteworthy differences. First, the party’s connection to Sōka Gakkai means that its persuasion and mobilization efforts are not only integrated with the religious organization, they are to a large extent “outsourced” to that group. Second, Kōmeitō’s party-centered structure produces changes in campaign staffing and participation. The last effect of integration is perhaps the most interesting: some Kōmeitō practices are driven by their usefulness for promoting and monitoring Sōka Gakkai religious activity, not by their effectiveness in winning political office. The next two sections of this chapter follow the chronology of Japanese campaigns—​an analysis of Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō persuasion first, then a look at mobilization. Persuasion Persuasion is an attempt to alter voters’ perceptions of a party or candidate (Huber and Arceneaux 2007). While some voters are committed to a particular party, others “float” between parties, offering them an incentive

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to reach beyond their base to secure new voters at election time. In mass media campaigns like those in the United States or Western Europe, this involves identifying images or strengths the party can advertise, trying to create a positive impression among voters (Smith 2009). Political actors can also change the weights voters assign to different preferences, convincing them to prioritize issues on which the candidate has a favorable reputation—​a process called “priming.” In Japan, however, campaign restrictions, particularly the stringent limits on advertising, force parties to reach out in different ways from those in the United States. Japanese parties rely primarily on social networks to spread their message, not the mass media, and Kōmeitō is no exception. It uses these to give its messages the credibility to make listeners consider it, and Sōka Gakkai does the same through its official communications with members. In the months leading up to the election, the two organizations’ persuasive work generally runs on separate tracks. There is some cooperation, such as how the party provides promotional material for Sōka Gakkai use, and high-level coordination on future mobilization activities, but we can say that during this stage, Sōka Gakkai primes its members for Kōmeitō partisanship, while Kōmeitō reaches out to persuade nonmembers. Kōmeitō Persuasive Activity

For aspiring national politicians, the real campaign begins as much as a year before the “official” campaign does. During this period Japanese candidates leave their loudspeaker trucks in the garage, but that does not mean they are less active. Their most important goal is lining up endorsements from companies and political associations, while their staff prepares for the frenzy of the official campaign. One crucial difference between candidate-centric politicians in the LDP and DPJ and Kōmeitō politicians is the composition of their staff. LDP politicians draw their staff from their personal support networks (kōenkai). Some may work for a wage, others may volunteer during the campaign season, but all are personally linked to the candidate. For LDP and DPJ politicians, outside help is usually limited to that provided by senior politicians with assistants to spare, either because their district is safe or they have the money to pay for more staff, and staff dispatched by sympathetic companies or organizations. Kōmeitō candidates, in contrast, rely on party headquarters for their staff.2 Candidate Takeya’s office, for example, 2  Hori (1985) suggests that this has not always been the case: the national railway workers union (Kokurō) endorsed Kōmeitō in the 1984 Lower House elections, and some of its members volunteered at Kōmeitō offices, though they reported feeling out of place in the heavy environment of Sōka Gakkai.

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was entirely staffed by party officials. According to the workers I talked to there, none of them had followed Takeya from her previous career. Since she was a public accountant (CPA) before entering politics, one might expect her to bring her own accountant, but even that person came from party headquarters. This example shows the contrast between how LDP politicians get elected and how their Kōmeitō counterparts get elected. Recalling the work of Curtis and others on LDP campaigns, it is clear that LDP politicians run on the strength of their own social networks. These networks may be residue from a prior career (in construction or in agriculture, for example), or they might be a legacy of their father’s career (for second/third generation politicians), but either way they represent a network with the politician at the center. Kōmeitō campaigns are different. The candidate is part of a larger network, not the hub of a wheel. No one I talked to (up to the level of local assemblyman and national Diet member personal assistants) could explain why or how Takeya had been selected to run in Tokyo. They all sounded pleased with the pick, but it seemed obvious that if the party had selected someone else, they would have accepted that person, too.3 From what I saw of Takeya’s and Nishida’s campaigns, they rode the social networks of local politicians, not those of the candidate.4 In American political parlance, Kōmeitō wins or loses on the strength of its “ground game”: over three thousand active local politicians—​city, ward, and prefectural assemblymen—​recruiting their supporters for the candidate, and an equal number of retired politicians bringing their own experience and contacts to their campaign volunteer work. While the headquarters staff slowly prepares to move into high gear during the official election, these local politicians are busy reaching out to potential supporters. Since the religious organization is taking care of its own members, Kōmeitō politicians are free to spend their time recruiting nonmembers, just like LDP or DPJ politicians do. These can be voters with relevant policy concerns or those with connections to local Kōmeitō politicians. These local politicians have their own contacts among their district’s social and professional organizations, in some cases dating back decades. In Takeya’s case, for example, her campaign manager Ishii Yoshinobu had been a Tokyo prefectural assemblyman for more than forty years, until his recent retirement. During the persuasion stage, the local politicians’ first responsibility is to make contact with political associations (seiji dantai) in their district and bring them on board with the campaign. As it turned 3 

See chapter 6 for more detail on Kōmeitō candidate selection. Scholars have noted the importance of local politicians to the LDP as well as for determining voter turnout (see Asano 1998, 2003). 4 

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out, the Tokyo Association of Bus Companies is located in Ishii’s former territory, and he went to its director and asked for a letter indicating the organization’s support. Armed with that letter, he traveled to the offices of the association’s members—​in this case the respective bus companies—​ and informed them that their political lobbying arm had decided to support Kōmeitō, asking the companies’ managers to spread the word to their employees. In Takeya’s case, Ishii was not her only pillar of support—​the wall of her campaign office was plastered with letters like this from different organizations. As a working CPA, for example, Takeya was able to gather support from the national CPA association. Besides recommendations from professional associations, local assemblymen reach out to individual companies in hopes they will urge their employees to vote Kōmeitō. In conversation, several local politicians privately acknowledged that the bulk of these company endorsements came from small businesses that are owned by members of Sōka Gakkai. The ratio of Sōka Gakkai support to non–​Sōka Gakkai support for Kōmeitō politicians is a perennial question, and anecdotes about individual companies or industry groups do not provide a clear answer. Nishida’s campaign staff estimated that they would need 650,000 votes to win, of which they could count on only 400,000 from Sōka Gakkai voters (as mentioned earlier, they did not expect votes from the LDP organization). In light of the impressive apparatus for member turnout monitoring described in this chapter, the source seems credible. In the end, Nishida received 594,678 votes (18.4%), which implies that approximately a third of his support came from non-Sōka Gakkai members. Given the lack of LDP electoral cooperation in the Saitama election, this result supports earlier findings (Ehrhardt 2009) that, in general, Kōmeitō politicians derive almost half of their votes from sources outside Sōka Gakkai. Once associations and companies are on board with a Kōmeitō candidate, two things happen before the campaign officially begins. If scheduling permits, the candidate herself visits the company, using the manager or owner’s explicit approval to win over employees. Second, the party takes the names of individuals who agree to be contacted later by the party. Collecting these lists is important because it allows Kōmeitō to call them legally during the official campaign. At this point, the party does not attempt to mobilize those voters; it only attempts to create a favorable impression of voting Kōmeitō. It is important to recognize, though, that not all external support comes from such personal or workplace connections. Kōmeitō does draw support for policy reasons in the same way as other parties. A surprising example of this appeared in the 2010 campaign, as newspapers noted that the Kōmeitō candidate in Saitama polled surprisingly well in rural areas

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(Mainichi, 5 July 2010). Saitama is primarily an urban prefecture, a bedroom prefecture for those commuting to Tokyo, but some farmers remain. The principal obstacles to farming in the prefecture are taxes; property taxes jump for land located in regions designated for residential use, and death taxes can force rural families to sell their land to developers in order to pay off the estate. As a party, though, Kōmeitō has pushed to allow farmers to keep their land taxed at agricultural rates as long as they continue to farm it, and to suspend death taxes as long as the children of the deceased continue to farm the land. Accordingly, the local Japan Agriculture Federations (Nōkyō) and other agricultural organizations asked their members to support Nishida, much as the Tokyo Bus Association asked its members to support Takeya.5 Nor is that the only example. After several years in which Kōmeitō politicians had filled the position of minister of land and transport, the Saitama Construction Association—​a former pillar of LDP support—​also began to endorse Kōmeitō (Yomiuri, 20 June 2004; Asahi, 22 November 2006, Saitama edition). Sōka Gakkai Persuasive Activity

Meanwhile, the religious organization is reaching out to its members, preparing them for the Kōmeitō messages they’ll hear during the campaign. Religious voters have diverse and often contradictory concerns, just like secular voters, and there is no way to know in advance which set of issues will rise to the top as they consider whom to vote for (Gelman and King 1993). “Priming” is an attempt to manipulate that selection of issues by raising a particular issue’s profile in advance (Jacobs and Shapiro 1994). A candidate with a reputation for being tough on crime, for example, might want to encourage the media to discuss the rising murder rate, because if that issue is foremost in a voter’s mind he would likely support the candidate, even if he disagreed on other issues. Sōka Gakkai does the same, using its several private channels to raise issues that favor Kōmeitō.6 The most obvious way for the leadership of Sōka Gakkai to prime members is by coordinating the content of the speeches they give at meetings. For regular members, these meetings typically include weekly divisional meetings (divided by age and sex) and monthly zadankai, gatherings of all members in the neighborhood. Leaders stay busy attending the zadankai of neighborhoods within their jurisdiction, which give them opportunities to close the meeting with a ten- to twenty-minute speech. Normally these 5  See also www.yomiuri.co.jp/election/sangiin/2010/jyosei/jyoban/ye11.htm (accessed Aug. 2013). 6  The following discussion is based on material published in Ehrhardt (2009).

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speeches feature a mix of morality and theology, but they can also prime members by raising political issues. For example, uncertainty about the 2009 Lower House election timing led Sōka Gakkai to begin priming its members in December of 2007, while I was attending meetings. At the time, Kōmeitō was under a cloud for its cooperation with the ruling LDP, and its complicity in the loss of 50 million government pension (social security) accounts. The oppositional Democratic Party was naturally raising these issues in the media, hoping voters would focus on the LDP’s malfeasance when it came time to vote. To resist this, Sōka Gakkai leaders raised the profile of political corruption and illegal contributions; each speaker I heard phrased the issues slightly differently, but they all shared a common theme. This choice of issues was no coincidence. One of Kōmeitō’s accomplishments in the preceding years had been convincing the LDP to place more stringent reporting requirements on political funds—​requiring receipts down to every last yen. When election season finally arrived, Kōmeitō candidates emphasized that accomplishment and criticized the other parties for taking illegal funds. That message activated the primed sentiments of Gakkai members, encouraging them to support Kōmeitō for that reason, even though they were unhappy with other aspects of Kōmeitō’s performance. In short, the two organizations coordinate like tag-team salesmen, with Sōka Gakkai warming voters up, and Kōmeitō coming in to close the deal. Another channel Sōka Gakkai uses to prime voters is its publications. In addition to the organization’s daily paper (Seikyō Shimbun), the Sōka Gakkai publishing arm puts out several periodicals: some of these (e.g., Daibyaku Rengei) are theological study magazines, but others (e.g., Ushio, Daisan Bunmei) include articles on public policy. While there is no systematic study relating the themes of Sōka Gakkai policy articles with later Kōmeitō campaign messages, anecdotal evidence suggests a connection. Consider this example from Daisan Bunmei in the July 2007 issue, just before that year’s Upper House election (Daisan Bunmei, July 2007, 45). The magazine included an editorial about the “two-party system” that begins by describing an LDP flyer claiming Democratic Party leader Kan Naoto is responsible for the disastrous state of Japan’s public pension system, and then it describes a proposed DPJ flyer claiming the LDP wants to steal pension money. The editorial insists the DPJ went overboard in its counterattack, portraying the two major parties as doing little more than mudslinging for votes, losing track of the real issues. In particular, the article continues, the real guilty one here is DPJ leader Ozawa Ichirō. If this continues, the editors argue, Japanese politics will be swayed by words and performances, not policy. At the very end they ask: “What party is

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carrying out politics that is responsible to the Japanese people?” There is no overt encouragement to vote Kōmeitō, and if we didn’t follow the party’s campaign rhetoric we might miss its main point. Kōmeitō’s election slogan that year was “the responsible (sekinin) party.” The Sōka Gakkai magazine primes its readers to respond positively to messages about being responsible, knowing that Kōmeitō politicians will hit the stumps with rhetoric about how they alone are responsible. This focus on implicit priming does prevent Sōka Gakkai from explicitly promoting Kōmeitō in the course of its normal operation. One way it does so is by inviting individuals that Kōmeitō has singled out to run in upcoming elections to visit Sōka Gakkai meetings, much like other religious organizations do. These serve a dual purpose: they increase the candidates’ name recognition among Sōka Gakkai members, but they also support the party’s argument that it “listens to the people” more than other parties.7 Attendance at meetings does offer constituents the opportunity to share their views with candidates, but it also primes them to respond positively to a Kōmeitō campaign message. Another form of campaign outreach that Kōmeitō uses to prime members of Sōka Gakkai in the months leading up to campaign season is showing party videos at divisional meetings. The videos I have been able to watch are similarly structured. They center on a salient policy issue, explaining why it is a problem and how Kōmeitō is working to solve it. For example, in the 2007 election when the pension issue was on everyone’s mind, Kōmeitō argued that the real source of a pension system’s strength is having enough young workers paying in, and this is the party’s specialty. Kōmeitō politicians talked about their signature achievement—​monthly payments to anyone raising small children (jidoteate). The 2008 video was similar, but focused on medical care rather than pensions. It took its cue from recent cases where patients died after hours in an ambulance looking for a hospital that would admit them, plugging the Kōmeitō’s policy goal of replicating Tokyo’s emergency information center in every prefecture. The format is different, but the strategy is the same: highlight a particular problem as the issue voters should consider during the election, then let Kōmeitō explain how it’s the best party to deal with that particular issue. Surprisingly, the political message of Sōka Gakkai avoids identity politics. It would have been trivial for the video editors to include subtle references in any of the videos I saw, such as a quote from Sōka Gakkai’s honorary president Ikeda Daisaku, a testimonial from a celebrity known 7  For example, the Kōmeitō 3000 campaign in 2010 conveyed the image that Kōmeitō has the largest network of local politicians feeding information from constituents up to national politicians.

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to be a member of Sōka Gakkai, or a building of the religious organization in the visual background, but none of these appeared. When authority figures are filmed to buttress Kōmeitō arguments, they tend to use experts from outside Sōka Gakkai, like professor-turned–​cabinet minister Takenaka Heizō. Nor was there mention of Sōka Gakkai–​specific issues, like freedom of religion, which could serve as code words for a Sōka Gakkai social identity. Whereas conversation with members reveals that, when asked, they admit to seeing Kōmeitō politicians as “like us,” those identity ties are not used to justify Sōka Gakkai’s mobilization efforts.8 Although researchers have not been privy to top-level strategy discussions, my suspicion is that the organizations’ leaders recognize the contradiction between an identity-based claim and the central justification for supporting Kōmeitō. A 2009 survey found that the number one reason members of Sōka Gakkai gave for supporting Kōmeitō was that “it works for the common people instead of special interests like the other parties” (Ehrhardt 2009). In other words, Sōka Gakkai members’ sense of Kōmeitō’s worth is rooted in their feeling that the religion is not an exclusive group with its own particular interest. This, obviously, makes it self-destructive for Kōmeitō politicians to claim that they will push for a Sōka Gakkai identity-based interest, or for Sōka Gakkai leaders to recommend Kōmeitō support for simple identity reasons.9 Whatever justification political leaders use to encourage new partisans, however, partisanship alone will not win elections. At this point in the campaign timeline, there is little visible contact between Kōmeitō politicians and Sōka Gakkai leaders. The two organizations split responsibilities, with Kōmeitō performing external outreach while Sōka Gakkai solidifies its members’ support. One area where it does happen regularly, however, is in planning for events during the official campaign. These rallies—​short outdoor speeches during the day and longer indoor speeches at night—​are aimed at a Sōka Gakkai audience, and, according to the party officials I talked to, candidate staff rely on Sōka Gakkai leaders to provide suitable times and locations within their area of 8  On the other side, Kōmeitō campaign rallies use endorsements from media stars who are openly members of Sōka Gakkai. 9  This raises an interesting point about Kōmeitō support. In general, representation can be geographical (e.g., US-American election districts) or functional (e.g., European proportional representation parties like the Greens). The former suppresses cleavages within the district, the latter uses them. On the surface, Kōmeitō looks like a functional party that operates along religious cleavages. Inside the party’s support base, however, it portrays itself as a geographic party, insisting that religious cleavages are irrelevant to its policies. I suspect this mismatch between external expectations and internal justification lies behind perennial Kōmeitō complaints of being misunderstood by secular voters and the media.

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responsibility. Not only does this promote attendance, it also allows local Sōka Gakkai leaders to organize their members to volunteer at the rallies. Mobilization Democracy measures popular support by how many citizens vote for a candidate or party, which means that no matter how persuasive a campaign is, its reservoir of popular support means nothing unless it convinces its supporters to vote. Turning support into votes is referred to as mobilization. To do this, campaign managers have an array of techniques: telephone calls, door-to-door canvassing, door hangers, direct mail, chauffeuring voters to the polling booth, candidate appearances, email broadcasts, ostensibly nonpartisan vote-promotion events like the “rock-thevote” concerts held in the United States, and others. While each of these works differently, research consistently supports several general propositions about mobilization: • Personal contact spurs citizens to vote, as shown in an extensive literature documenting the strength of this effect (see Gosnell 1927).10 • While not as effective as personal contact, candidate appearances late in a race may increase partisan turnout (Jones 1998; Herr 2002). • Parties tend to engage in more mobilization in closer races and more in single-member districts than in proportional representation contests, because it appears to matter more in those situations (Cox 1999; Karp et al. 2008). • Parties direct their mobilization efforts at known partisans. For this reason, parties prize lists of current and past supporters, but when those are unavailable parties can target their efforts at sympathetic regions or demographics (Holbrook and McClurg 2005). None of these results should be a surprise to anyone who has studied Kōmeitō politics. In fact, if one were to design organizations from the ground up to mobilize votes based on this literature, it would look much like Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai. The important difference between Kōmeitō mobilization campaigns and those in the United States is the way Japanese election law sharply restricts candidates’ activity (McElwain 2008). Unlike American politicians, Japanese candidates cannot use political commercials on TV or radio freely, or even pass out yard signs and bumper stickers. The law 10  The following articles offer overviews of the literature: Kramer (1973), Rosenstone and Hansen (2002), Gerber and Green (2000), Nickerson (2005), and Alvarez et al. (2010).

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regulates how many leaflets they are allowed to print, along with when and where they are allowed to hand them out. Posters are limited to publically erected poster boards, on which each candidate gets one poster. Call centers must rely on volunteers; payment is illegal. There is also a ban on door-to-door canvassing by supporters, something that got Sōka Gakkai into trouble in the 1950s (see chapter 3). Candidates are only allowed to contact the public in highly formalized ways, principally by cruising a district in loudspeaker vans and standing outside train stations bowing to commuters. The law even restricts the number of rallies and other campaign appearances candidates can attend. As a whole, these restrictions essentially forbid U.S.–​style campaigns based on the mass media and professional staff. Kōmeitō Mobilization Activity

During the campaign, Kōmeitō candidates act the same as those of other parties. They follow a grueling schedule of traveling the district with their loudspeaker vans, giving public speeches at train stations or other crowded places, visiting companies whose management supports the candidate, and holding rallies at night. At this point in the campaign, there is little time for persuasion—​often the speeches literally amount to no more than repeating their name and thanking the listeners. Instead of trying to persuade undecided voters, candidates use these practices to put themselves in front of friendly partisans, activating their interest in the election and encouraging them to vote. The key to understanding how Kōmeitō activities differ from other campaigns is seeing how they mesh with Sōka Gakkai activism. While Kōmeitō does pursue its own independent mobilization efforts with non–​ Sōka Gakkai entities as described earlier, it also integrates Kōmeitō activities into members’ political participation. The most visible form of this is at outdoor rallies (gaitō enzetsu), which usually find Japanese politicians standing outside of train stations with megaphones, trying to reach busy housewives and tired commuters. Sometimes this is an endless drone of “My name is X, thank you for your support. My name is . . .” and other times it features a ten- to fifteen-minute speech by the candidate and another by a friendly politician. Sōka Gakkai involvement, though, makes a Kōmeitō rally a very different experience from that of most other parties. Near the beginning of my 2010 fieldwork I arrived early for one of these Kōmeitō outdoor rallies at Kyodo station in Tokyo’s western suburbs, only to find that a socialist candidate was staging one first. By any standard, it was a failure: a couple of monotone speakers, dog-eared placards condemning U.S. military bases, three people (trying to) hand out pamphlets, and no one paying them any attention. My attention flagged, and looking

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around to guess where Takeya would speak, I saw a group of formally dressed men standing by their cars in the station’s no-parking zone. Drifting in that direction, I saw that they all wore armbands with “Staff” written by hand. Not long afterward, a group of young women in orange polo shirts appeared (orange was Takeya’s campaign color) and huddled with the men. With twenty minutes to go before the candidate’s appearance, people had begun to cluster in front of a supermarket, where the young men and women were standing. One older lady appeared to take the orange-clad young women in hand and give them directions. About ten minutes before the candidate arrived, the young women began passing out leaflets in the form of orange-colored fans. Unlike the socialists, these women had little trouble handing their material out. In fact, some of the waiting ladies took several and passed them on to their friends. Soon the growing crowd was a mass of fluttering orange. I estimated that between two-thirds and three-fourths were women (similar to other daytime Kōmeitō rallies I attended), which is to be expected given the rally was at noon when more men would be at work. The socialists looked incongruous, lecturing to the orange-marked women around them. Standing at the back, I was surprised when one of the white-shirted men I had spotted earlier appeared at the back of the crowd with a roll of finish line tape taken from a track meet. By this time the crowd of several hundred people had covered a third or so of the station plaza’s arc, blocking one station exit and the supermarket.11 With bows and apologies, the man began packing the crowd toward the street, away from the supermarket. Across the plaza, other men were doing the same by the station and crosswalks. Once the crowd had cleared a path, he unspooled his tape, working with the other men to enclose the crowd and keep it from blocking transit. Watching this process, I was struck by how many in the crowd seemed to know the men (and each other). Finally the candidate arrived, to much excitement among the older ladies around me. Kōmeitō outdoor rallies share a common pattern. The warm-up act is a local politician, a town or prefectural assembly member who introduces the candidate. Ideally, that person is followed by a famous media personality active in Sōka Gakkai, but one is not always available.12 After that, the candidate speaks for ten minutes or so, giving a standard stump speech about his or her qualifications. For the rest of the half-hour slot a sitting Diet member would take the microphone and close out the event 11  Takeya’s campaign budgeted six hundred fan/leaflets for each outdoor rally. From what I saw, they were able to hand them all out at major locations (there appeared to be a shortage at Ikebukuro Station, for example), but not at the smaller ones. 12  At one rally in Saitama I attended much of the crowd hung around after the candidate left, apparently knowing in advance that pop singer Yamamoto Linda would appear.

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while the candidate climbed down from the loudspeaker van and moved across the crowd shaking hands. When time was up, the candidate would return to the van, give the crowd a final thank-you, and head off to his or her next appearance. The crowd would slowly break up, as the listeners tended to stay around and chat with each other before leaving. There is much we can learn from these events, but the integration between Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai stood out most of all. On the surface, there was little to link the two organizations. None of the speakers referred to Sōka Gakkai, there was no visible paraphernalia or any use of the tri-color Sōka Gakkai insignia. When I commented to the lady who organized the orange-clad leaflet distributors that Takeya drew quite a crowd, she simply noted, “Yes, she has lots of fans, doesn’t she.” When I asked the man in charge of the crowd control brigade about his affiliation, he insisted that he was a “Kōmeitō volunteer,” and that “word comes from Kōmeitō headquarters to do crowd control at a given time and place.” In reality, though, he and the other men are members of a group within the Sōka Gakkai that receives training in security and crowd control, and watch over Sōka Gakkai’s facilities. Later in my fieldwork, when I had established greater rapport, other members of that group who participated in similar activities would freely admit that the instructions came from the Sōka Gakkai leadership, not the party headquarters, so it is interesting to note how those two refused to make any connection with the Sōka Gakkai. There is more coordination behind the scenes as well. According to the director of a Sōka Gakkai facility I met during the campaign, party officials consult with leaders like him about when and where to hold rallies, relying on Sōka Gakkai to get word about the event out to its members. It is no exaggeration to say that Kōmeitō outdoor rallies are actually Sōka Gakkai events, at which Kōmeitō provides the speakers. Not all candidates use them in equal proportion, of course; one of the surprising things I observed in the 2010 election was diversity in campaign styles among Kōmeitō candidates. Where Takeya in Tokyo did not hold large rallies at night, Hamada in neighboring Kanagawa prefecture did. Whereas Nishida’s campaign moved its headquarters regularly, Takeya’s kept hers in one location throughout the campaign. In conversation with those working in each campaign, they did not seem aware of what exactly neighboring prefectures were doing. In retrospect, there were logical reasons for each difference, but it does suggest a more decentralized party organization than the monolithic entity that appears in the contemporary literature. Another example of Kōmeitō campaign diversity was Hamada Masayoshi’s activities in Kanagawa. While I did not follow his campaign closely, he stood as a Kōmeitō candidate in the proportional representation

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constituency. In practice, however, he focused his campaign on winning votes in Yokohama and surrounding Kanagawa prefecture. On the ground, his campaign used very different tactics from those of his counterparts in Tokyo and Saitama. In contrast to the mass rallies in those districts, his outdoor rallies looked more like the socialists at Kyodo. When he spoke at Sakuragi Plaza—​a central location in Japan’s second-largest city—​he drew little more than the few old ladies that came and sat next to me at the pie shop along one edge of the plaza. Where Takeya’s volunteers managed to hand out hundreds of orange fans at her rallies, Hamada’s volunteers struggled even to catch the eyes of passing commuters. Those few who did take a leaflet were encouraged to shake the candidate’s hand, and there were never enough to form a line. That night, however, his campaign staged a much more successful event—​with Sōka Gakkai assistance. Unlike Takeya and Nishida, Hamada held nighttime rallies that were open to the public, instead of private visits to companies or organizations, and I was able to attend one. Fortyfive minutes before it was scheduled to start, young men with green staff badges (Hamada’s campaign color was green) stood scattered around the facility grounds, much like the crowd control at Takeya’s rallies. Inside the door, a cluster of young women in pastel suits (a sure sign of Sōka Gakkai activity) stood taking tickets. After establishing my bona fides, they allowed me into the hall, where other women escorted guests to their seats, trying to fill the hall from the front. When I sat, a lady asked me to move back a row because I was seated in a row with an even number of seats and the guests would come in groups of two. This seemed odd at first, but it turned out to be an important detail. What I had taken as just another Sōka Gakkai–​only rally turned out to be a way to integrate Kōmeitō politicians into Sōka Gakkai efforts to win “friends.” Guests came in pairs because each member (guest with a ticket) was expected to bring a friend. As the member sitting next to me explained, the lady with her was her best friend, who had agreed to come to the rally out of respect for their friendship. As we waited for the event to begin, most of the conversations around me focused on politics—​the DPJ’s faults were a common theme; there were more people talking about politics simultaneously than I’ve heard in a career studying Japanese politics. When Hamada finally took the stage after a series of introductions, his speech was longer and more detailed than Takeya’s stump speech, as befits an incumbent with a seated audience in an air-conditioned hall.13 On the surface, this event was quite 13  The policy content is outside this chapter’s focus, but two points are worth noting. First, he did very well talking about the small-scale concrete ways he had improved government policy, but he was less convincing talking about larger narratives (like President Bush Sr., he

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different from Takeya’s outdoor rallies, but it had the same purpose—​rally the faithful, both members and their closest friends, the nonmembers most likely to be Kōmeitō supporters. In staging these varied events, however, the party and the religion have different purposes. Kōmeitō is mobilizing its core constituency. Other political parties try to gather crowds like these, but can only manage it by bringing headline speakers—​the prime minister or party leader, or nationally known charismatic speakers—​normal candidates meet the same apathy I saw for the socialist candidate who spoke at Kyodo before Takeya’s rally. For a candidate, large crowds are important as a mobilization opportunity; the goal is to bring out a partisan crowd, not to catch passers-by (Jones 1998; Herr 2002; Holbrooke and McClurg 2005). With only two weeks before the election, new information about the candidate is unlikely to change voters’ minds—​the struggle is to get partisans to the polls. The problem with mobilization work, however, is that one can never be sure how voters will act once they have the ballot in hand. Smart campaigners, then, seek to mobilize their partisans, not the electorate in general. This is especially true for smaller parties, like Kōmeitō, who might find it counterproductive to encourage random commuters to vote. In other words, Kōmeitō is not trying to impress outsiders with the large rallies (as I originally hypothesized), it is “firing up” Sōka Gakkai members who attend to hear the candidates. An anecdote to illustrate this: one morning during the election I received an email from a Kōmeitō official saying that the Tokyo district was “safe,” but hours later I heard his boss tell a crowd that Takeya was in danger. From a persuasive standpoint this doesn’t make sense—​to tell uncommitted passers-by that a candidate lags in popularity—​but from a partisan mobilization it makes perfect sense—​insisting that the candidate can win, but only if the partisans turn out. The mobilization effect goes beyond the immediate election, however. As Kōmeitō politicians like to repeat, the party stands candidates in local elections all over Japan, and wins many of them. Even if a national candidate loses, the campaign mobilization may carry over to later local elections. Sōka Gakkai’s organizational motives for staging Kōmeitō events are similar. It does hope for more Kōmeitō votes, but that isn’t the whole picture. As I discuss in the next section, Sōka Gakkai uses political campaigning to encourage and measure members’ religious activity. In the same had trouble with the “vision thing”), which I think is common to Kōmeitō rhetoric. Second, he disagreed with Takeya and Nishida on whether to support Prime Minister Kan’s call for a sales tax hike (they strongly opposed it; he said it could be a good idea if done correctly). This is interesting because we don’t normally think about policy divides within Kōmeitō.

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way as I’ve heard LDP candidates use speech attendance as a crude poll of their support in a neighborhood, I’ve heard Sōka Gakkai leaders claim their organization uses political participation as one measure of a region’s religious activism. Sōka Gakkai Mobilization Activity

There is no doubt that Sōka Gakkai’s mobilization techniques are effective. As we show in chapter 8, members’ level of political participation is far higher than the national average. Its actions confirm comparative research suggesting that religious organizations that place demands on members’ time cannot sustain political activism indefinitely, but do create the networks and social capital to enable short periods of participation (Putnam 2001). Before the official campaign period, the organization primes members for upcoming Kōmeitō messages, and member preferences filter upward through both organizations’ hierarchies, but little is expected of members. Once the official campaign starts, however, Sōka Gakkai political participation kicks into a “short burst of intense activity” (Campbell 2004). Members’ activity can be classified into three broad categories: (1) volunteering for Kōmeitō directly, (2) ensuring internal turnout, and (3) gathering external votes. The first type appears in the previous section on Kōmeitō activity, playing support roles at Kōmeitō events. According to the director of a Sōka Gakkai regional facility that I interviewed, higher-ups in the religion arrange with Kōmeitō for the sites and times of rallies, but the schedule remains flexible. Some members I talked to identified a prefectural-level Sōka Gakkai election committee (senkyo taisaku iinkai) as the source of this planning, but no one would describe it clearly. A day or two before a rally actually happens, the local Sōka Gakkai organization is notified and asked to provide a certain number of volunteers.14 If the three 2010 campaigns I witnessed are any indication, this tends to be limited to the younger divisions, in part because they are more likely to have the flexible schedules necessary to volunteer. The Young Men’s Division provides security and crowd control, while the Young Women’s Division provides greeters (i.e., receptionists and leaflet distributors). Interestingly, when I asked about the Married Women’s Division’s (Fujinbu) role at Kōmeitō events, no one gave a clear answer—​they seemed to be the largest portion of the 14  Not all the staff at events were volunteers, but armbands proved to be an efficient way of distinguishing them. Individuals whose armbands included the characters for “Kōmeitō” above the word “Staff” tended to be local politicians, while those with generic or handlettered armbands tended to be volunteers from Sōka Gakkai. The men in suits who hang around the loudspeaker truck tend to be either local politicians or Kōmeitō party staff.

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audience, and highly active in the other two categories of Sōka Gakkai activity, but not volunteering at outdoor rallies. Over the decades since Kōmeitō entered politics, scholars have noted that its partisans tend to have a high turnout rate, meaning that the party does better when overall turnout is low and poor when the general public is highly interested in an election. There may also be theological reasons for this, but one clear explanation is the intense internal campaign that the religious organization puts on, referred to as “internal confirmation” (naibu kakunin)—​the Married Women’s Division’s specialty. Naibu kakunin uses Sōka Gakkai’s fine-grained division of responsibility. Unlike the LDP, for example, which uses only prefectural-level and local-level (shibu, organized around a particular politician) offices, the leadership structure of Sōka Gakkai extends from prefectural-level officers down to the “block,” which may be only two or three families.15 Not all these families are active; only 20 to 30 percent of official members regularly attend meetings (Ehrhardt 2009). Ensuring that active members vote is easy enough, but the nonactive members are harder to reach. Before the campaign officially starts, the region’s Married Women’s Division prepares lists for all the block leaders, including the names and addresses of each member in their geographic area of responsibility, active or not. Armed with that list, block leaders are expected to visit each member at home and confirm his or her vote. Since each area will have a leader for each gender division, two or more leaders might visit each household. Meanwhile, Married Women’s Division members regularly buttonhole the leaders, quizzing them about their progress in confirming their divisional members’ votes. The best examples of the relentlessness of this campaign came from two well-placed officials, one with Sōka Gakkai and one on the staff of a Kōmeitō national politician. On separate occasions, both expressed their disbelief at how often Married Women’s Division members asked if they had voted yet. “It’s my job!” the latter said, shaking his head. The introduction of early voting in 2003 transformed naibu kakunin, allowing the leaders to ask members whether they had voted, instead of whether they planned to vote. For the first few elections with early ballots, voters had to assert an excuse why they could not vote on the official election date, but that requirement was dropped, and in the 2010 election, 11.9% of voters cast their ballots early (Asahi, 12 July 2010). This means that the entire three-week official campaign period resembles election day “get out the vote” (GOTV) efforts in America, with active members volunteering to drive nonvoters to the polls whenever they find convenient. 15  The frontline organization above the block is roughly the following: a chiku is two or three blocks, a shibu is two or three chiku, and a honbu is usually three shibu.

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Block leaders regularly report how successful they have been—​how many names they have crossed off their list—​to their chiku leaders, who report that to shibu leaders, and so on up the ladder, giving the higher levels of Sōka Gakkai a fine-grained real-time picture of the organization’s activity and turnout. Nevertheless, this goes largely unnoticed by outsiders, whose knowledge of Sōka Gakkai politics is limited to the final category of campaign activity—​gathering external votes. In an earlier article (2009), I explore how members mix religious proselytization and Kōmeitō electioneering in their everyday contacts with nonmembers, exploring the concept of winning voters as “friends” (f-tori). During the official campaign, however, contacts with nonmembers tend to be shorter and more direct appeals for Kōmeitō support. During the 2010 election, I was able to participate with a group of Sōka Gakkai members and gain a sense of how this activity proceeds. There are two types of outreach during the campaign, deliberate and opportunistic. The latter is for people whom Sōka Gakkai members do not know, but come across in their social interactions, like shopkeepers, and typically consists of a simple one-sentence request to vote Kōmeitō. For Sōka Gakkai members who travel to different prefectures to help campaign, this is often the most they could do. The 2010 campaign in Saitama, for example, became a cause célèbre for the whole organization, which led to a flood of members coming into the prefecture who did not have a network of friends or neighbors to contact. This left them little choice but to seize any opportunity they could. One member I talked to recounted mentioning Kōmeitō to a restaurant owner in Saitama and being told that he had already heard it twenty times and didn’t want to hear it any more. Another group I was campaigning with ate lunch at Yoshinoya, part of a large restaurant chain. Before we went in, our leader mentioned that the chain’s head office had recommended its Saitama branches support Nishida, a successful example of preelection Kōmeitō efforts to secure endorsements from business managers. The members planned to approach the clerks with this endorsement, asking them to support Kōmeitō (in the end, they decided the restaurant was crowded enough that they’d only end up embarrassing the staff). Nevertheless, these opportunistic contacts are a sideshow to the real efforts—​working their social networks for Kōmeitō support. This is a complex activity, and there are different ways to approach it. Put simply, the religious organization pressures its members to contact everyone they know and urge them to vote Kōmeitō. During the 2010 election I spent several days campaigning with members in Saitama and saw how the contacts followed a common pattern. Each active member would have a

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list of people they could contact, with their name, address, and relationship. Either alone or with a small group, members would visit a neighborhood, stopping at each of the houses on the list, usually without calling ahead of time.16 If a resident answered the doorbell, the member would explain his identity in terms of the relationship, and ask to talk to his or her “friend” (I campaigned with the Young Men’s Division, and usually their target’s mother would answer the doorbell). If that person were there, they would then identify themselves and ask the person to vote Kōmeitō. If not, they would give their campaign pitch to whomever was there. Many residents did not open the door, limiting the conversation to the intercom. As the research cited earlier predicts, very little persuasion occurred during these contacts. In my time campaigning, I witnessed only one conversation that lengthened into policy discussions and explanations of why one should vote Kōmeitō—​every other contact was pure mobilization, just an urging to go vote, followed by a (typically noncommittal) response. Depending on the member, this can mean contacting literally hundreds of people. To many nonmembers, it’s an annoying habit—​how can they claim to be friends if they call only at election time, I have heard people ask. Critics see the lengths members go to as an exercise in futility, as if someone will change their vote because their son’s preschool classmate from twenty years ago asks them. Inside Sōka Gakkai, opinion is divided: I heard opinions ranging from those who insisted (albeit diplomatically) that it is a waste of time, to those who fiercely enjoy it, to those who say it is useful for stimulating religious activity, regardless of its political effects. For active members, though, it is an all-consuming task during the election, one that deserves careful study. Comparing Sōka Gakkai’s activity to political mobilization around the world suggests that it is not unique, or even unusual. There is a history of experimental research into the effectiveness of voter contact like Sōka Gakkai’s—​especially in the United States and United Kingdom, but also in continental Europe, which suggests that it can be a candidate’s most powerful tool for increasing voter turnout (Gerber and Green 2000; Nickerson 2005; Alvarez et al. 2010). Put briefly, these studies find that while socioeconomic factors are the best predictors of whether a voter will actually cast his or her ballot, personal contact by someone the voter knows is the most influential thing a campaign can do to stimulate turnout. In fact, this literature also suggests that Sōka Gakkai’s practice of contacting “friends” to mobilize recruits is actually the norm, not the outlier, because 16  The group nature of the activity made it a site for passing on civic skills, as I watched older members coaching younger members in how to approach and mobilize voters, or subtler skills, like how to estimate whether someone was home by how fast their electric meter was spinning.

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personal contact works best when the target knows the contactor (Fenno 1978; Rosenstone and Hansen 2002; Verba et al. 1995). At some basic level, then, we can explain Sōka Gakkai outreach by pointing to extensive research showing that it works. I believe, though, that we can say more than this, and I came away from my fieldwork thinking about Sōka Gakkai voter outreach in two ways: tactical and instrumental. It may sound surprising, but I think the most salient fact about this outreach is that it is legal. Chapter 3 describes the scarring effect of Sōka Gakkai’s early encounters with election law; Ikeda Daisaku’s brief imprisonment for allegedly organizing illegal door-to-door canvassing remains vividly alive in Sōka Gakkai’s historical memory. This creates a contradiction between its fear of breaking election law and its evangelical drive to mass outreach. Sōka Gakkai wants door-to-door campaigning to be legal for evangelical reasons, but also because it could give Kōmeitō, who could take advantage of Sōka Gakkai volunteers, an electoral advantage. Until the law is repealed, social networks—​however distant—​are a useful tactic to get around the law. Knowing someone from a nonpolitical context gives Sōka Gakkai members a legitimate excuse to visit their house and ask for Kōmeitō support. Observers who focus on the weakness of these social connections miss the point. For members who have lived in an area for a long time, this means that they can legally campaign door-to-door in their neighborhood. In fact, many of the people I visited with Sōka Gakkai campaigners during the 2010 election mentioned how other members had already approached them, showing how much canvassing the tactic allows. While these social connections are not the only (or even primary) feature of Sōka Gakkai mobilization, that doesn’t mean they are irrelevant. Political scientists have long argued that social connections establish a campaign worker’s bona fides and, depending on the degree of connection, compel the target to listen respectfully (Sabato 1989; Rosenstone and Hansen 2002). The truth of this observation struck me most strongly as I listened to a Kōmeitō phone campaign, calling voter lists submitted by supportive small businessmen (described previously). The standard script began with the caller identifying himself as a Kōmeitō supporter, to which the recipient would almost always respond with a noncommittal monosyllable. The next step in the script was mentioning the name of whomever had recommended Kōmeitō call—​usually a business owner or upper-level executive. Whether the listeners changed their vote I do not know, but the change in voice tone was unmistakable. Mentioning the referrer’s name increased listener interest and engagement in the call. Seen this way, the practice of contacting “friends” is not a religious oddity; it is a standard political mobilization tactic, albeit with unusual terminology. There is also an instrumental aspect to Sōka Gakkai’s political outreach, regardless of whether it produces votes or not. Previous research suggests

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that campaign work does more than just increase vote totals; it also reinforces social ties and creates a feedback loop that legitimizes the activities and the politicians it supports (Ginsberg and Weissberg 1978). Anecdotally, I did hear from members who had drifted away from religious practice, but returned to the fold after invitations to join in political volunteer work recreated their social bonds with other members. In light of this, it was no surprise to hear on the 2010 campaign trail that the pro-campaigning faction inside Sōka Gakkai uses its impact on membership as justification, claiming that regions that campaign for a district candidate (as opposed to generic proportional representation voting) tend to see a subsequent increase in religious activity.17 Campaign activity is also useful for the organization as a measure of member activity. It is difficult to count members of a religious organization, because numbers on paper may not reflect the numbers of actual participants. In Sōka Gakkai’s case, it uses subscriptions to its publications Seikyō Shimbun and Daibyaku renge to count members and active members respectively, but election results add a snapshot of how committed those members are. Local organizers are certainly aware of this: at one rally I attended in Saitama, for example, local politicians performed crowd control instead of the usual Sōka Gakkai volunteers. When I asked why, the chief organizer (a city assemblyman from a neighboring town) said that high-ranking officials were watching the Saitama campaign and the local contingent needed to demonstrate its commitment in their eyes. On a larger scale, Japanese tabloids published rumors that the 2010 Upper House campaign in Osaka was a test of whether Ikeda Hiromasa—​son of Ikeda Daisaku and recently appointed to a top leadership position in Osaka—​was qualified to lead Sōka Gakkai after his father’s death (Taketomi 2010). Unfortunately, personnel decisions in Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai remain opaque, even to middle-ranking officials of both organizations, so it is impossible to know the truth of these assessments. Conclusion Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai make a useful case study in religion and politics. On the surface, the pair looks like an anomalous situation, in which religion intrudes into and distorts political behavior. Looking below the surface, however, reveals that Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai political activity follow the same logic as secular campaigns throughout the democratic world. While Kōmeitō’s party-centered campaigns and close integration with a single support group make its electioneering different from other 17  Hori (1985) points out that other religious organizations value election campaigning for the same reason.

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parties, it does follow the same logic they do. All Japanese parties spend the months leading up to the three-week election period persuading voters, particularly by gathering endorsements that will help make their appeal more credible, such as industry associations or social network leaders. Kōmeitō politicians are no exception, and their focusing on parlaying local assemblymen’s connections into support for the party’s national candidates is no different from what their LDP or DPJ counterparts do. Once the official campaign starts, Kōmeitō candidates ride their “campaign car” just like other politicians, stopping occasionally to give speeches. The difference comes in how integration with Sōka Gakkai makes this standard repertoire more effective, by gathering voters so candidates can mobilize them more efficiently, for example, or providing candidates with information about voters, or providing volunteers. Veteran observers of Japanese politics might also note that Sōka Gakkai’s organizational behavior is not unusual. In fact, other “organized vote” associations, like Japan Agriculture or the Special Postmasters, use the same practices, such as the way the Retired Postmasters Association rapidly disseminates election information, or postmasters consciously attempt to parlay their nonpolitical contacts into political requests (cf. Mac­ lachlan 2004). In the same way, religious organizations like Sōka Gakkai have the institutional capacity to efficiently mobilize voters, using the same techniques as secular organizations. The empirical similarity between the activities of Sōka Gakkai and those of secular interest groups suggest that Sōka Gakkai’s connection between religion and politics is not what it first seemed. Originally, observers worried that Sōka Gakkai would overwhelm democratic politics, imposing its beliefs and suppressing discourse with uncompromising faith. When that danger passed after 1970, the concern switched to the potential suppression of individual freedoms among members, as in the books cited at the beginning of this chapter. Based on this evidence from actual Sōka Gakkai campaign practice, however, we conclude that there is no more reason to fear a loss of political agency among members of Sōka Gakkai than among farmers or special postmasters. What the evidence does raise is a question about the effect of political mobilization on the religious organization itself. Over the past fifty years, Sōka Gakkai has allowed demands from political mobilization to shape its form and activities. While campaigning does strengthen intragroup bonds, it also takes time away from other forms of religious practice, something I have heard members express ambivalence about. One must also wonder to what extent the aversion to Sōka Gakkai that many Japanese express stems from its political activities—​ members’ relentless canvassing for votes and the memory of more extreme actions in the

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1960s—​and how much that aversion affects Sōka Gakkai’s other activities. This book is about Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō’s place in Japanese politics, but future research into the place of politics in twenty-first century Sōka Gakkai might prove valuable. References Alvarez, R. Michael, Asa Hopkins, and Betsy Sinclair. 2010. “Mobilizing Pasadena Democrats: Measuring the Effects of Partisan Campaign Contacts.” The Journal of Politics 72, no. 1:31–​44. Asano Masahiko. 1998. “Kokusei senkyo ni okeru chihō seijika no senkyo dōin: Edoshi genshō no nazo” [Voter mobilization by local politicians in national elections: The puzzle of the “year of the boar” phenomenon]. Senkyo Kenkyū 13:120–​129. ———. 2003. “Senkyo seido kaikaku to kōhosha kōnin” [Electoral system reform and candidate nomination–​LDP (1960–​2000)]. Senkyo Kenkyū 18:174–​189. Campbell, David. 2004. “Acts of Faith: Churches and Political Engage­ ment.” In Political Behavior 26:155–​180. Cox, Gary W. 1999. “Electoral Rules and the Calculus of Mobilization.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 24:387–​419. Curtis, Gerald. 1999. The Logic of Japanese Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Ehrhardt, George. 2009. “Rethinking the Kōmeitō Voter.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 10:1–​20. Etō Shunsuke. 2003. Jimintō–​Sōka Gakkai–​Kōmeitō: Kokumin fuzai no renritsu seiken–​hishi [LDP–​Sōka Gakkai–​Kōmeitō: The secret history of coalition government without the people]. Tokyo: Gakushū no Tomo Press. Fenno, Richard. 1978. Home Style: House Members in Their Districts. New York: Little, Brown. Finkel, Steven E. 1993. “Reexamining the ‘Minimal Effects’ Model in Recent Presidential Campaigns.” The Journal of Politics 55, no. 1 (February): 1–​21. Gelman, Andrew, and Gary King. 1993. “Why Are American Presidential Election Campaign Polls So Variable When Votes Are So Predictable?” British Journal of Political Science 23, no. 4 (October): 409–​451. Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. 2000. “The Effect of a Nonpartisan Get-Out-the-Vote Drive: An Experimental Study of Leafletting.” The Journal of Politics 62 (August): 846–​857. Ginsberg, Benjamin, and Robert Weissberg. 1978. “Elections and the Mobilization of Popular Support.” American Journal of Political Science 22:31–​55.

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Shaw, Daron R. 1999. “The Effect of TV Ads and Candidate Appearances on Statewide Presidential Votes, 1988–​96.” American Political Science Review 93, no. 2 (June): 345–​361. Smith, Jennifer K. 2009. “Campaigning and the Catch-All Party: The Process of Party Transformation in Britain.” Party Politics 15:555–​572. Taketomi Kaoru. 2010. “Ikeda Daisaku ‘X-dē’ ni mukete ugokidasu: Kore ga chōdan SGI kaichō shūnin no ‘seshū shinario’ da” [Moving toward Ikeda Daisaku’s “day X”: This is the “heredity scenario” in which the oldest son of the SGI president takes over the job]. Sapio 22, no. 13:16–​17. Verba, Sydney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. 1995. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. White, James W. 1970. The Sokagakkai and Mass Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Yamada Naoki. 2004. Sōka Gakkai to ha Nanika [What is the Sōka Gakkai?]. Tokyo: Shinkosha Press. Periodicals

Asahi (Shinbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 7.6 million; evening edition: 2.7 million) was second only to that of the Yomiuri Shinbun. Available at http:// adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Mainichi (Shimbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 3.4 million; evening edition: 1.0 million) was third to that of the Yomiuri and the Asahi. Available at http://adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Seikyō Shimbun is Sōka Gakkai’s newspaper; it has a circulation of 5.5 million. Available at www.seikyoonline.jp/seikyo/index.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Ushio is a monthly magazine published by Sōka Gakkai’s publishing company (also Ushio). Circulation is around 250,000. Available at www.j-magazine.or.jp/magadata/?module=list&action=list. Accessed Jan. 2014. Yomiuri (Shinbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 9.9 million; evening edition: 3.4 million) was larger than that of any other Japanese daily. Available at http://adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014.

Six

Party Ideals and Practical Constraints in Kōmeitō Candidate Nominations

Daniel M. Smith Introduction Candidate selection is a fundamental part of the delegation and accountability relationship between voters and political parties in modern representative democracies (Strøm 2000). In most parliamentary democracies, parties play the greatest role in recruiting (screening) and selecting candidates for office, so the processes and outcomes of candidate selection can confer a great deal of information about a party’s organization and its priorities in terms of key personnel (Schattschneider 1942; Crotty 1968; Ranney 1981; Rahat 2007; Hazan and Rahat 2010). However, the candidate selection process within parties is often opaque. In many parties, the internal process of selecting candidates is guarded with secrecy, and details about specific nomination decisions are rarely discussed publicly. Thus, only a few comparative studies have examined the internal recruitment processes and priorities of parties (e.g., Gallagher and Marsh 1988; Katz and Mair 1992; Norris 1997; Narud et al. 2002; Lundell 2004; Siavelis and Morgenstern 2008). This is no doubt a reflection of the difficulty in obtaining such “insider” information from parties—​in contrast to more readily available data, such as electoral results. In Japan, there are few legal constraints imposed on eligibility for office. According to Article 10 of the Public Offices Election Law, a candidate for I thank the Japan-U.S. Educational Commission (Fulbright Japan Program) for financial support, and the University of Tokyo Institute of Social Science and Yukio Maeda for hosting me during the 2010-2011 academic year. I owe additional gratitude to Ellis Krauss, Robert Pekkanen, and Steven Reed for generously sharing their data, Tomonori Sugimoto for research assistance, and Steven Reed, Levi McLaughlin, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft. Lastly, I gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the Kōmeitō politicians I interviewed.

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the Lower House must be at least twenty-five years old at the time of the election, while a candidate for the Upper House must be at least thirty. Aside from additional restrictions on individuals with a criminal history, any Japanese citizen who meets these basic age requirements is eligible to run for office. In practice, however, each party has different methods and criteria for screening and selecting candidates (Shiratori 1988; Fukui 1997; Smith 2013). The structure of opportunity for candidacy is not universally equal, and there is considerable variation across parties in terms of process, and in the extent of involvement by local versus national party leaders. Parties also differ in the types of candidates they recruit—​for example, with regard to their age, gender, occupational backgrounds, or relationships with various interest groups in society. Although some important research has advanced our understanding of the process and outcomes of candidate selection in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) (e.g., Asano 2006; Smith 2012; Tsutsumi 2012; Smith 2013), and in the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) (Miura et al. 2005; Weiner 2011; Hamamoto 2011; Smith et al. 2013), extant studies of Japanese parties have largely ignored the candidate selection process within Kōmeitō, despite the party’s status until 2012 as Japan’s third largest, and its decade-long experience in government as the LDP’s junior coalition partner. The most thorough existing English-language account of Kōmeitō candidate recruitment policies consists of just a few pages analyzing the 1983 elections, and is thus over thirty years out of date (Shiratori 1988, 178–​180). Very little is known about how Kōmeitō recruitment and nomination practices have evolved over time, let alone what types of personal characteristics Kōmeitō candidates tend to exhibit. My aim in this chapter is to confront this serious gap in our understanding of Kōmeitō with an examination of the party’s candidate recruitment and nomination processes, and the patterns in Kōmeitō candidates’ social and career backgrounds over the past thirty years. The chapter will address not only the question of how the nomination process works within Kōmeitō, but also who tends to get nominated, as well as where and why. My analysis makes use of quantitative data on Kōmeitō candidates for the Diet from 1980 through 2013,1 as well as qualitative data obtained through personal interviews with Kōmeitō politicians, to evaluate the balance between the Kōmeitō’s guiding principles and ideals in candidate selec1  Lower House candidate background data from 1980 through 2009 were collected from various sources (including Asahi Shimbun, Seikan Yōran, and Seiji Handbook) for Ellis Krauss and Robert Pekkanen’s Japan Legislative Organization Database (J-LOD); the 2012 data are based on Yomiuri Shimbun candidate biographies provided by Michael Thies and coded by the author. Upper House data were collected by the author from digitally archived Asahi Shimbun newspaper and CD-ROM records.

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tion—​including those influenced by its relationship to Sōka Gakkai—​and the constraints imposed on the party by its limited support base and the Japanese electoral system.2 I will show how Kōmeitō candidate nomination decisions are largely shaped by the party’s relationship to Sōka Gakkai—​in terms of the screening and selection of candidates loyal to the religious organization’s mission, as well as the strategic nomination of candidates where Sōka Gakkai membership is strong enough to assure their election. Sōka Gakkai has functioned as a reliable arena for screening potential candidates, though in recent decades, the party organization itself has taken over much of this role. However, the party has also been limited through its relationship with Sōka Gakkai to nominating candidates in urban areas where both Sōka Gakkai membership and district magnitude are large. The introduction of single-member districts (SMD) in 1994 has further constrained the party’s electoral opportunities. At the national level, Kōmeitō survives today predominantly through the proportional representation (PR) tier of the Lower House electoral system, and through its coalition with the LDP. Kōmeitō as a “Small Mass” Party Kōmeitō was founded in 1964 as a political offshoot of the Nichiren Buddhist organization Sōka Gakkai, with the mission of infusing government with the harmonious virtues of Buddhism (see chapter 3). Although the party officially severed all formal ties to Sōka Gakkai in 1970, the party’s core organization and support base in the electorate continue to be nearly coterminous with the religious movement (Baerwald 1986; Curtis 1999; Hrebenar 2000). Organizationally, Kōmeitō thus resembles the classic mass (democratic integration) party model of early Western European class-based and religious parties (Duverger 1954; Neumann 1956; Worley 2009), albeit with a much smaller extra-parliamentary “mass.”3 2  The two chambers of Japan’s Diet use different electoral systems. The more important Lower House reformed its electoral system in 1994 from a single non-transferable vote (SNTV) in multi-member districts (MMD) ranging in magnitude (seats) from three to six, to a mixed-member majoritarian system (MMM) that elects 300 members in single-member districts (SMD), and an additional 180 members, reduced from 200, through proportional representation (PR) in eleven regional districts. The Upper House electoral system combines SNTV in prefectural districts that range in magnitude from one to five, with a national tier that used SNTV until 1980, closed-list PR from 1983 through 1998, and open-list PR since 2001. 3  The Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and former Japan Socialist Party (JSP) also fit this model nicely. In contrast, the two main political parties in Japan, the LDP and the DPJ, instead resemble “catch-all” parties, or at times even “cartel” parties (for a discussion of the different party models, see Katz and Mair 1995).

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The typical mass party can be thought of as one that is organized around “pre-defined and well-defined social groups, membership in which is bound up in all aspects of an individual’s life” (Katz and Mair 1995, 6). The party is an agent of these groups, through which members participate in political life and articulate their policy demands. The more the party’s extra-parliamentary base is concentrated among distinct target social groups, the more it can be expected to select candidates who represent these groups, and the more it will rely on various screening mechanisms in these selection efforts (Müller 2000). Kōmeitō’s origins and its enduring relationship to Sōka Gakkai make it an ideal example of such a mass party. Due to solid organizational foundations in the electorate, electoral politics for mass parties is often “less about differential rates of conversion than it is about differential rates of mobilization” (Katz and Mair 1995, 7). Although Kōmeitō has tried to project some independence from its extraparliamentary base and expand its support beyond Sōka Gakkai members—​and has perhaps been more successful at attracting new Kōmeitō voters than Sōka Gakkai has been at converting new followers—​this aspect of mass parties is also evident in the mobilization practices of the party (Ehrhardt 2009; see also chapter 5). Party leaders know, roughly, how many Kōmeitō voters reside in a given electoral district, and the party’s candidates work predominantly towards mobilizing these core supporters. As a “small mass” party, the candidate recruitment and nomination decisions within Kōmeitō today are thus shaped as much by the party’s ideals and organizational relationship with Sōka Gakkai as they are by constraints imposed on the party by its limited support base and the Japanese electoral system, particularly since the 1994 electoral reform of the Lower House. The relationship with Sōka Gakkai provides Kōmeitō with several organizational advantages, including a reliable arena for screening potential new candidates, and a benchmark of support (Sōka Gakkai membership and past results) in the electorate on which to base electoral expectations. However, the party’s limited appeal beyond Sōka Gakkai members also means that Kōmeitō nomination decisions must carefully take into account the practical constraints embedded in the mechanics of the electoral system, and that mobilization of supporters at election time is of utmost importance to realizing the party’s electoral goals. The Candidate Selection Process in Kōmeitō Kōmeitō’s official party by-laws state that potential candidates for office are evaluated by the party’s Election Strategy Committee, which then makes recommendations to the party’s Central Executive Committee (or

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Central Secretariat) for final approval.4 The Central Secretariat is typically composed of the chief representative (party president), the chairman of the national representatives, the acting chief representative (deputy president), several vice presidents, the secretary general, the policy affairs research committee chair, and several senior members.5 Within the Central Secretariat, the party president and secretary general are the most influential party leaders. Kōmeitō’s Central Secretariat plays a much more direct role in candidate selection decisions, and the centralization of the process is much greater, than in the two largest political parties in Japan, the LDP and the DPJ, or in the former Japan Socialist Party (JSP), which was the main opposition party prior to 1994. Organizationally, the party is most similar to the highly centralized Japanese Communist Party (JCP). Before an election, the Central Secretariat, in consultation with the party’s Election Strategy Committee, considers which candidates to nominate. Even for local (municipal and prefectural) elections, the recommendations of the local candidate selection committees must ultimately be approved by the central party leadership, and it is not uncommon for national leaders to overrule or disregard the recommendations of local party organizations. The central party leadership also decides the ranking of candidates in the closed-list PR districts, as well as the prefectures in which candidates for the national open-list PR district of the Upper House will concentrate their campaigns in order to optimize mobilization activities and efficiently distribute the party’s vote (this mobilization strategy will be revisited later in the chapter). Like most other parties, incumbents are often given priority unless they have exceeded the party’s age limit (sixty-six) for candidates, though there are exceptions to this rule. Between 1980 and 1993, 70% of Kōmeitō candidates in Lower House elections were incumbents. Since the 1994 electoral reform, between 80% and 90% of SMD candidates have been incumbents. However, the proportion of incumbent candidates in the Upper House prefectural district races has been lower, at just 60% from 1980 through 2013. In contrast to the LDP and DPJ, where new candidates often approach the party directly or, more recently, apply to become candidates through an open recruitment (kōbo) process (Tsutsumi 2012; Smith et al. 2013; Smith 2013), Kōmeitō candidates often have no prior ambitions for public office until they are contacted by a party leader asking them to run. As one 4  Kōmeitō By-laws, Article 53 (available at www.komei.or.jp/komei/about/agreement. html; accessed Jan. 2014). 5  In 2011, the total membership of the Central Secretariat was thirty-five members, including twenty-four incumbent Diet members.

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veteran Kōmeitō representative puts it, the nomination philosophy of the party can best be characterized as “Detai hito yori dashitai hito” (Rather than people who want to run, [we nominate] people who the party wants to run).6 Individual politicians often view their candidacy as part of a duty to the party, or public service to society (kōboku), rather than as a personal calling or vehicle for higher political aspirations.7 Party leaders claim to weigh three basic ideals (or criteria) in screening and selecting new candidates for office. The party must evaluate (1) a potential candidate’s alignment with the spirit of Kōmeitō’s ideals and principles; (2) his or her demonstrated or potential personal ability or insight into society and politics; and, lastly, (3) the candidate’s capability of successfully gathering votes and winning in a given district.8 The first two criteria indicate the continued relevance of the Sōka Gakkai organization and beliefs to Kōmeitō party organization. While nearly all candidates are also members of Sōka Gakkai, the party seeks in principle to nominate individuals from all walks of life who are working hard and succeeding in their chosen profession.9 This sentiment coincides with Sōka Gakkai’s teaching that a “happy person” is someone who “maximizes his potential in his chosen sphere of life and who helps others maximize theirs” (Métraux 1996, 370). Such candidates also represent promising agents for elevating Kōmeitō’s public image and appeal to voters, and thereby also contribute to Sōka Gakkai’s goals of institutional expansion. The third criterion for selection, however, hints at the real constraints facing the party, in terms of both electoral strength and party resources. As a small mass party dependent on a relatively bounded core support base of Sōka Gakkai members, Kōmeitō is careful not to squander its resources running candidates in unwinnable districts, especially since the party typically pays many of its candidates’ campaign expenses (Fukui 1997, 103; see also chapter 7). Moreover, the unconditional support of Sōka Gakkai members cannot be taken for granted (chapter 5), so the party exerts considerable effort to satisfy and mobilize its core supporters. In districts where the party leadership believes it has a chance to win, candidates are often carefully selected to meet the electoral and representational demands of supporters in those districts.

6  Personal interview with Lower House member and chair of Party Electoral Strategy Committee Takagi Yōsuke, 8 June 2011. 7  This sentiment was expressed by multiple interview subjects, though no doubt there are some candidates who seek out their nominations. 8  Personal interview with former Lower House member and former party president Ōta Akihiro, 21 June 2011. 9  Personal interview with Takagi Yōsuke, 8 June 2011.

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Party Ideals in Candidate Selection Beyond the strong organizational link with Sōka Gakkai, the party does not have direct ties to interest groups in society from which it recruits new candidates. Nearly all Kōmeitō candidates are thus also members of Sōka Gakkai. In recent years, only two Kōmeitō Diet members were not members of Sōka Gakkai: Ikenobō Yasuko (Lower House), and Kusakawa Shōzō (Upper House), who retired before the 2012 and 2013 elections, respectively. When the national tier of the Upper House changed to closed-list PR in 1983, the party also nominated a few non–​Sōka Gakkai intellectuals to the party list (Asahi Shimbun 1983; Shiratori 1988, 179), but this practice did not last beyond a few elections.10 It is not clear whether this shift was because of a lack of supply of interested non–​Sōka Gakkai candidates or because of a change in party strategy.11 Potential Kōmeitō candidates are often screened and recommended to the party leadership by influential leaders of the Sōka Gakkai organization, professors from Sōka University, or local party branches. Sōka Gakkai and its daily newspaper, the Seikyō Shimbun (founded in 1951), have also at times been important arenas for the screening of potential Kōmeitō candidates, particularly in the early years of Kōmeitō’s electoral activities. However, these days there is very little direct personnel overlap between the two organizations (table 6.1).12 In recent years, the party has recruited more heavily from its own employees, as well as from the official Kōmeitō newspaper, Kōmei Shimbun (first published in 1962). Newspaper reporters are often considered to be knowledgeable in the workings of Nagatachō, the area of Tokyo where the Diet and prime minister’s office are located. A background as a newspaper reporter thus also satisfies the party leadership’s second recruitment criterion for an insightful candidate. Moreover, recruiting candidates from the Kōmeitō or Sōka Gakkai organizations, or the two organizations’ newspapers, decreases the chance of agency problems—​working for the party-affiliated organizations is a strong signal that a candidate is in agreement with the basic philosophical and political goals of the party and spiritual movement. 10  The non–​Sōka Gakkai candidates included Fushimi Kōji, Nakanishi Tamako, Takakuwa Eimatsu, Wada Kyōmitsu, Iida Takao, Hironaka Wakako, and Tsuzuki Kunihiro. 11  It could be that non–​Sōka Gakkai members are less effective at mobilizing supporters to vote, and with the switch to open-list PR for the national tier in 2001, such mobilization by individual candidates has become more important. 12  This observation was confirmed in a personal interview with Upper House member and party vice-president Shirahama Kazuyoshi, 31 May 2011. Shirahama himself was recruited from the Sōka Gakkai organization after the previous Kōmeitō incumbent was embroiled in a bribery scandal and the party wanted to avoid any further problems of moral hazard.

0% 0%

13% 4% 33% 33%

1990

1993

MMD

MMD

0% 17% 15%

0% 39% 39%

18%

3%

0%

0%

0%

0%

10%

0%

0%

33%

0%

13%

0%

8%

0%

Sōka Gakkai Organization

4%

0%

0%

0%

0%

5%

0%

0%

0%

0%

20%

25%

8%

50%

Seikyō Newspaper

27%

57%

33%

33%

45%

40%

18%

33%

0%

13%

27%

0%

0%

0%

Sōka University

172

23

3

15

11

20

34

6

3

24

15

4

12

2

N

Source: Adapted from J-LOD and 2012 Yomiuri Shimbun candidate biographies. Notes: Categories are not mutually exclusive. Values for 1996 represent Kōmeitō-affiliated candidates from the New Frontier Party (NFP). There were no first-time SMD candidates in the 2000–2009 elections.

Total

PR

2012

73%

2009

PR

SMD

33%

64%

2005

PR

25%

70%

2003

PR

15%

56%

2000

20%

0%

0%

PR

PR

1996

25%

1986

MMD

SMD

4%

0%

1983

MMD

0%

0%

1980

MMD

Kōmei Newspaper

Year

District Type

Party Organization

Table 6.1 Percentage of first-time Kōmeitō candidates for the Lower House with a background in the party and Sōka Gakkai organizations, 1980–2012

Party Ideals and Practical Constraints 

147

Table 6.1 shows the proportion of new (first-time) Kōmeitō candidates for the Lower House recruited since 1980 who had a background in the party organization (excluding the Kōmei Shimbun), the Kōmei Shimbun, the Seikyō Shimbun, and the Sōka Gakkai organization (excluding the Seikyō Shimbun). Also shown is the proportion of new candidates who were graduates of Sōka University, an additional signal of commitment to the Sōka Gakkai system of beliefs. The university was founded in 1971, but its graduates did not regularly appear as Kōmeitō candidates until the 1990s. Since then, it has been increasingly responsible for the education of new candidates. Roughly half of all new candidates since 1980 have been active in at least one of these five organization-based activities. Experience as a Kōmeitō representative at the local level (a powerful screening mechanism and signal of both service to the party and political preparedness) was also common prior to 1994, but has decreased rapidly since the 1994 electoral reform (table 6.2). In addition to candidates with experience in the news media or local politics, Kōmeitō has frequently nominated individuals with experience working in private sector businesses (20%), as lawyers (12%), or as Diet member (MP) secretaries, medical professionals, educators, or bureaucrats (5% to 7% each). Similar patterns in career backgrounds can be observed in Kōmeitō’s candidates for the Upper House, though the party nominates fewer candidates in elections to that chamber. In contrast to the LDP, candidates who come from a political dynasty (so-called legacy candidates) have been rare—​less than 4% in recent elections (Smith 2013).13 The party also does not prioritize local connections to a district when making its nomination decisions (table 6.3). Only about half of new Kōmeitō candidates have been born in the prefecture where they ran, compared to roughly 65% and 75%, respectively, of new DPJ and LDP candidates (Smith 2013). These patterns indicate that a candidate’s local connections or personal name recognition in a district are only a minor factor in Kōmeitō nomination decisions (and such attributes are also likely to be only marginally relevant to most Kōmeitō voters). Practical Constraints on Nomination Decisions As a small mass party with limited appeal beyond Sōka Gakkai members, Kōmeitō faces several challenges under the electoral systems used in Japan. Although nearly three thousand Kōmeitō politicians are routinely 13  Only five Kōmeitō candidates for the Lower House between 1980 and 2012 were related to a previous Diet member. However, not one of them directly succeeded his or her predecessor, as is common in the LDP—​where nearly half of all new candidates came from political dynasties in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Smith 2012).

4% 11% 11% 9% 10% 7% 11% 7%

5%

7%

7%

6%

6%

9%

10%

13%

11%

9%

1990

1993

MMD

MMD

PR

SMD

PR

SMD

PR

SMD

PR

2005

2003

2000

1996

3%

1986

MMD

SMD

7%

3%

1983

MMD

5%

5%

3%

2%

3%

1980

Bureaucracy

MMD

MP Secretary

Year

District Type

2%

11%

4%

10%

7%

11%

11%

19%

15%

26%

41%

42%

42%

Local Politics

26%

22%

24%

30%

27%

22%

14%

30%

22%

14%

13%

15%

17%

Private Sector

12%

22%

9%

20%

5%

33%

17%

19%

19%

14%

8%

7%

3%

Law

5%

11%

4%

10%

9%

11%

3%

7%

6%

5%

5%

5%

5%

Medicine

Table 6.2 Career backgrounds of all Kōmeitō candidates for the Lower House, 1980–2012

9%

0%

9%

0%

14%

0%

9%

0%

2%

7%

10%

8%

6%

Education

21%

22%

24%

20%

29%

11%

23%

22%

26%

28%

21%

20%

17%

Media

43

9

45

10

56

18

35

27

54

58

61

59

64

N

2012

2009

13% 7% 33% 4% 7%

0%

7%

0%

2%

6%

20%

9%

11%

5%

0%

20%

20%

0%

21%

25%

12%

9%

22%

12%

25%

5%

0%

0%

2%

13%

7%

0%

0%

9%

0%

23%

16%

11%

23%

25%

644

45

9

43

8

Source: Adapted from J-LOD and 2012 Yomiuri Shimbun candidate biographies. Notes: Based on all candidates in each election year. Categories are not mutually exclusive. Individual candidates can have more than one career background, and minor career categories are excluded, so row values do not total 100%. Observations for 1996 represent Kōmeitōaffiliated candidates from the New Frontier Party (NFP). MP secretaries are the private or public secretaries of incumbent politicians. Bureaucracy includes only national-level civil servants. Local politics refers only to municipal and prefectural assemblies, as there have been no candidates who were former mayors or governors. Private sector employment includes any position as a company employee or executive. Law means practicing lawyers. Medicine includes doctors, nurses, and other occupations in the health care industry. Education includes teachers, professors, researchers, and school administrators. Media includes Komei Shimbun and Seikyo Shimbun, as well as any other newspaper.

Total

PR

SMD

PR

SMD

Table 6.3 Social demographics of all Kōmeitō candidates for the Lower House, 1980–2012 District Type

Year

Mean Age

Female

Local Birth

College Degree

MMD

1980

MMD

50

0%

47%

77%

6%

64

1983

51

0%

44%

75%

7%

59

MMD

1986

53

0%

47%

77%

7%

61

MMD

1990

52

2%

43%

83%

10%

58

MMD

1993

47

4%

56%

96%

13%

54

49

4%

65%

93%

4%

27

50

9%

64%

91%

17%

35

52

6%

50%

83%

11%

18

51

27%

75%

89%

13%

56

54

0%

50%

100%

20%

10

49

13%

63%

93%

13%

45

56

0%

56%

100%

22%

9

51

14%

67%

93%

16%

43

59

0%

50%

100%

25%

8

52

9%

67%

98%

16%

43

50

0%

56%

100%

44%

9

49

9%

56%

100%

22%

45

51

7%

55%

86%

13%

644

SMD PR SMD PR SMD PR SMD PR SMD PR SMD PR Total

1996

2000

2003

2005

2009

2012

Graduate Degree

N

Source: Adapted from J-LOD and 2012 Yomiuri Shimbun candidate biographies. Notes: Observations for 1996 represent Kōmeitō-affiliated candidates from the New Frontier Party (NFP). Local birth means that the candidate’s birthplace was in the prefecture containing the district.

Party Ideals and Practical Constraints 

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elected to local assemblies, the party has historically only been able to secure between thirty and fifty seats in the Lower House, and twenty to thirty seats in the Upper House. If one looks at the Upper House national PR vote as a proxy for the party’s core national support, the total number of Kōmeitō voters has remained relatively stable at between seven and eight million votes (13% to 15% of voters) since the 1980s. Kōmeitō voters are located throughout the country, but are most concentrated in urban areas. The party must determine where to run candidates, as well as how to successfully organize and mobilize their supporters, whose automatic support and turnout at election time cannot be taken for granted. These concerns have only grown more important with the introduction of SMDs in Lower House elections after 1994 and the necessity of a preelectoral coalition with another party in order to win any SMD races. Plurality-Rule District Nominations

The number of core Kōmeitō voters in a given district is closely related to the number of Sōka Gakkai members residing there. This regularity gives the party a strategic advantage in terms of estimating its candidates’ chances of success in a given electoral district, but its supporters are not numerous enough to assure election in all districts. For example, under the single non-transferable vote (SNTV) in multi-member districts (MMD) electoral system used for the Lower House from 1947 through 1993, district magnitude ranged mostly from three to five seats. Over half of Kōmeitō’s candidates during this period were nominated in the more populous districts with five seats. The party’s support was strong enough to successfully run candidates in such districts, where high district magnitude and multiple candidates from other parties meant that the threshold for gaining a seat was often as low as 15% of the vote. Kōmeitō candidates during this period won, on average, between 14% and 18% of the vote in districts where they ran, thus frequently securing their seats. Kōmeitō generally has not nominated a candidate in a district where it did not expect to have enough votes to get him or her elected. In fact, from 1980 to 1993, forty-eight of fifty-seven (84%) first-time Kōmeitō candidates for the Lower House were successfully elected, as were roughly 82% of all the party’s candidates during the same period. In the Upper House, the percentage of prefectural district candidates from 1980 through 2010 who won their elections is also 82%. In comparison, the average success rate for JSP candidates for the Lower House from 1980 through 1993 was 70%, while for the JCP it was only 17%. The LDP’s official success rate was also around 84%, but drops to 75% if LDP-affiliated independents are included. Under the SNTV/MMD system, conservative politicians who were refused the official LDP nomination often ran as independents, and

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would be given an ex-post nomination (tsuika kōnin) if they were successful. The effective nomination policy of the LDP was “Kateba, Jimintō” (If you win, you are LDP) (Reed 2009). In contrast, Kōmeitō’s nomination strategy might be described as “Kōmeitō nara, kateru” (If Kōmeitō is running someone, they can win). Since the electoral reform of 1994, success rates in SMDs have become more volatile for all parties, including Kōmeitō, which has won 61% of its SMD races (compared to a similar 61% success rate for the LDP, but just 34% for the DPJ prior to 2012). The introduction of SMDs has imposed new constraints on Kōmeitō’s candidate nomination decisions. On its own, the party is not strong enough to win an SMD contest without the electoral cooperation of a coalition partner.14 Thus, since 1994 it has been necessary for Kōmeitō to seek cooperation from other parties in order to field its candidates in SMD contests, a process that has required tremendous effort and negotiation (see chapter 9). For the 1996 Lower House election, Kōmeitō merged with several other parties to form the New Frontier Party (NFP), which nominated Kōmeitōaffiliated candidates in twenty-seven SMD races—​fourteen of whom won. The NFP disbanded after the election, and Kōmeitō—​refounded as “New Kōmeitō”—​decided to enter a coalition arrangement with the LDP. For the 2000 Lower House election, Kōmeitō negotiated an additional four SMD races with the LDP (for a total of eighteen), of which it won half. The party later added one additional SMD to those nine (Tokyo 12th District in 2003), while ceasing to run in two other districts after losing (Okinawa 1st District and Saitama 6th District). The party lost in all eight SMD races in 2009, but regained them all plus an additional seat (Hokkaido 10th District) in 2012 (Klein 2013). The SMDs where Kōmeitō has successfully negotiated stand-down agreements are generally areas where the party’s support is high, and the LDP (or NFP founder parties) did not have an especially strong candidate (Reed and Shimizu 2009). The amount of raw Kōmeitō support in an SMD can reasonably be estimated using the average of the party’s ­municipal-level votes in elections for the national PR tier of the Upper House from 1998 to 2010 (where there is no coalition coordination) aggregated to the SMD boundaries of the Lower House.15 Across all SMDs, the average Kōmeitō support rate is about 7.84% (minimum 4.28%, maximum 14  Since 1975, the party has never nominated a candidate to contest a by-election, either, which would require winning a plurality of votes. A Kōmeitō candidate has only appeared in the following by-elections for the Upper House: Hyōgo (1972), Kyōto (1974), Kōchi (1974), and Aichi (1975). The first and only by-election for the Lower House contested by Kōmeitō was in Fukuoka (1973). 15  Many thanks to Steven Reed for providing this measure.

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Figure 6.1 Kōmeitō support and patterns in Lower House SMD nominations and electoral success, 1996–2012 Source: Author’s calculations using district-level party support data provided by Steven Reed. Note: The 1996 values represent Kōmeitō-affiliated candidates from the New Frontier Party (NFP).

15.61%). In 1996, three of the four Kōmeitō-affiliated NFP candidates who ran in districts where Kōmeitō’s support was below this average lost their races. In 2000, all three candidates whose districts had less than average Kōmeitō support lost, and by 2003, all Kōmeitō candidates were running in districts with higher than average Kōmeitō support. The average support rate in districts where Kōmeitō candidates have run since 2003 is around 11% (figure 6.1). Although the merger with the NFP in 1994 and the LDP coalition partnership since 1999 have allowed Kōmeitō to contest a limited number of SMD elections, the party now primarily depends on its strength in the Upper House and among PR candidates in the Lower House in order to remain a viable national party. Perhaps the only positive effect of the electoral reform for Kōmeitō in terms of candidate selection has been the trend toward nominating more female candidates for the Lower House, thanks

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to the PR tier (table 6.3). The party still has a poor record when it comes to nominating women in SMDs. Proportional Representation List Nominations

Kōmeitō is equally aware of the limits to its potential in the PR tiers of the Upper and Lower House, and these limits are subsequently reflected in its nomination decisions. For example, in the Upper House national tier (which utilized closed-list PR from 1983 through 1998, and open-list PR since 2001), the party has a general idea of how many candidates it can get elected given prior experience and the number of Sōka Gakkai members nationwide. The same is true for the eleven regional PR districts of the Lower House. In each election, the party thus nominates a number of “serious” candidates roughly equal to the number of past incumbents (plus one if party leaders believe there might be a chance to expand). The party then fills the remaining list positions with party employees and other lowpriority individuals. For the Upper House national open-list PR tier, the party has consistently nominated seventeen candidates, and elected six to eight of them (table 6.4); in the eleven Lower House PR districts, the party nominates only one to three candidates beyond the number it expects to elect in each district. Like the JCP, but unlike other small parties, Kōmeitō covers most of its candidates’ campaign expenses (Fukui 1997, 103; see also chapter 7), including the election deposit (Harada and Smith 2014). Each candidate for an SMD race in a Lower House election (or a prefectural district race in an Upper House election) must pay 3,000,000 yen as a deposit, or 6,000,000 yen if the candidate is dual-listed on the PR tier (the same amount is required for each “pure PR” candidate). For SMD candidates, the deposit is returned if the candidate secures one-tenth of the vote, while 12,000,000 yen are returned for each PR candidate who is elected. By nominating only a few more candidates than it expects to elect in the PR tier, the party can recuperate most of its deposit expenses. Since the adoption of open-list PR in the Upper House national tier, the party leadership has designated specific prefectural “turf” for each candidate so as to efficiently distribute votes geographically to each serious candidate whom the party has a reasonable expectation to elect. In addition to numerical considerations for evenly dividing Kōmeitō votes among candidates, the party leadership also considers a candidate’s own connections to a geographical area or its interests when assigning campaign territory to candidates, though, as in the Lower House, local birth is not a main priority. For example, in addition to the main campaign turf of Yamanashi, Tokyo, and Shizuoka prefectures, national-list candidate

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Table 6.4 Efficient distribution of Kōmeitō candidate preference votes for the Upper House national open-list PR tier Election year

2001

2004

2007

2010

2013

Average difference (percentage points) in preference vote shares between top vote-earners

1.41

3.42

3.13

1.60

2.15

Difference (percentage points) between last top-earner and next candidate on the list

10.33

12.08

4.54

10.20

12.16

Number of serious candidates

8

6

7

7

6

Total number of candidates elected

8

8

7

6

7

17

17

17

17

17

Total number of candidates

Source: Author’s calculations based on vote results from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Sōmusho). Notes: Preference vote shares were calculated with the total number of preference votes cast as the denominator, not the total number of preference votes and party votes combined (many Kōmeitō voters simply cast party votes without using the preference vote option, thus leaving the ranking of candidates up to other voters). The lower difference in 2007 was the result of a rare coordination failure. Prior to that election, incumbent Kusakawa Shōzō had decided to retire. When he changed his mind and asked to be placed on the list, the party had already finalized its coordination strategy. Thus, the votes he got might be thought of as his own “rogue” personal votes. One other candidate, Yoshimoto Masafumi, also received extra votes to a lesser extent, and the highest earner, Yamamoto Kanae, did exceptionally well compared to the other serious candidates, increasing the average difference between top-earners. The difference between the last “serious” candidate and the next truly “nonserious” candidate if Kusakawa and Yoshimoto are removed from the picture is 5.31 percentage points.

Tōyama Kiyohiko (who has a Ph.D. in peace studies and speaks English fluently) was also assigned to distant Okinawa, where his professional expertise in international relations and peace studies was considered to be an attractive quality for representing the interests of voters in the prefecture, where many U.S. military bases are located.16 This attention to geographical representation among national-list candidates is quite different from the prevailing patterns in the LDP and 16 

Personal interview with Lower House member Tōyama Kiyohiko, 29 June 2011.

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DPJ, whose national-tier candidates tend to earn votes based on personal name recognition or association with core interest groups in society (labor unions, doctors’ and dentists’ associations, etc.). The geographical allocation of Kōmeitō candidates is important for two reasons: it provides Kōmeitō supporters in each prefecture with an identifiable representative in the Upper House (even where the party does not run a prefectural candidate), and it helps manage the regional party mobilization responsibilities of each candidate. The party and its national-level candidates have proven quite successful at the latter. As noted earlier, the electoral success of mass parties is often more dependent on the mobilization of core supporters than on the conversion of new adherents (Katz and Mair 1995, 7). With the introduction of intraparty preference voting for the Upper House national tier in 2001, individual Kōmeitō candidates appear to have worked hard to secure the “personal votes” of their geographically allocated constituents—​ an effort that has in turn increased the party’s overall vote mobilization. In fact, following the switch to open-list PR in 2001, the party’s overall vote in the national PR tier increased by about 439,500 votes from 1998, to a level that was also 1.2 million votes more than the average from 1983 through 1998, while closed-list PR was in use. However, the vote increased on average by approximately 10,000 votes in prefectures where the party did not run a candidate in the prefectural district tier in either election; in contrast, in the five prefectures where the party had a history of running a candidate in the prefectural tier, the party’s vote increased by only about 4,500 votes, as party strongholds Tokyo and Osaka actually witnessed a decrease in votes. Obviously, other contextual factors of individual elections, candidates, and prefectures have an impact on mobilization and support, but the difference between the two types of prefectures could be interpreted to mean that the average turnout “bonus” to Kōmeitō from individual national-list candidates’ mobilization efforts might have been around 5,500 extra party votes per prefecture. The distribution of candidate preference votes is also extremely efficient (Köllner 2002, 129–​132). For example, in the national PR tier for the 2010 Upper House election, it is clear that the party expected to win seven seats. This is evident by the distribution of the top candidates’ preference votes. While the average difference in each candidate’s share of preference votes between the top seven vote-earners (six of whom were successfully elected) was only 1.6 percentage points, the difference between the seventh-highest vote-earner and the eighth-highest vote earner was 10.2 percentage points. The remaining candidates’ preference votes each accounted for less than 1% of the total number of preference votes cast,

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compared to an average of 14% each for top vote earners.17 Combined, the “serious” candidates’ preference votes accounted for 98% of all preference votes cast within the party list. Similar coordination is evident in the results of other recent Upper House elections (table 6.4). Moreover, in 1980, when the national tier of the Upper House still used the SNTV/ MMD electoral system, all nine Kōmeitō candidates won their contests, each with between 10% and 12% of the total Kōmeitō vote. The average difference between their vote totals was just 15,700 votes, or less than 1% of the total party vote. In the eleven regional PR districts of the Lower House, the party can similarly estimate the number of candidates it has a chance to elect based on past experience and the number of Sōka Gakkai members in the region. These numerical constraints have an impact on the types of candidates that Kōmeitō can convince to run. Particularly for PR candidates in marginal positions, giving up a career for candidacy can be a difficult decision if success is not guaranteed and the prospects for returning to a former job are low. This explains why many Kōmeitō candidates in marginal list positions come from backgrounds with relatively flexible employment, such as law or from the party organization or newspaper, where they can presumably be hired again without much difficulty (table 6.2), and why party employees nearly always fill the hopeless list positions.18 It also explains why the party (like the JCP, but unlike the DPJ and LDP) has rarely utilized the dual-listing provision of the mixed member electoral system. SMD races have been carefully negotiated with much effort and careful attention to incumbent strength, local support, and “winnability.”19 Moreover, the incumbents and serious new candidates of the PR tier are important candidates for the party in their own right, and would not want to be bumped out of one of the few safe PR positions by a dual-listed candidate who failed in his or her SMD contest.20 Since resources and votes are limited, and expectations for success are carefully calculated in all nomination decisions, there are few “low-priority” winners among Kōmeitō incumbents. 17  In recent elections, about 45% of Kōmeitō voters have chosen to vote simply for the party in the national PR tier, rather than expressing a preference for a particular candidate. It is unclear how these voters are different from those who express a preference, or why they choose not to indicate a preference (they may be less committed to the party, or may be LDP supporters who have been asked to vote Kōmeitō as part of the coalition coordination agreement). By not using a preference vote, they are essentially leaving the ranking of candidates up to other Kōmeitō voters to decide. 18  Personal interview with Tōyama Kiyohiko, 29 June 2011. 19  Personal interview with Ōta Akihiro, 21 June 2011. 20  Personal interview with Takagi Yōsuke, 8 June 2011.

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Conclusion Kōmeitō was created as the political arm of Sōka Gakkai much in the way that many early mass parties in Western European democracies emerged out of class or religious movements. My analysis in this chapter illustrates how Kōmeitō candidate nomination decisions are highly shaped by the party’s historical and organizational relationship to Sōka Gakkai—​not only in terms of the candidate screening and selection process, but also in terms of the constraints imposed on the party given the mechanics of the electoral system and the party’s limited ability to extend its support beyond Sōka Gakkai members. The religious affiliation of candidates within Kōmeitō has remained relatively constant, as has the top-down process of candidate recruitment and selection. However, the path to nomination has evolved. In the early decades after the party’s founding, the Sōka Gakkai organization itself functioned as an important arena for screening potential candidates. But in recent decades, this role has shifted largely to the party organization—​ an indication that the party itself has grown more institutionalized, perhaps in an effort to distinguish itself from Sōka Gakkai, or perhaps as part of a natural evolution toward becoming a “religious party” rather than simply the “party of a religion.” In addition, although Kōmeitō’s limited appeal beyond Sōka Gakkai members constrains its electoral opportunities, the stable benchmark of Sōka Gakkai support also enables the party to be highly strategic in its nomination decisions and coalition negotiations with the LDP. However, it is important to note that the party does not take for granted that all Sōka Gakkai members will vote for it. Sōka Gakkai itself is a religious movement more than a political movement (cf. Ingram 1969), and its members can and do sometimes hold diverse political opinions. Many Sōka Gakkai members were upset by Kōmeitō’s decision to support the LDP-sponsored Peace-Keeping Operations Bill in 1992 (Métraux 1996, 388), and other policy concessions that have resulted from the LDP-Kōmeitō coalition, including elderly-care pensions and child allowance policies (e.g., Yamada 2004; Etō 2003; Hirano 2005; see also chapter 10). Kōmeitō politicians work tirelessly to explain these compromises to Sōka Gakkai voters, and the party keeps careful track of fluctuations in its vote share for signs of dissatisfaction. Even candidates who are given “safe” list positions must work diligently to mobilize supporters during elections (chapter 5), as abstention by enough Sōka Gakkai voters can easily cost the party a seat.

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References Asano Masahiko. 2006. Shimin Shakai ni okeru Seido Kaikaku: Senkyo Seido to Kōhosha Rikurūto [System reform at the level of civil society: Electoral reform and candidate recruitment]. Tokyo: Keio Gijuku Daigaku Shuppankai. Baerwald, Hans. 1986. Party Politics in Japan. New York: HarperCollins. Crotty, William J. 1968. “The Party Organization and Its Activities.” In Approaches to the Study of Party Organization, edited by William J. Crotty, 247–​306. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Curtis, Gerald. 1999. The Logic of Japanese Politics. New York: Columbia University Press. Duverger, Maurice. 1954. Political Parties: Their Organization and Activities in the Modern State. London: Methuen. Ehrhardt, George. 2009. “Rethinking the Komeito Voter.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 10, no. 1:1–​20. Etō Shunsuke, and Wajō Shichiri. 2003. Jimintō–​Sōka Gakkai–​Kōmeitō: Kokumin Fuzai no Renritsu Seikken Hishi [LDP–​Sōka Gakkai–​Kōmeitō: The secret history of coalition government without the people]. Tokyo: Gakushū no Tomosha. Fukui Haruhiro. 1997. “Japan.” In Passages to Power: Legislative Recruitment in Advanced Democracies, edited by Pippa Norris, 98–​113. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gallagher, Michael, and Michael Marsh. 1988. Candidate Selection in Comparative Perspective: The Secret Garden of Politics. London: SAGE Publications. Hamamoto Shinsuke. 2011. “Minshuto ni okeru Yakushoku Haibun no Seidoka” [DPJ personnel system change]. In Minshuto no Soshiki to Seisaku [DPJ organization and policies], edited by Takayoshi Uekami and Hidenori Tsutsumi, 29–​70. Tokyo: Toyo Keizai Shinpansha. Harada, Masataka, and Daniel M. Smith. 2014. “You Have To Pay To Play: Candidate and Party Responses to the High Cost of Elections in Japan.” Electoral Studies 36:51–​64. Hazan, Reuven Y., and Gideon Rahat. 2010. Democracy within Parties: Candidate Selection Methods and Their Political Consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hirano Sadao. 2005. Kōmeitō–​Sōka Gakkai no Shinjitsu [The truth about Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Hrebenar, Ronald J. 2000. “The Komeito Returns: The Party of ‘Buddhist Democracy.’” In Japan’s New Party System, edited by Ronald J. Hrebenar, 167–​207. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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Ingram, Paul O. 1969. “Sokka Gakkai and the Koumei-tou: Buddhism and Political Power in Japan” Contemporary Religions in Japan 10:155–​180. J-LOD. [Ellis S. Krauss and Robert J. Pekkanen]. 2011. Japanese Legislative Organization Database. Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 1992. Party Organizations: A Data Handbook on Party Organizations in Western Democracies, 1960–​90. London: Sage Publications. Katz, Richard S., and Peter Mair. 1995. “Changing Models of Party Organization and Party Democracy: The Emergence of the Cartel Party.” Party Politics 1:5–​28. Klein, Axel. 2013. “Kōmeitō—​The First ‘Third’ Force.” In Japan Decides 2012, edited by Robert Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed, and Ethan Scheiner, 84–​100. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Köllner, Patrick. 2002. “Upper House Elections in Japan and the Power of the ‘Organized Vote.’” Japanese Journal of Political Science 3, no. 1:113–​137. Lundell, Krister. 2004. “Determinants of Candidate Selection: Degree of Centralization in Comparative Perspective.” Party Politics 10, no. 1:25–​47. Métraux, Daniel. 1996. “SG and Kōmeitō: Buddhism and Political Power in Japan.” In Engaged Buddhism: Buddhist Liberation Movements in Asia, edited by Christopher S. Queen and Sallie B. King, 365–​400. Albany: State University of New York Press. Miura, Mari, Kap-Yun Lee, and Robert Weiner. 2005. “Who Are the DPJ? Policy Positioning and Recruitment Strategy.” Asian Perspective 29, no. 1:49–​77. Müller, Wolfgang C. 2000. “Political Parties in Parliamentary Democracies: Making Delegation and Accountability Work.” European Journal of Political Research 37:309–​333. Narud, Hanne M., Mogens N. Pedersen, and Henry Valen, eds. 2002. Party Sovereignty and Citizen Control: Selecting Candidates for Parliamentary Elections in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and Norway. Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark. Neumann, Sigmund. 1956. “Towards a Comparative Study of Political Parties.” In Modern Political Parties, edited by Sigmund Neumann, 395–​421. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Norris, Pippa, ed. 1997. Passages to Power: Legislative Recruitment in Advanced Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Norris, Pippa, and Joni Lovenduski. 1995. Political Recruitment: Gender, Race, and Class in the British Parliament. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Rahat, Gideon. 2007. “Candidate Selection: The Choice before the Choice.” Journal of Democracy 18 no. 1:157–​170. Ranney, Austin. 1981. “Candidate Selection.” In Democracy at the Polls, edited by David Butler, Howard R. Penniman, and Austin Ranney, 75–​ 106. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute. Reed, Steven R. 2009. “Party Strategy or Candidate Strategy: How Did the LDP Run the Right Number of Candidates in Japan’s MultiMember Districts?” Party Politics 15:295–​314. Reed, Steven R., and Kay Shimizu. 2009. “Avoiding a Two-Party System: The Liberal Democratic Party versus Duverger’s Law.” In Political Change in Japan: Electoral Behavior, Party Realignment, and the Koizumi Reforms, edited by Steven R. Reed, Kenneth Mori McElwain, and Kay Shimizu, 29–​46. Stanford, CA: The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Schattschneider, Elmer Eric. 1942. Party Government. New York: Farrar and Rinehart. Shiratori, Rei. 1988. “Japan: Localism, Factionalism, Personalism.” In Candidate Selection in Comparative Perspective: The Secret Garden of Politics, edited by Michael Gallagher and Michael Marsh, 169–​189. London: SAGE Publications. Siavelis, Peter M., and Scott Morgenstern, eds. 2008. Pathways to Power: Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Latin America. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Smith, Daniel M. 2012. “Succeeding in Politics: Dynasties in Democracies.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego. ———. 2013. “Candidate Recruitment for the 2012 Election: New Parties, New Methods . . . Same Old Pool of Candidates?” In Japan Decides 2012: The Japanese General Election, edited by Robert Pekkanen, Steven R. Reed, and Ethan Scheiner, 101–​122. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, Daniel M., Robert J. Pekkanen, and Ellis S. Krauss. 2013. “Building a Party: Candidate Recruitment in the Democratic Party of Japan, 1996–​2012.” In Japan under the DPJ: The Politics of Transition and Governance, edited by Kenji E. Kushida and Phillip Y. Lipscy, 157–​190. Stanford, CA: The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. Strøm, Kaare. 2000. “Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies.” European Journal of Political Research 37:261–​289. Tsutsumi, Hidenori. 2012. “Kōhosha sentei katei no kaihō to seitō soshiki” [Opening up the candidate selection process and party organization]. Senkyo kenkyu 28, no. 1:5–​20. Weiner, Robert. 2011. “The Evolution of the DPJ: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back.” In The Evolution of Japan’s Party System: Politics and Policy

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in an Era of Institutional Change, edited by Leonard J. Schoppa, 63–​98. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Worley, Matthew, ed. 2009. The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures, and Perspectives, 1900–​39. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing. Yamada Naoki. 2004. Sōka Gakkai to wa Nanika [What is the Sōka Gakkai?]. Tokyo: Shinchōsha. Yomiuri Shimbun. 2012. Shūinsen 2012. Available at www.yomiuri.co.jp/ election/shugiin/2012/. Accessed July 2013. Periodicals

Asahi (Shimbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 7.6 million; evening edition: 2.7 million) was second only to that of the Yomiuri Shimbun. Available at http://adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Kōmei Shimbun is the daily party newspaper of Kōmeitō with a circulation of 800,000. (Personal communication with newspaper headquarters in June 2013.) Seikyō Shimbun is Sōka Gakkai’s newspaper with a circulation of 5.5 million. Available at www.seikyoonline.jp/seikyo/index.html. Accessed Jan. 2014. Yomiuri (Shimbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 9.9 million; evening edition: 3.4 million) was larger than that of any other Japanese daily. Available at http://adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html. Accessed Jan. 2014.

Seven

Kōmeitō, Sōka Gakkai, and Money in Japanese Politics

Matthew Carlson Introduction The pervasive use of money in Japanese politics was a predominant feature of the “1955 system” where the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was the dominant ruling party and continues to be important in one of the world’s most expensive political systems (Nassmacher 2009). Money flowed freely from big business to LDP coffers, which helped sustain oneparty dominance. It also greased the corners of the “iron triangle”—​the three-legged relationship of politicians, bureaucrats, and big business—​ and was linked to a vicious cycle of political corruption scandals. Money also played a significant yet understudied role in the emergence of some of Japan’s New Religions and their involvement in politics.1 The purpose of this chapter is to examine some of the money-collecting methods of Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai and to consider some of the efforts of Kōmeitō to advocate for more transparent politics when it joined the ruling coalition government from 1999 to 2009. In this chapter, several questions are considered. How much money do Kōmeitō members raise and spend compared to those of other parties in Japan’s Lower House, the more powerful chamber of the bicameral parliament? And, what are the money-collecting methods of Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai? While the fund-raising efforts of Kōmeitō in recent years have relied heavily on the government subsidy for political parties, Sōka Gakkai’s finances have been officially separate from those of the party since its creation in 1964.2 However, the division and the financial ties 1  The term New Religion (shinshūkyō) primarily refers to lay-centered groups founded in the last two hundred years (see chapter 3). 2  See also chapters 3 and 4, and Kōmeitō’s official explanation titled “New Kōmeitō’s Views on Politics and Religion in Japan,” available at www.komei.or.jp/en/about/view. html (accessed Jan. 2014).

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between these two organizations are not absolute as ordinary Sōka Gakkai members help finance the party and similar fund-raising practices are employed. Because existing research on the financial underpinnings of either or both organizations has been extremely limited, discussion of these broader questions are necessary and in order. One reason for the lack of research is the difficulty in accessing relevant data on the financial situation of both organizations. To build upon this shortcoming, this chapter makes use of official campaign finance reports disclosed to the Japanese government. Campaign finance reforms initiated in 1994 have introduced greater transparency and have made it easier for scholars and journalists to study and examine the flow of official funds in the political system. My focus is a comparison of Kōmeitō to other political parties, which I use to highlight the argument that Kōmeitō is not so different from other parties in the realm of money collection. The empirical section of the chapter examines and compares Kōmeitō by looking at several different levels of party organizations: the party headquarters of major parties in Tokyo and the main party organizations for parties in each of Japan’s forty-seven prefectures, as well as the aggregate picture of finances linked to individual politicians in the Lower House. The emphasis here is considering Kōmeitō and its money-gathering efforts as a political party that operates in the electoral realm and also considering its role in campaign finance reform. Unlike political parties that are required to file annual reports, the financial practices of Sōka Gakkai are much more challenging to evaluate with any great certainty because they are not publicly disclosed. This makes it difficult to examine the extent that ordinary Sōka Gakkai members contribute to Kōmeitō and also to compare Sōka Gakkai with religious groups in general. Nonetheless, I try to discuss its money-collecting methods by reviewing and updating some of the scant research on this important topic. This will include the research done by James White in 1970, whose book on Sōka Gakkai is one of the most important in political science, along with the more recent writings of the controversial Japanese scholar Shimada Hiromi.3 Both offer important insights into money-collecting practices while highlighting the limits of existing studies. One argument in the literature is that the current money-collecting methods pursued by Sōka Gakkai have gradually evolved over the last several decades and may not be so different from those pursued by other religious groups. In the fourth section of this chapter, Sōka Gakkai is shown to rank first among religious groups in 2003 in terms of its profitmaking enterprises, which is largely based on its vast publishing empire. 3 

See chapter 1 for more information on White and Shimada.

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I hope that the preliminary efforts of this chapter to clarify the money-­ gathering strategies of Kōmeitō, Sōka Gakkai, and other political and religious organizations will encourage additional research on the broader topic of religion and money in politics as well as comparisons of Kōmeitō with other politically active religious groups in Japan. The remainder of this chapter is presented in five sections. The following, second section examines the finances and sources of income for Kōmeitō with comparisons to other major Japanese political parties. The third section looks more closely at Kōmeitō by examining the campaign finance reports filed by individual politicians as well as the party’s role in recent efforts to reform the campaign finance system. The fourth section explores the money-collecting methods of Sōka Gakkai based on accounts from the scholarly literature. The fifth and final section summarizes the main findings. The Money-Collecting Methods of Kōmeitō In contrast to the veil of secrecy cast over the finances of Sōka Gakkai, the finances of Japan’s political parties are much more transparent, which has occurred through repeated revisions to the Political Funds Control Law (Seiji Shikin Kiseihō). Enacted in 1948, the PFCL is the main set of regulations in Japan that deals with the financing of political activities. When it was first introduced, the law was largely ineffective at regulating political finances. However, major revisions of the PFCL occurred in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s typically after the exposure of major political scandals. The more recent 1994 reforms went a step further by introducing a public subsidy system for political parties, which requires parties to disclose and provide detailed accounting for how they raise and spend public funds. A few caveats about the financial disclosure reports should be mentioned. First, most of what we know about party finances is limited to the amounts that are officially reported. It is difficult if not impossible to know whether and to what extent some funds have been concealed. Second, it is difficult to compare the funding sources of parties across time because of the multiple changes to the PFCL. This is unfortunate in the case of Kōmeitō because it would be useful to have accurate and detailed information about how the money-gathering strategies have evolved over time. Despite these limitations, however, the official reports will be used to capture some of the major money-gathering methods used by Kōmeitō—​both as a national party organization and in terms of its individual members—​ since the 1990s. The major pattern that emerges is that Kōmeitō is the third-wealthiest political party in Japan largely because it adopts some of the successful

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fund-raising strategies employed by Sōka Gakkai, namely, the creation of a successful newspaper and gathering donations from individual supporters at the prefectural level. A second pattern that emerges is that Kōmeitō legislators in the Lower House are neither excessively extravagant nor resource poor in terms of money. In contrast to the LDP’s traditional reliance on big business, Kōmeitō politicians rely more heavily on party sources of funds as well as political contributions to support their yearly activities. Revenue from National Party Headquarters

The amounts of annual revenue collected by Kōmeitō and three of Japan’s most important political parties are reported in table 7.1. Among the parties represented, Kōmeitō averages the third-highest revenue after the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and the LDP. When the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was in power from 2009 to 2012, Kōmeitō’s lead over the DPJ narrowed and was surpassed, placing Kōmeitō in fourth place. Much of the income generated from the JCP is from the publication of the daily newspaper Akahata (Red flag), whereas the LDP has traditionally relied upon donations from corporate Japan. The DPJ, in contrast, has relied upon contributions as well as loans and the political party subsidy that has been available since 1995. Kōmeitō and the LDP also rely on the subsidy for a considerable portion of their income, but this is not the case for the JCP, which argues that the subsidy is unconstitutional since Japanese taxpayers are effectively forced to finance parties with which they may disagree. The party revenues are also relatively stable for most of the years with only a few exceptions that warrant brief mention. For Kōmeitō, it is important to note that the party actually disappeared in 1994 when it dissolved and became part of the New Frontier Party (NFP) until it split apart in 1997. Thus, the report for 1994 represents the amount of income when the party officially dissolved itself. The reports for 1995 to 1997 are for part of the party, renamed Kōmei, which consisted of a smaller contingent of Upper House members and local politicians. Consequently, the figures for Kōmeitō do not capture the entire picture for when its finances were merged with the NFP. The other exception is the small amount of income collected by the LDP in 1994, which can be explained in the context of the LDP’s loss of power in the 1993 Lower House election where many LDP politicians left to join or establish other parties. Beyond the broader patterns of party revenues, it is useful to examine the specific sources of income that has been collected by Kōmeitō since 1990. Thus far, there have been four major sources: publication-related revenues, the party subsidy that has been available since 1995, party membership fees paid by party supporters, and revenues from other

Table 7.1 Party revenues Kōmeitō

LDP

DPJ

JCP

1990

¥13,490 ($93.0)

¥30,844 ($212.7)

–​

¥32,058 ($221.1)

1991

¥12,567 ($93.1)

¥29,285 ($216.9)

–​

¥32,148 ($238.1)

1992

¥15,693 ($123.6)

¥25,517 ($200.9)

–​

¥33,636 ($264.9)

1993

¥14,462 ($130.3)

¥26,854 ($241.9)

–​

¥32,319 ($291.2)

1994

¥11,864 ($116.3)

¥12,692 ($124.4)

–​

¥32,999 ($323.5)

1995

¥13,417 ($142.7)

¥23,549 ($250.5)

–​

¥31,104 ($330.9)

1996

¥13,107 ($120.2)

¥26,074 ($239.2)

–​

¥30,405 ($278.9)

1997

¥13,334 ($110.2)

¥24,562 ($203.0)

–​

¥30,874 ($255.2)

1998

¥19,720 ($150.5)

¥28,929 ($220.8)

¥9,486 ($72.4)

¥30,853 ($235.5)

1999

¥16,941 ($148.6)

¥25,020 ($219.5)

¥8,452 ($74.1)

¥30,239 ($265.3)

2000

¥15,907 ($147.3)

¥27,110 ($251.0)

¥10,990 ($101.8)

¥32,781 ($303.5)

2001

¥17,217 ($141.1)

¥24,428 ($200.2)

¥11,053 ($90.6)

¥34,289 ($281.1)

2002

¥15,384 ($123.1)

¥22,926 ($183.4)

¥10,661 ($85.3)

¥33,429 ($267.4)

2003

¥17,409 ($150.1)

¥25,697 ($221.5)

¥11,442 ($98.6)

¥30,710 ($264.7)

2004

¥16,202 ($150.0)

¥26,415 ($244.6)

¥14,137 ($130.9)

¥30,068 ($278.4)

2005

¥16,134 ($146.7)

¥26,229 ($238.4)

¥14,075 ($128.0)

¥28,415 ($258.3)

2006

¥14,439 ($124.5)

¥26,161 ($225.5)

¥12,502 ($107.8)

¥28,197 ($243.1)

2007

¥15,096 ($127.9)

¥25,294 ($214.4)

¥13,148 ($111.4)

¥26,408 ($223.8)

2008

¥14,520 ($140.3)

¥30,813 ($297.8)

¥14,213 ($137.4)

¥24,961 ($241.2)

2009

¥13,513 ($143.7)

¥19,728 ($209.8)

¥16,305 ($173.5)

¥24,621 ($261.9)

2010

¥14,339 ($162.9)

¥15,231 ($173.1)

¥20,690 ($235.1)

¥23,746 ($269.8)

2011

¥12,707 ($158.8)

¥13,955 ($174.4)

¥20,232 ($252.9)

¥23,416 ($292.7)

2012

¥13,772 ($172.2)

¥15,898 ($198.7)

¥19,563($244.5)

¥23,283($291.0)

Source: Kanpō, various years. Notes: 1994 Kōmeitō is the amount reported when the party dissolved. 1995 to 1997 reports are for the smaller Kōmei, mostly Upper House and local politicians, when Kōmeitō was absorbed into the New Frontier Party. Exchange rates of respective years.

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Figure 7.1 Percentage derived from major sources of revenue Source: Kanpō, various years.

party-affiliated organizations that were generated after the subsidy was introduced in 1995. Figure 7.1 captures the percentage share that each of these four sources occupies in relation to total revenues. What is shown is the strong position of publication income, which has occupied between 60 and 70 percent of total revenues. The advent of the party subsidy from 1995 is currently the second-largest source of revenue, followed by income derived from membership fees and other party-affiliated organizations. From 1998 to 2012, Kōmeitō averaged approximately 10 billion yen in publication-related revenues. The majority of this income is generated from its daily newspaper Kōmei Shimbun as well its Sunday edition. However, like Sōka Gakkai, Kōmeitō does not own a printing company and thus there are considerable overhead costs that must be subtracted if a true picture of net profits is to be derived. During this same period, Kōmeitō reported an average of 7.6 billion yen in publication-related expenses. This means a much smaller profit of 2.4 billion yen. Thus, Kōmeitō’s position as the third-wealthiest party—as well as the JCP’s position as the wealthiest—might be reconsidered if the costs of their publishing activities are factored in. As is the case with Sōka Gakkai, a benefit of the newspapers and published materials is the information shared with like-minded supporters and the type of community that this fosters. 5HYHQXHIURP3UHIHFWXUDO3DUW\+HDGTXDUWHUV

Beyond the level of national party headquarters, it is important to examine how Kōmeitō and others collect funds at the prefectural level. In each of Japan’s forty-seven prefectures, Kōmeitō and other major parties have

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Table 7.2 Sources of income collected by prefectural party organizations in 2005 Kōmeitō

LDP

DPJ

JCP

Party Headquarters ¥1,459.5 ($13.3) ¥1,990.7 ($18.1) ¥1,211.0 ($11.0) ¥9,311.9 ($84.7) Branches

¥110.6 ($1.0)

¥274.4 ($2.5)

¥48.4 ($0.4)

¥2,620.6 ($23.8)

¥2,287.2 ($20.8)

¥623.4 ($5.7)

¥649.3 ($5.9)

¥1,845.3 ($16.8)

Contributions Individual Group

¥17.7 ($0.2)

¥103.8 ($0.9)

¥24.8 ($0.2)

¥ 0.0 ($0.0)

Political

¥19.9 ($0.2)

¥189.4 ($1.7)

¥34.6 ($0.3)

¥0.0 ($0.0)

Fund-raising

¥153.4 ($1.4)

¥1221.4 ($11.1)

¥490.9 ($4.5)

¥80.6 ($0.7)

Membership

¥0.0 ($0.0)

¥1,391.3 ($12.6)

¥81.6 ($0.7)

¥1,883.9 ($17.1)

Other

¥4.8 ($0.0)

¥273.6 ($2.5)

¥32.4 ($0.3)

¥150.3 ($1.4)

Total Income

¥4,053.0 ($36.8) ¥6,068.1 ($55.2) ¥2,573.0 ($23.4) ¥15,892.6 ($144.5)

Sources: Kanpō and Kōhō, various years. Note: JPY and USD in millions.

prefectural party headquarters staffed with party professionals who oversee party affairs for the entire prefecture. Their job includes everything from helping with elections at all levels of office to organizing political events for politicians and constituents, all of which requires often substantial sums of money. To support these costs, prefectural organizations turn to their party, contributions, fund-raising activities, membership revenue, and other sources. By examining the disclosure reports for a one-year cycle, it is possible to better understand the fund-raising efforts of Kōmeitō at the local level and how they compares to those of other major political parties. Of particular interest is the ability of Kōmeitō to generate substantially large sums of income from individual supporters, particularly in prefectures where the party is the most active in fielding candidates to the Lower and Upper Houses. The financial reports for each of the main prefectural party organizations were collected and totaled for Kōmeitō, the LDP, the DPJ, and the JCP for the 2006 filing year, which covers activities that took place in 2005 and the snap Lower House election that was called over the issue of postal

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privatization. Table 7.2, which captures the aggregate picture of this effort, reports the total amounts of income for all forty-seven prefectural organizations in terms of five major sources of income: (1) party funds from the national headquarters or from other local party branches (e.g., a party branch organized for a specific city); (2) contributions, which are classified as being from an individual (kojin), group (dantai), or political group (seiji dantai); (3) fund-raising activities; (4) membership revenues; and (5) other sources of income that do not fall into any of the previous categories. Several observations about the four parties can be made by looking at the aggregate picture. First, in terms of party sources, all of the prefectural organizations rely on national party headquarters for onethird to half or more of their funding. Except for the JCP, few funds are derived from other local party branches located within the prefecture. Kōmeitō organizations are thus no different from the LDP and DPJ in terms of receiving a considerable share of funds from the national party headquarters. Second, the amounts raised through contributions vary considerably by party and by contribution type. Kōmeitō, in particular, raises close to 60 percent of its total revenue from contributions, most of which are from individual supporters. The DPJ, in contrast, raises only one-fourth of its funds from this source, whereas the LDP and JCP collect one-fourth or less. Kōmeitō can thus be distinguished considerably from the other parties in its ability to collect the largest sum of individual contributions, at least for the one year that was examined. A third observation is that prefectural party organizations associated with Kōmeitō and the JCP generally do not hold many fund-raising activities as a means to generate income, particularly in contrast to the LDP and DPJ. For one reason, both parties may have less necessity for this approach, particularly as they can rely on party sources for their funding. A second reason is that fund-raising parties have generally been associated with the LDP and the necessity of individual politicians to raise vast sums of money to survive and prosper in the political system. In the present day, fund-raising parties continue to be valuable for this purpose not only for individual politicians, but also local party organizations. In 2005, LDP and DPJ groups collected nearly 20 percent of their total revenues through this source alone. A fourth and final observation concerns the revenue derived from membership fees. By registering and paying a nominal fee every year, supporters become registered party members. The prefectural party organizations of Kōmeitō do not collect and report membership dues as this task is conducted by the national party headquarters. There is thus

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no income derived from this source for Kōmeitō at the prefectural level.4 For the remaining parties that report membership funds at the prefectural level, the JCP collected the largest sum of funds: 1.9 billion yen from more than 3 million supporters. The LDP raised a small sum of 1.3 billion from 1.2 million supporters whereas the DPJ gathered nearly 82 million yen from less than 40,000 supporters. What emerges from the overall aggregate picture is that Kōmeitō, in contrast to the three other major parties, is particularly strong at collecting individual contributions at the local level. The connection between religion and politics is that many of the individual supporters of Kōmeitō are members of Sōka Gakkai. Although Sōka Gakkai as an organization does not directly fund Kōmeitō, its individual supporters do, which is particularly evident if the finances of local party organizations are examined. For this reason, it is perhaps not surprising that Kōmeitō is quite strong in terms of collecting funds from individual supporters at the local level. These are many of the same supporters that help fund Sōka Gakkai through the purchase of newspapers and through its membership system. Kōmeitō and Money Politics This third section examines Kōmeitō and other parties by looking at campaign finance reports filed by individual politicians during five Lower House election years.5 The analysis will cover politicians competing primarily in single-seat districts. Politicians raise and spend funds throughout the year and during the twelve-day official campaign period. Of particular interest is how Kōmeitō members compare to members in the LDP and the DPJ. Kōmeitō was part of the ruling LDP coalition government from 1999 to 2009 and again from December 2012 on (see chapter 10). Compared to the average LDP member, Kōmeitō members generally raised and utilized considerably less funds. Compared to the average DPJ member, the average level of income and expenses for Kōmeitō has been nearly double, with the amount somewhat narrowing in 2009 when the DPJ took the reins of power. Politicians’ Average Income and Expenses in the Lower House, 1996–​2009

To examine how Kōmeitō fares against the LDP and DPJ in terms of politicians’ individual political finances, it is useful to detail the amounts of

4  In 2005 at the national level, Kōmeitō raised approximately 1.3 billion yen in membership revenues from 400,000 supporters, which comes out to about 3,200 yen per supporter. 5  Reports used to estimate the most recent election in 2012 were not available at the time of this writing.

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income and spending reported for five Lower House election years.6 Of the multiple sources available for raising funds, two are highlighted in particular: the percentage of income linked to party sources as well as the percentage of income derived from political contributions. Party sources are primarily party subsidies from the Law for Government Subsidies of Political Parties (Seitō Joseihō) established in 1994 but include other funds that party headquarters may give to its members. Proponents of the new subsidy system argued it would promote a sound development of political activities of political parties, secure their legal and fair activities, and encourage party-centered rather than candidate-centered campaigns. Most politicians in Kōmeitō, LDP, and DPJ file disclosure reports for a single fund agent (shikin kanri dantai) and their local party branch office (seitō shibu), which is typically one of their main local offices.7 Average income for politicians in each party is calculated by summing the total of fund agent and party branch income and making any necessary adjustments to prevent double counting when there are financial transfers between the two organizations. The average amounts collected by politicians in the three parties are reported in table 7.3. For Kōmeitō members, average income ranged from 66.5 to 83.6 million yen. The percentage of Kōmeitō member funds derived from the party ranged from 35.2% to 54.9%, which is considerably higher than the LDP for each election year but lower than the DPJ except for 2009. Most Kōmeitō members also rely on individual contributions to generate enough funds for their yearly activities. Contributions have generally made up nearly half of politicians’ income, although contribution levels dropped considerably in 2009. For LDP members, average income ranged from 84.2 to 111.5 million yen. The political party subsidy only accounts for 16.7% to 33.6% of their income. The more significant source for the LDP is contributions from political groups and individuals. Although more than half came from this source in 1996, the percentage amounts have gradually decreased each election year to a low of nearly 39.4% in 2009. For DPJ politicians, average income has ranged from a much smaller 34.6 to 50 million yen. The DPJ raised considerably less than the LDP but was also surpassed by Kōmeitō in each election year. The DPJ is closer to Kōmeitō in terms of its reliance 6  The JCP is excluded in this section, as most legislators from this party do not file reports for local party branches. See Carlson (2007) for additional analysis and discussion of campaign finance reports. 7  Many politicians, particularly in the LDP, file reports for multiple personal support organizations called kōenkai, which were not collected for all of the election years and thus not reported. Kōenkai usually cost politicians money, although they can generate some income particularly through membership fees and supporter contributions.

¥14.2 ($131,000)

Campaign Period

–​

Campaign Period

47.0

21.2

¥94.8 ($818,000)

¥11.7 ($101,000)

¥80.6 ($695,000)

49.9

35.2

¥76.8 ($662,000)

2003

¥9.8 ($90,000)

¥38.0 ($352,000)

39.0

44.4

¥37.4 ($346,000)

¥13.9 ($129,000)

¥9.6 ($83,000)

¥36.5 ($314,000)

41.9

40.4

¥34.6 ($299,000)

¥12.5 ($108,000)

¥121.8 ($1.1 million) ¥105.0 ($905,000)

52.3

18.0

¥111.5 ($1 million)

¥14.1 ($131,000)

¥83.5 ($773,000)

56.7

36.6

¥78.5 ($727,000)

2000

¥9.6 ($87,000)

¥39.5 ($360,000)

37.2

47.0

¥37.3 ($339,000)

¥12.6 ($115,000)

¥95.1 ($864,000)

45.3

27.1

¥89.7 ($816,000)

¥13.0 ($118,000)

¥66.9 ($608,000)

53.3

36.1

¥66.5 ($604,000)

2005

¥7.7 ($82,000)

¥50.7 ($540,000)

35.4

45.9

¥50.0 ($532,000)

¥11.3 ($120,000)

¥95.5 ($1 million)

39.4

33.6

¥84.2 ($896,000)

¥12.7 ($135,000)

¥74.4 ($791,000)

36.3

54.9

¥71.5 ($761,000)

2009

Sources: Kanpō and Kōhō, various years. Notes: JPY and USD in millions. Included are estimates for Kōmeitō members prior to 1998 when the party merged with the New Frontier Party. Income is calculated from the reports of main local party branches and politicians’ fund agents (excluding transfers of funds between the two organizations) for all single member district-based members in the Lower House who reported any income for the election years in question.

–​

–​

  % Contributions

–​

  % Party

Annual expenses

–​

Annual Income

DPJ members

¥110.6 ($1 million)

59.0

  % Contributions

Annual expenses

16.7

¥103.6 ($950,000)

  % Party

Annual Income

LDP members

¥13.5 ($124,000)

Campaign Period

45.0

  % Contributions

¥94.8 ($870,000)

36.4

  % Party

Annual expenses

¥83.6 ($767,000)

Annual Income

Kōmeitō members

1996

Table 7.3 Politicians’ average income and expenses

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on the political party subsidy and other party funds, which partially reflects the party’s relatively new emergence in the late 1990s and its smaller stock of incumbent legislators. The revenues accrued by politicians in each party are spent on everything from personnel to maintaining support organizations (kōenkai). Politicians are also able to transfer funds collected during the year to use during the official campaign period that is scheduled just prior to the election. During the official campaign period, campaign activities are heavily regulated by the Public Offices Election Law, which is the main set of regulations governing public elections. Among the regulations during this time are spending limits for campaign-period expenditures. For annual expenditures excluding the campaign period, table 7.3 shows that Kōmeitō politicians have averaged anywhere from 66.9 to 94.8 million yen. The highest average was when Kōmeitō was part of the NFP and the LDP was its main competitor. From 2000 to 2005, the costs for Kōmeitō dropped in each election partly because it joined the LDP in a coalition government and many of its members could avoid direct competition with the LDP. In 2009, average costs for Kōmeitō increased possibly in response to increasing party competition that would result in the electoral defeat of the ruling coalition. Kōmeitō spending, like income, places it squarely in the middle of the other two parties. Overall, the averages for Kōmeitō show that the party is moderately positioned between the LDP and DPJ in terms of income and spending. Its members as a whole are more likely to rely on party funds instead of political contributions, which can also be said of the DPJ. At the same time, Kōmeitō politicians competing in the single-member districts may not have needed as much funds since joining the coalition government meant that the LDP and Kōmeitō cooperated to minimize any direct electoral competition between each other. They might have also utilized fewer funds because they could make use of a large army of Sōka Gakkai volunteers (see chapter 5 and Ehrhardt 2009). Compared to the DPJ, Kōmeitō members were also much better funded, which is reflected not only in the party’s overall financial strength but also by the ability of the individual members of the party to attract political contributions. Campaign Finance Reform

One of the likely consequences of Kōmeitō’s relatively smaller reliance on raising vast sums of money is that it is able to advocate for greater transparency in the realm of Japan’s campaign finance laws. Kōmeitō’s activities in this policy field are also motivated by its ideal of “humanist politics” and the goal of fighting political decay (seiji fuhaibō) (see chapter 10). As part of the ruling government with the LDP (1999–​2009), Kōmeitō

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faced considerable obstacles for realizing these policy preferences since the LDP’s way of financing itself was prone to corruption. During the coalition decade, there were two notable efforts to reform the campaign finance system and in both cases (2004 and 2007) the impetus to reform was due to the exposure of scandal in the LDP. In 2004, Kōmeitō and the LDP sponsored legislation that would ultimately revise one part of the Political Funds Control Law. The main impetus for reform was the revelation in the same year that the large Hashimoto faction within the LDP had received an illegal hundred-million-yen donation from the Japan Dental Association, funds that were in all likelihood intended to help sponsor the candidate it was backing in the 2001 Upper House election. The fallout from the scandal weakened what had been one of the LDP’s most powerful factions throughout Japan’s postwar period, costing Hashimoto his career and helping further tarnish the image of the LDP among Japanese voters. The campaign finance revision to emerge from all of this commotion was a relatively minor rule change that placed a restriction on the transfer of funds between political bodies (Asahi, 22 October 2004). Unfortunately, for both Kōmeitō and the LDP, this reform did little to ward off another series of scandals three years later. In 2007, the LDP and Kōmeitō proposed new legislation that would require one of the fund-collecting bodies created by politicians (shikin kanri dantai) to attach receipts for expenditures of 50,000 yen or more, with the exception of personnel fees (Asahi, 24 February 2007). The impetus for reform came from a series of scandals that began with the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries minister Matsuoka Toshikatsu. Among the accusations leveled against Matsuoka was that he reported extremely high utilities expenses when utilities for his Tokyo office are provided free of charge from Japanese taxpayers. Mr. Matsuoka argued that his office had spent the money on purified water, which subjected him to considerable ridicule in the national press. His suicide shortly after stunned the nation. To make matters worse for the LDP and its coalition partner, the successors to Mr. Matsuoka’s position were cursed by additional scandals related to the filing of dubious expenses and other financial irregularities. The scandals helped contribute to the LDP’s loss of majority control in the Upper House in summer 2007. Kōmeitō lost three of the twelve seats that were up for election. Two months after the election, the LDP’s then prime minister Abe Shinzō checked himself into a hospital and announced that he was quitting due to crippling diarrhea. After the Upper House election and Abe’s abrupt resignation, the legislation requiring receipts was strengthened and amended. The law that went into effect in 2009 requires all political groups registered to Lower and Upper House members to submit receipts for all ordinary and political

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expenses, excluding personnel fees, above 10,000 yen.8 The receipts must be certified by a registered auditor who may be a lawyer, public accountant, or tax accountant. The receipts can be viewed in person or photocopy requests can be made by interested parties. Compared to the legislation passed in 2004, the 2007 revision is more significant in scope as it subjects the murky area of expenditures to some requirements for receipts and closer public scrutiny. Kōmeitō can surely be credited with supporting the campaign finance legislation, but the major factors that gave rise to these reforms appear to have been public criticism and the efforts of the DPJ and parts of the media to shine a light on the excesses of LDP rule. After the 2009 election, Kōmeitō struggled to reposition itself in the party system. In the realm of campaign finance, Kōmeitō attempted to cooperate with the DPJ in increasing the penalties for false reporting on campaign financial disclosure reports, but little progress was made.9 Sōka Gakkai’s Money-Collecting Methods Thus far, this chapter has focused on Kōmeitō and has noted that its finances have been officially separate from Sōka Gakkai since its creation in 1964. The examination of official campaign finance reports demonstrated that Kōmeitō was particularly strong in the realm of collecting funds from individual donors, many of whom are likely members of Sōka Gakkai. Likewise, Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai seem to have adopted similar practices such as the use of publications to foster their community of supporters. To highlight these points further and to compare Sōka Gakkai with other religious organizations in Japan, this section delves into the ­money-collecting strategies of Kōmeitō’s parent organization, Sōka Gakkai. It does so by examining previous studies on this topic. Although more speculative than definitive, they nonetheless provide some of the only information available. To begin, it is necessary to offer a brief explanation of the importance of Japan’s postwar constitution as well as the 1951 Religious Corporations Law to the emergence of New Religions in general. Article 20 of Japan’s postwar constitution states: “Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. No religious organization should receive any privileges 8  Receipts for expenditures of 10,000 yen or less are supposed to be kept and disclosed upon request. For details, see “Seiji Shikin Kiseihō, Kaiseian Kyō Teishutsu” [Political Funds Control Law Reform Bill to be submitted today] (Asahi, 19 December 2007). 9  See, for instance, “Kōmeian, Ōsuji Ukeire e Minshu, Hoseiyosan Seiritsu Niramu-­ Seijishikin Bassoku Kyōka” [Democratic Party accepts outline of Kōmeitō’s proposal with an eye on passing the supplementary budget-strengthening penal regulations re. political funds] in Asahi (28 October 2010), or “In Policy Shift, Komeito To Oppose Extra Budget” in Japan Times (10 November 2010).

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from the State, nor exercise any political authority.”10 There is nothing formally that prohibits religious organizations from participating in Japanese politics. Indeed, it has been argued that one of the reasons for their active involvement in politics was that the new religious groups wanted to protect themselves from potential attacks from reactionary political forces, including those who advocated for prewar State Shinto (Dorman 2006). Consequently, after the war many of the New Religions such as Sōka Gakkai developed sophisticated organizations, which required considerable expenses to maintain and operate. The Religious Corporations Law, which was passed in 1951, granted religious groups considerable freedom from taxation and government scrutiny of their finances. Because religious groups were protected by the state (and from the state), they maintained considerable freedom in how they operated and financed themselves. The 1995 gassing of the Tokyo subway system by Aum Shinrikyō led the LDP to pass a controversial bill revising part of the Religious Corporations Law (Métraux 1999; Klein 2012). Although the law now requires Sōka Gakkai and other religious organizations to disclose their financial assets to the Japanese government, there is nothing in its provisions that mandates the disclosure of this information to the general public. Thus, there has been no disclosure of Sōka Gakkai finances from 1951 to the present day. The only exception, which will be discussed later in the chapter, is the disclosure of taxable enterprises that was required for a brief time. The lack of adequate reports and legal requirements for disclosure has not only invited considerable negative criticism of Sōka Gakkai, but has also resulted in the lack of basic information about its finances. Fortunately, however, it is possible to glean partial insights into Sōka Gakkai finances by making use of two sources: (1) existing scholarly and journalistic accounts; and (2) the amounts on taxable enterprises linked to Sōka Gakkai that the group disclosed to the Ministry of Finance between 2002 and 2004. Both these sources have considerable limitations in capturing a complete and accurate picture of Sōka Gakkai’s financial bases. But short of disclosure of the financial records of the group itself or a change in the disclosure laws, these are two of the few sources that can be used to glimpse into its current and former practices and to make comparisons between Gakkai and other organizations. Existing Studies on Sōka Gakkai’s Finances

There are countless publications about Sōka Gakkai, although only a few of them give more than a passing mention of the organization’s finances. 10  The full text of the constitution is available at www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/constitution_ and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html (accessed Jan. 2014).

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This section will examine and compare two of the best accounts. The first is The Sokagakkai and Mass Society (1970), by James White, one of the few and most important political science studies to date on this organization. Of particular relevance to this chapter is White’s discussion of Sōka Gakkai finances based on the fieldwork he conducted in the 1960s. The second will be Shimada Hiromi’s (2008) Shin Shūkyō Bijinesu (New Religions’ business), which seeks to explain the various business models followed by New Religions such as Sōka Gakkai. As will be discussed later, even Shimada has to rely on considerable guesswork, which unfortunately makes his study much more suggestive than definitive. Accepting Shimada’s claims at face value, it seems that we know little more about Sōka Gakkai finances despite the passage of four decades since White’s original study. White’s book examines Sōka Gakkai as a sociopolitical movement and attempts to answer such questions as whether it can be categorized as a mass movement and what it means for Japan’s democratic future. To answer these questions, White considers some of its specific tactics and strategies, including those related to finance. He compares Sōka Gakkai to other New Religions in terms of shared finance. The new faiths place little compulsory financial burden on members and instead derive their income from other sources. He argues that having a strong financial base is critical for Sōka Gakkai to maintain itself and support its many activities. Using a variety of evidence gleaned from interviews and from sources both within and outside the organization, White details what he deems to be the most salient features of Sōka Gakkai’s funding base. These can be divided into three main areas: donation drives, fees collected from the elite group in the Financial Department, and funds from its publishing empire. Each of these areas will be discussed and then compared and updated with Shimada’s more recent study. In White’s analysis, the most spectacular source of financial backing for Sōka Gakkai is what he describes as the donation drives. These drives emerged as a way for the organization to support itself, as members were not assessed a regular levy even though they faced the expectation to buy certain publications. They were created for the purpose of constructing new buildings and facilities, but the target goal was always surpassed, providing the organization with additional funds. White gives the spectacular examples of the 1961 and 1965 drives to support the construction of the Grand Reception Hall and the Main Hall of Worship at the Taiseki temple in Shizuoka prefecture. On both occasions, the faithful donated several times the amount of the stated goals of the drive: in 1961 they brought in almost 3.2 billion yen and in 1965 around eight million people

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contributed about 35.5 billion yen. White thus identifies these drives as the most lucrative source of funding for Sōka Gakkai when he published his book in 1970. After donation drives, the second major source of funds for Sōka Gakkai according to White is members who are invited to join an elite group in the organization called the Financial Department or zaimu buin system. These are the members who are deemed to be financially and spiritually fit. After being selected, they are given a gold badge to wear, which helps identify their special status in the organization. The most important aspect for finance is that these members are asked to donate a minimum amount to the organization each year. At the time of White’s study, members paid a sum of 8,000 yen ($22 at the time), which is believed to have helped the Gakkai collect at least $40 million in annual income. Unlike the donation drives, which were held sporadically, fees from the Financial Department were a steady source of revenue from year to year. The third and final major source of funds identified in White’s study is the revenue culled from Sōka Gakkai’s considerable publishing empire. He argues that the publishing activities are important not only because of their revenue, but also because they help conserve manpower and are valuable in transmitting information about the organization to its followers.11 The publications include everything from the Seikyō Shimbun (Holy teachings news) to Nichiren’s works and children’s picture magazines. How profitable is this publishing empire? White cites estimates that place the annual income from these periodicals as being close to 19 billion yen. However, there are considerable overhead costs that need to be subtracted to derive a more accurate sense of net profit. All told, White surmises that the publishing empire brings in slightly less revenue than that collected from the Financial Department. The three major sources of funds discussed by White have strong parallels to some of the money-collecting practices utilized by Kōmeitō covered in the previous section, such as individual contributions and publications revenue. One of the reasons that the party’s finances are officially separate is that it was able to borrow and adapt the money-gathering practices of its parent organization to create an “independent” organization with its own balance sheets. It is important to remember, however, that the division is not absolute. The party’s finances are strong partly because it is able to tap into the financial strength of Sōka Gakkai’s membership base. 11  The top Gakkai leaders typically do not receive salary for their roles in the organization, but instead hold paid positions in the Seikyō Publishing Company and other commercial subsidiaries.

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The unofficial financial ties should not be underestimated and await future exploration and study.12 In contrast to White, Shimada’s study seeks to describe and explain how Japan’s New Religions have each developed their own systems for collecting funds. He emphasizes the importance of these systems because they allow the organizations to maintain themselves. He argues that different organizations have developed their own type of system, which he likens to a business model. He classifies Gakkai as having what he calls a “book club” business model. His discussion of Sōka Gakkai finances includes the three areas covered by White but these have been updated to reflect current practices and contain his estimates of various sources of income. One distinguishing feature of Shimada’s study that is useful here is his emphasis on the importance of the Religious Corporations Law to explain the financial operations of Japan’s New Religions. Because Sōka Gakkai is registered as an official religious corporation, it is not required to pay property tax, inheritance tax, or income tax on activities that the law classifies under the religious sphere. However, for profit-making activities such as publishing, the law allows a discounted income tax for affiliated enterprises (Shimada 2008, 54). Shimada notes that religious organizations cannot receive financial assistance from the government. Thus, if they do not earn money, they will not be able to fund themselves and ultimately will fail to maintain their organization. Like White, Shimada discusses the importance of the donation drives in the 1960s but does not emphasize their importance after this point. Shimada explains that after the war, the leaders of the organization went to great efforts to create a “religion that does not cost money.” Leaders were particularly critical of other religions that stockpiled large sums of cash. He notes that the second president of Sōka Gakkai, Toda Jōsei, stressed that people could become rich just through their faith and targeted his message to the lower economic classes of society. This message typically appealed to those who migrated from the countryside to urban centers, did not attain a high level of education, and were generally not employed in the top companies or represented by labor unions (Shimada 2008, 61; cf. chapter 3). Shimada thus is able to clarify why Toda resisted the implementation of a required membership fee system and why donation drives were necessary for the organization after the war. Another contributing 12  One untapped area is to make use of the party’s original campaign finance reports that list the names, addresses, and main affiliation of the individual donors. This level of detail would be useful in identifying major donors and in helping to disaggregate different interests, as argued by Ehrhardt in chapter 8.

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factor was simply the need to raise immediate funds when Sōka Gakkai was affiliated with the Nichiren Shōshū sect of Buddhism to build enough temples and buildings to accommodate the large influx of believers after the war.13 Shimada further extends the historical importance of the donation drives to the second area discussed by White: the Financial Department. However, he identifies this system as being one of the original sources for some of Sōka Gakkai’s current financial practices. When the system was started in 1951, members were originally requested to donate 4,000 yen each year. Shimada explains that this system started out as tapping into a small elite group but gradually evolved as a responsibility that all members face today. Currently, contributions are collected in December using bank transfer. The target amount is 10,000 yen per household. Some members cannot afford to pay this amount, while other members can donate much more than the target. How much money the organization currently derives from the zaimu buin system is difficult to pinpoint, in part because of the difficulties Shimada notes in estimating the number of members. Estimates from Sōka Gakkai are based on household units—​this is because it is the household that is given the Gohonzon, the object of devotion in the form of the scroll, from the organization itself. The current estimate of 8.27 million households, however, does not control for members that quit the organization or those that do not actively participate. Despite the difficulties in estimating an accurate number, Shimada still attempts to calculate the financial gains from this practice. He surmises that there are about 2.5 million active members, or about 5 million if less active members are included (for instance, those who help at election time). Thus, he calculates that with 2.5 million active members that give 10,000 yen each, the current zaimu buin system probably nets the organization at least 25 billion yen yearly. Following White, Shimada also discusses the importance of the publishing empire, which he views as being less lucrative in current times compared to revenues from the Financial Department. The publishing empire is one of the central components of what Shimada calls the Sōka Gakkai book club model—​followers purchase books, subscriptions, and other literature as might be seen in a book club. He discusses the importance of the Seikyō Shimbun, which has around 5.5 million readers, making it one of the largest newspapers in Japan. It is not a private newspaper, as Shimada notes, but rather the Sōka publishing department that pays a reduced tax for sales and publication. Instead of paying a membership fee 13  Nichiren Shōshū, or “Nichiren True Sect,” is a minority lineage that follows the Buddhist teachings of Nichiren (see chapter 3).

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to join Sōka Gakkai, members are encouraged to subscribe to the newspaper. They are also encouraged to purchase other publications, including some of the hundred-plus books by its current honorary president, Ikeda Daisaku. As nearly all of the publications feature Ikeda quite prominently, Shimada even suggests that the book club model further resembles a “fan club.” The main point of his discussion is that the book club model allows the organization to generate valuable income to support its activities. In Shimada’s coverage of the publishing empire, he does provide a useful estimate of the revenue generated by the Seikyō Shimbun. His estimate is derived by multiplying the monthly subscription price of 1,880 yen by the number of readers. He then deducts the overhead costs, noting that the newspaper does not own its own printing company but must pay other companies for printing. The net profit is close to 16 billion yen, which falls in second place compared to the 25 billion generated by the Financial Department. Based on both estimates, Shimada thus ventures that Sōka Gakkai is able to generate at least 40 billion yen annually. Overall, the portrayal of Sōka Gakkai’s money-gathering methods is fairly consistent between the studies despite the passage of nearly four decades between them. One of the gradual changes to the organization is the move away from the donation drives in the 1960s and the reliance on a small elite in the Financial Department to the book club model where responsibilities and duties are spread across as many followers as possible. The donation drives detailed by White in the 1960s had usefully served their purpose of generating enough additional revenues beyond publishing and the Financial Department to construct new buildings and temples to deal with the massive increase in followers after the war. The high number of new followers was not something that the Nichiren Shōshū sect could easily absorb without the financial assistance of Sōka Gakkai.14 Being the more recent, Shimada’s study also suggests that our knowledge about Sōka Gakkai finances has not progressed very far in the four decades since White’s book. Part of the reason mentioned earlier is that neither the organization nor the Japanese government is required to disclose this information to the public. Another possible explanation is that much of the writing and reporting on this topic seems to be more about appealing to some of the public’s fascination with wealth, power, and religious groups. In the case of Shimada’s writings, one general criticism is that he leaves too much to guesswork and not much effort is made to carefully document and verify all sources. For this reason, his claims about 14  The buildings and temples built with the donation drives are no longer under Sōka Gakkai control since the organization repeatedly clashed with Nichiren Shōshū and both split apart in the 1990s (Shimada 2007).

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religious groups are suggestive, and a more definitive study of the Soka Gakkai’s money-collecting methods remains to be conducted. Income from Sōka Gakkai’s Profit-Making Enterprises

A second avenue to consider Sōka Gakkai’s money-collecting methods is to examine some of the reports the organization was required to disclose to the Japanese government regarding their profit-making enterprises. As an officially registered religious corporation, Sōka Gakkai is not required to pay taxes on activities that fall under the religious sphere, but it has to pay taxes on profit-making activities such as publishing. This section will present some of the information from these reports and try to situate Sōka Gakkai’s profit-making income in relation to that of other religious corporations in Japan. From 2002 to 2004, the Ministry of Finance released information on more than 700,000 profit-making enterprises in Japan, which included some estimates for the profit-making companies affiliated with major religious corporations including Sōka Gakkai. These reports have been compiled and published for business users in Japan to capture a general sense of which corporations in the country are making the most profit in a given year and in a given sector. To compare Sōka Gakkai against other religious corporations and to see the comparative rankings for each group among the more than 700,000 profit-making enterprises, the earnings of the top ten largest religious organizations for the year 2003 is reported in table 7.4. Several observations can be made based on the figures presented in table 7.4. First, it is clear that Sōka Gakkai is the top religious corporation in Japan in terms of sheer earnings. In 2003 alone, it posted more than 18 billion yen in profits from its vast publishing empire alone. Second, while Sōka Gakkai occupies the top spot for religious corporations, its earnings place it in the 170th position among the more than 700,000 corporations. The top position, incidentally, is held by the supermarket chain Itoyokado. Thus, the Sōka Gakkai’s profit-based earnings are quite considerable if compared with either other religious corporations or against other profitmaking corporations. The earnings were also surpassed by 169 corporations, which must be kept in perspective. The success of Sōka Gakkai’s book club model has incidentally made it a target for criticism along with the Religious Corporations Law that allows it to receive reduced taxes. Some questioned why the Japanese government would protect religious organizations with tax breaks when many companies were going bankrupt during times of economic recession.15 Criticisms over the role of religious groups in politics also came to 15 

For more discussion on this point, see Mullins (2001).

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Table 7.4 2003 earnings of religious corporations in Japan (yen in millions) Rank

Income Rank

Corporate Body (Affiliation)

Earnings

Sōka Gakkai (Buddhist)

18,115

1

170

2

2,020

Meiji Jingu (Shinto)

3

8,805

Gessōji (Buddhist)

409

4

9,296

Renjōji (Buddhist)

388

5

11,308

Sensōji (Buddhist)

321

6

11,402

Reiha no Hikari Kyōkai (Shinto)

319

7

11,426

Yasukuni Jinja (Shinto)

318

8

12,380

Kenshōkai (Buddhist)

293

9

13,416

Kōsenji (Buddhist)

269

10

13,416

Nihon Kirisuto Kyōdan Misakichō Kyōkai (Christian)

258

1,687

Source: Hōjin shintoku rankingu (2004).

the forefront when Kōmeitō joined the coalition government led by the LDP in 1999 (see chapter 9). Although I was not able to evaluate these criticisms directly, the analysis and discussion here suggests that the moneygathering methods of Sōka Gakkai have many things in common with the methods of other religious groups, political parties, and corporations. Conclusions This chapter examined some of the money-collecting methods of Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai with comparisons to other political parties and religious organizations. Compared to several of the other main political parties, Kōmeitō’s money-gathering methods are not drastically different. Kōmeitō is a wealthy political party, but not the wealthiest. Its publishing empire, similar to that of Sōka Gakkai as well as the Communist Party, generates considerable revenue. Like in the cases of the DPJ and LDP, contributions from individual supporters form only a small portion of income at the party headquarter or Lower House level. One exception here is at the prefectural level, where Kōmeitō is particularly strong at collecting

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individual contributions. What perhaps makes Kōmeitō unique as a religious political party seems to be its relationship with Sōka Gakkai, whose members contribute money and support to the party through informal channels that escape easy quantification. Additional research is needed to better illuminate some of the informal ties but also efforts to compare Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai to other religious groups that are active in Japanese politics. References Carlson, Matthew. 2007. Money Politics in Japan: New Rules, Old Practices. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Dorman, Ben. 2006. “Religious Politics, Japanese Style.” Religion in the News 9, no. 1:6–​18. Ehrhardt, George. 2009. “Rethinking the Kōmeitō Voter.” Japanese Journal of Political Science 10, no. 1:1–​20. Hōjin shintoku rankingu: Nihon no kaisha besuto 7-man 1076-sha [Company revenue ranking: Japan’s best 71,076]. 2004. Tokyo: Daiyamondosha. Kanpō. Various years. Seiji dantai no shūshi hōkokusho no yōshi [Income reports of political organizations]. Tokyo: Ministry of Finance Press. Klein, Axel. 2012. “Twice Bitten, Once Shy: Religious Organizations and Politics after the Aum Attack.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39, no. 1:77–​98. Kōhō. Various years. Seiji dantai no shūshi hōkokusho no yōshi [Income reports of political organizations]. Senkyo Kanri Iinkai [Election Administration Commission] (located in each prefecture). Métraux, Daniel. 1999. “Religious Terrorism in Japan: The Fatal Appeal of Aum Shinrikyo.” Asian Survey 35, no. 12:1140–​1154. Mullins, Mark. 2001. “The Legal and Political Fallout of the ‘Aum Affair.’” In Religion and Social Crisis in Japan, edited by Robert Kisala and Mark Mullins, 71–​86. New York: Palgrave. Nassmacher, Karl-Heinz. 2009. The Funding of Party Competition: Political Finance in 25 Democracies. Baden-Baden: Nomos. New Kōmeitō. New Kōmeitō’s Views on Politics and Religion in Japan. Available at www.komei.or.jp/en/about/view.html. Accessed 31 December 2013. Shimada Hiromi. 2007. Kōmeitō vs Sōka Gakkai [Kōmeitō versus Sōka Gakkai]. Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha. ———. 2008. Shin shūkyō ‘bijinesu’ [New Religions’ “business”] Tokyo: Kodansha. White, James. 1970. The Sokagakkai and Mass Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

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Periodicals

Asahi (Shimbun) is one of five national newspapers in Japan. As of 2013 its circulation (morning edition: 7.6 million; evening edition: 2.7 million) was second only to that of the Yomiuri Shimbun (see http:// adv.yomiuri.co.jp/yomiuri/busu/busu01.html; accessed Jan. 2014). Japan Times is the major English-language daily newspaper in Japan, with a circulation of close to 50,000.

Eight

Housewife Voters and Kōmeitō Policies

George Ehrhardt

Introduction Deciphering what Kōmeitō wants to accomplish is an enduring project for outside observers. This is often driven by the way it commonly uses left-of-center rhetoric on social issues while allying solely with the rightof-center Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) instead of the more left-leaning Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Broadly speaking, there are two conventional understandings of Kōmeitō political goals that explain this discrepancy: religious motives and elite power seeking. While these theories have different implications, they both rely on a top-down model of political behavior, which assumes that voters echo politicians’ preferences, rather than the other way around. In this chapter, I take the perspective that in spite of its religious origins, Kōmeitō is above all a political party, whose goal is to win elections. Like other political parties, it pursues policies to win votes, and the key to understanding Kōmeitō’s policy goals is identifying whose votes the party seeks to win (Aldrich 1995). To restate this differently, while important decisions are typically made by elites in opaque processes, the contents of those decisions are dominated by the long shadow of grassroots preferences. Correspondingly, understanding the party’s supporters allows us to explain what the party is doing and is likely to do in the future. Saying that Kōmeitō’s base is Sōka Gakkai—​as most analyses do—​isn’t wrong, but it misses a fundamental point: unpacking the black box of Sōka Gakkai membership reveals a diversity of political preferences. Looking at those gives us a more nuanced understanding, one that enables us to see how the party relies on a particular portion of Sōka Gakkai for its votes, and how that shapes its policy goals. Here I propose and test an alternative hypothesis about Kōmeitō’s agenda: like secular political parties, Kōmeitō’s policy agenda matches that of its core supporters, which in this case is Sōka Gakkai’s Married

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Women’s Division (Fujinbu). I find that not only does a study of Kōmeitō policies support this alternative hypothesis; the theory also helps us understand related political behavior. For example, it explains the uniquely profemale gender gap in Kōmeitō party support and why Sōka Gakkai membership produces different effects on the political behavior for women than it does for men. This bottom-up hypothesis contrasts with the two top-down hypotheses that have held sway since the 1960s. Until 1970 or so, observers agreed that Sōka Gakkai’s explicit goal in political mobilization was religious control. Levi McLaughlin’s chapter in this volume (chapter 3) builds on earlier work by White (1970) and Nakano (2003) to explore these religious intentions, arguing that Sōka Gakkai saw politics as a tool to converting Japan to its brand of Nichiren Buddhism (White 1970; Métraux 1988, 1994; Nakano 2003). Disregarding the postwar constitutional restrictions on state-sponsored religion, Sōka Gakkai hoped its political wing Kōmeitō would bring the ordination of Buddhist priests nationwide under their control. By 1970, however, even the most ardent supporters understood the strength of their opposition and dropped the explicitly theocratic portion of the party’s agenda. The currently dominant hypothesis among scholars looking at Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō is that Kōmeitō’s primary goal is power itself (­Miura 2003; Tamano 2008; Matsutani 2009; Suzuki 2010). In other words, the party subordinates its policy agenda to whatever potential partner offers it the greatest share of power and status. Kabashima, for example, insists that “the reason Kōmeitō leaders don’t use their bargaining power over the LDP is that they aren’t just interested in implementing policy, they want power for the sake of being in power” (Kabashima and Yamamoto 2004). Tamano puts a more positive spin on this sentiment in his explanation of Kōmeitō’s rationale for abandoning firm goals, saying that from the party’s perspective, “to exercise influence and make policy, one has to look carefully at the political scene and from time to time work with different parties and make compromises.” Admittedly, this is true of all political parties to some degree, especially junior parties in ruling coalitions, but these observers insist that since 1998, Kōmeitō in particular has no enduring goals.1 These authors agree that the party’s turn away from ideology is a recent event. In its early days, Kōmeitō claimed to be a voice for the marginalized, those who belonged to neither unions supporting the Japan Socialist 1  Some authors qualify this assertion by noting Kōmeitō’s post-1995 interest in protecting Sōka Gakkai from government oversight, and its leader Ikeda Daisaku from being compelled to testify before the Diet.

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or Democratic Socialist Party nor industrial interests supporting the Liberal Democrats. Former Kōmeitō chief representative Takeiri Yoshikatsu and former Diet member Hirano Sado, who worked with Kōmeitō legislators in the 1993–​1994 coalition government, both insist that Kōmeitō once represented poor and marginalized migrants to Tokyo or Osaka working at small businesses.2 Their criticism—​and that of the scholars quoted earlier—​is for Kōmeitō in the twenty-first century. Matsutani (2009) supports this with a Marxist false consciousness argument, insisting that the organization’s religious messages overwhelm lower-class Kōmeitō partisans’ economic interests. This turn, scholars agree, implies Kōmeitō is pursuing power for the sake of power and status, not a policy agenda. Indeed, Kōmeitō’s behavior during the DPJ administration may support this interpretation; its refusal to join the DPJ in coalition calls its rhetoric into question, since the DPJ agenda would appear to be more similar than the LDP’s (see chapter 10). Nevertheless, denials of Kōmeitō support for particular agendas are ultimately unsatisfying. Saying that Kōmeitō’s policy agenda doesn’t center on helping the poor, for example, does not mean that it has no policy agenda. Similarly, Suzuki’s argument that Kōmeitō’s actions don’t fit social democratic ideology does not mean that the party has no ideology. Political parties in all countries evolve over time, trading constituents and policies, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t ascribe them a set of political preferences. The best way to understand Kōmeitō’s goals is to investigate who it does represent, not whom it doesn’t. Investigating who the party does represent uncovers a trail that leads straight to the housewives of the Sōka Gakkai Married Women’s Division. Prior research has given us a robust picture of contemporary Japanese housewives’ politics, and at first blush that picture looks very similar to Kōmeitō’s policy choices. Consider the party’s self-proclaimed signature achievements, the jidoteate (monthly payments to all families with small children) and holding down health insurance costs for retirees. Both policies are aimed at a single audience—​housewives who manage the finances and care of both young children and elderly parents. I suggest the party’s choice to trumpet these achievements, rather than policies to help the urban worker or small businessman, is a signal that the party itself sees Sōka Gakkai housewives as its core constituency (see chapter 10).3

2  For evidence on the historical composition of Kōmeitō supporters, see White (1970) and Azumi (1971). 3  For more detail on Kōmeitō’s promotional materials, electoral outreach, and campaign rhetoric where these themes occur, see Ehrhardt (2009).

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Housewives In Japan, the word shufu—​usually translated as “housewife”—​is a broadly inclusive term, including both sengyō shufu (full-time housewives), who do not work outside the home, and women who combine housework with part-time jobs. Conceptually, though, it is closer to the English word “homemaker,” because it carries connotations of holding primary responsibility for the home and the people in it (Leblanc 1999). Over the past decade, scholars have discovered a distinctive set of political attitudes among Japanese housewives, one that cuts across economic status and geography. Japanese Housewives: Public, But Not Political

Scholars broadly agree on three common characteristics of Japanese housewives. Their policy agenda focuses on issues that touch the household; foreign policy and business conditions are far less important. They do act publicly, forming groups and associations to collectively solve problems. Nevertheless, they remain deeply ambivalent about electoral politics. While they vote in equal numbers to men, other forms of political participation are far less common among women, especially those that identify as housewives. Susan Pharr (1998) coined the term “care issues” to describe housewife policy preferences. In survey after survey, Japanese housewives prioritize issues of social welfare, environmental protection, consumer protection, tax reform, and education (Soma 1975; Watanuki 1991; Hastings 1996; Patterson and Nishikawa 2002). Gill Steel (2004) supports these surveys with focus groups, finding that her participants become particularly animated when talking about environmental protection and neighborhood problems. Robin Leblanc (1999) confirms this with a long-term ethnographic study of a group of housewives in Tokyo, finding that they are most interested in questions of how vulnerable members of society such as children, the elderly, and the handicapped can be protected. These women turn out to be highly active in community groups, particularly those that address their preferred issues. Some are directly related to their role as housewives, like the PTO or the consumer cooperative Netto. Others are more community oriented, like the halfway house for mentally handicapped that Leblanc volunteers at with the women she studies. Either way, they blur the line between private and public life, making Eto’s description of how housewife movements like Life Club or Netto link women to public life worth quoting in full: “The organizations provide women with a space for interplay between the public and private spheres through three functions: the transformation of women’s private

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concerns into public issues; problem-solving based on their everyday experience; and sharing knowledge and expertise which have been accumulated in political activities” (2004, 42). Combined with our knowledge of housewives’ policy preferences, this draws a picture of women interested in a particular set of issues, those relating to their homemaker responsibilities, and willing to leave the home to take public action to resolve problems they see as important. And yet, in spite of having clear political interests and a willingness to act, Japanese housewives are relatively reluctant to translate those feelings into campaign work. A survey of 1,618 voters after the 2000 election, for example, found that 35% of men claimed to have helped in a political campaign, in contrast to only 25% of women (Leblanc 1999; Steel 2004; Eto 2004; Nishizawa et al. 2001). Among women who identified themselves as housewives, that number fell to 24%. Roughly the same percentage of men (37%) claimed to have attended political rallies, a number that fell to 21% among women and 20% among self-identified housewives. The survey finds similar gender differences in other measures of political participation, including donating money, writing to politicians, and so on. When asked if they had asked friends to vote for a political party (the most common form of Gakkai member political participation), 32% of men said yes compared with only 21% of women. The only measure on which men and women remained equal was voting; 91% of both sexes claimed to have voted “a number of times” in past elections. While contemporary Japanese women are as interested in politics as men, equally well informed, and turn out to vote in roughly equal proportion, women are nevertheless less likely to support a political party, less likely to become politicians, less likely to feel they belong in the political process, and more reluctant to engage in campaigning (Imamura 1987; Watanuki 1991; Iwao 1993; Kutsuzawa 1998; Leblanc 1999; Patterson and Nishikawa 2002). These gaps have decreased since the immediate postwar period, but they remain significant. In short, Japanese women tend to reject electoral politics. The source of this rejection remains subject to debate, but scholars have identified two explanations: one is cultural, inherent in housewives’ private identity, and the other is rational, a decision that political parties do not support their policy agenda. Eto and Leblanc argue the latter, citing their participants’ insistence that the political realm cannot solve their problems, pointing out how males’ separation from the domestic sphere leads male politicians to neglect issues like elderly care or food safety. At the same time, Patterson and Nishikawa analyze long-term survey data and find clear evidence that women do support some parties, as

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Figure 8.1 Size of gender gap in party support (in percent).

Source: Patterson and Nishikawa (2002) and data from various General Social Surveys from 2000 to 2008.

shown in figure 8.1. This figure shows the percentage of men that support the party minus the percentage of women for each major party, so that positive numbers represent majority male support, and negative numbers represent majority female support. The vertical lines show the range of observations over the five General Social Survey4 studies between 2000 and 2008, the circles represent the average gender balance for each party. The LDP and DPJ have high numbers, indicating that their support among men is higher than among women. The Communist Party and Socialist Party, known for addressing issues that matter to housewives, have much smaller gender gaps. And yet, even the Socialists still have more male partisans than female partisans. In fact, Kōmeitō is the only party that consistently has a profemale gender gap. By Patterson and Nishikawa’s measures, Kōmeitō’s highest level male support is below the lowest recorded by any other party, even parties like the Socialists that are seen as more woman-friendly in the literature. 4 

The General Social Survey is conducted every other year by the University of Chicago.

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Kōmeitō’s position as the only party that draws higher support from women than men—​and one that does so consistently—​raises a serious question. Why are women willing to identify with Kōmeitō and not the other parties? In this chapter I argue that Kōmeitō retains its female support by appealing to the housewives of Sōka Gakkai’s Married Women’s Division—​the Fujinbu. Housewives: The “Pillar of the Sōka Gakkai”

Toward the end of my fieldwork with Sōka Gakkai in 2007, I was touring a meeting hall in Osaka, and we came across a locked door in the basement, with signs cautioning visitors to stay out. I asked what lay behind the door, and my guide replied that was the “Fujinbu activity room.” I pressed him, wondering what the women did behind closed doors, and whether other divisions had their own room. He paused, clearly unsure how to reply. In the end, he said that only the Fujinbu had a room, because “women need space to do, you know, Fujinbu stuff.”5 In theory, the Fujinbu is for all adult females, but, in reality, the organization expects that its members are housewives; this expectation is already in place when members graduate from youth divisions to the gendered adult divisions. Men’s identity is determined by their employment status: entry into their adult group (Seinenbu) occurs when they enter the workforce, and later join the Senior (Sōnen) Division. Women, on the contrary, gain their adult status from marriage, joining the Fujinbu when they achieve that milestone; like marriage, Fujinbu status is for life—​there is no Retired Women’s Division as there is for men. Meeting schedules cement these gendered identities. Men’s Division meetings start between nine and ten at night, after members get home from work. Fujinbu meetings start around 1 pm, arranged to fit a housewife’s schedule—​sandwiched between housework in the mornings and children’s arrival home from school after 2:30 pm.6 Obviously, this works only for families held together by a female homemaker—​career women have no place, nor do men who must stay home with their children at night. This fixed gender role is common among Japanese New Religions, most of which encourage believers to accept a worldview that a woman’s place is in the home, subordinate to her husband. Hardacre’s work (1986) on Risshō Kōseikai, a Buddhist New Religion, documents how its religious doctrine bluntly asserts male superiority. Her work on Reiyūkai (1984) shows how its emphasis on preserving extended families (ie) encourages women to submit to their husbands and dedicate themselves to being a 5  6 

All translations are mine. Mixed-gender events usually happen on weekends.

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“dutiful wife.” Usui describes something similar in Shinyoen, where the founding leader’s wife became an important figure in her own right, but who remained situated in the kitchen, giving instruction while caring for her family (2003, 217–​241). She urged female believers to serve others rather than themselves. Kaneko’s work on Tenrikyō finds elements of this same maternalistic teaching, though she does qualify it as a modern addition, rather than an original teaching (2003, 3–​4 and 243–​258). The net result of these teachings is what Hardacre (1993) calls the “radical patriarchism” of Japanese New Religions. By rhetorically valuing the maternal role, they lead female believers to internalize a norm of staying at home. This leaves the public sphere of collective activity and decision making exclusively to men. It is easy to see how this works in Sōka Gakkai. The subleaders around honorary president Ikeda Daisaku are all male. Underneath them, at each level—​neighborhood, district, prefecture, and so on—​there are separate positions for the head of the Youth Division, Young Women’s Division, Men’s Division, Women’s Division, and Senior Men’s Division, but only the senior men’s leader is referred to as overall leader of that geographic area. At mixed-gender meetings in my experience, men do more of the speaking, and do so more authoritatively. For example, when two leaders of different genders but equal rank were present, the male spoke last, signifying his higher authority. In theory, then, it is difficult to imagine the Fujinbu as an independent constituency with its own preferences. And yet, a closer look at actual practice challenges this; there are too many anecdotes like the following that it cannot explain. Sōka Gakkai’s daily newspaper Seikyō Shimbun is a major part of communication within the organization, and all members are expected to subscribe to it and sell it to nonmembers. Women do the actual work of selling and distributing it, but, in theory, men are in charge. Theory, however, does not match reality. At one year-end meeting I attended, for example, the male leader responsible for newspaper sales got up to present the year’s results, but he quickly went off the rails: “Well guys, like usual, except for Mr. District-leader all the top sellers were women. Here’s the list . . .” He stopped, confused, then looked at his wife. “Uh, honey? Do you have the list?” She shuffled through her papers, found the list, and he read the names aloud. Then he said, “And our top salesperson sold . . .” He stopped again. “Uh, honey, how much did she sell?” he asked. “Maybe I should do this?” she replied. “Uh, maybe that’d be a good idea,” he said, sitting down.

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I looked around the room. No one seemed disturbed, or even surprised, that his wife was actually the one in control—​most joined the presenter in a good-natured chuckle. In theory, a gendered patriarchy is in charge. In practice, it isn’t. Another time, I attended a mixed-gender meeting where each division performed a song. Singing is common at meetings, much like in Christian services. This time, the women sang without incident, but when the Senior Men Division’s turn came, their performance was a mess—​out of tune, unfamiliar lyrics. Watching the audience, I could see the older women look at each other with expressions of “here we go again” and begin singing, carrying the men through the rest of their song. The striking thing about this incident isn’t that the women helped sing, it was the expectation of the men’s inability to fulfill their role without female help—​the same expectation I saw in the newspaper presentation. On my way home from a later meeting, I discussed the issue with a regional leader; an older man and successful business owner in a rural farming community, a social role that tends to produce men who believe that men should be in charge and women should do what they’re told. But when I asked him about gender and power in Sōka Gakkai, he replied: “Well, yes, men are in charge. But, you know, if we make decisions they [the Fujinbu] don’t like, they argue. And they don’t stop arguing. They don’t stop until we change. So we just don’t do anything they might argue with.” I think he artfully sums up the role of gender in Sōka Gakkai that I witnessed. Formally, men dominate, but they act in the long shadow of the housewives of the Fujinbu. I thought of these stories while listening to my two guides talk about what might lie behind Fujinbu’s locked door on the tour I mentioned earlier. After my guide admitted he didn’t know what happened inside the room, he continued: “They don’t exactly tell us what they are doing.” The observer from headquarters accompanying us nodded his head in agreement, and the two commiserated about how “the Fujinbu does whatever the Fujinbu decides to do.”7 At that point in my fieldwork, I was accustomed to such comments, but I was still surprised to hear it from these two men, since the man from headquarters was an important figure for the whole Kansai area, and the tour guide was the regional director in charge of the building itself. 7  Another version of this story: I asked someone from the organization about who picks the songs for each meeting, wondering how it compared to Christian churches. He replied that the organization issues guidance about which songs to sing each month, but the Fujinbu sings songs they like and doesn’t sing songs they don’t.

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They acknowledged that women, ostensibly low in the gender hierarchy, carve out physical and metaphorical space for action independent of the male control. The men responsible for their behavior in theory could neither control nor even monitor their activity in practice. This independence challenges our stereotype of gendered Japanese religion, forcing us to acknowledge women’s potential for independent political action and justifying an unprejudiced look at the Fujinbu’s role in electoral politics. Sōka Gakkai Housewives: Public and Political

In contrast to secular housewives, Fujinbu members eagerly embrace electoral politics. Journalistic exposés of Sōka Gakkai often include stories of Fujinbu electioneering, told in breathless “can you believe it” tones. In one interview, a former Fujinbu member divulges her electioneering secret—​ wait until election season to hire home repairmen so she has a captive audience (SGMK 2001).8 In my own fieldwork, one young man told me a story about his mother’s enthusiasm: during election season, she regularly harangues Communist Party candidates speaking at train stations, shouting them down with cries of “Liar!” and worse—​not at all what our theories of housewife behavior predict. Sōka Gakkai itself leaves no doubt that the Fujinbu is the most powerful vote-gathering organization in the country (SGMK 2011). Survey data support these claims, showing how strikingly different Sōka Gakkai housewives are from the secular counterparts. Table 8.1 makes this clear, comparing the two groups. No matter what form of political participation one looks at, women in Sōka Gakkai are between two and four times as likely to engage in it. This is especially true for asking friends to vote and donating money—​activities in which all Sōka Gakkai members are expected to participate. Admittedly, Sōka Gakkai men are still more likely than women to engage in the traditional types of political participation measured in surveys. What those surveys’ definitions of campaigning miss, however, are the ways the Fujinbu drives others’ participation in ways that aren’t included in those surveys. In chapter 5 of this volume I offer more details on Sōka Gakkai electioneering, but here I want to point out how women have a crucial internal role, organizing and mobilizing men’s campaign activities. Sōka Gakkai campaign activities can be divided into two categories: gathering external support (f-tori) and mobilizing members to go vote 8  Even Sōka Gakkai members recognize the potential for self-parody in this behavior. The organization’s newspaper Seikyō Shimbun ran a cartoon in which two ladies sit in a crowded public bath, carrying on a conversation about the virtues of the local Kōmeitō representative, then smugly announce at their next Sōka Gakkai meeting that they did election outreach to fifty people.

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Table 8.1 Gender and political participation

Measures of political participation

Women in the population at large

Women in Sōka Gakkai

Attend political rally

21%

46%

Ask friend to vote for a political party

21%

64%

Volunteer for a campaign

24%

39%

Donate money

10%

39%

Source: JEDS (2000). Note: N=1,618 total, 55 women in Sōka Gakkai.

(naibu kakunin). The former is essentially an individual act; each member is responsible for producing his or her own list of associates to contact during the election period. In contrast, internal mobilization is organized by the Fujinbu. Prior to the election, Fujinbu members produce detailed spreadsheets of the membership in their district, with names, addresses, and phone numbers, as well as other relevant details about each person. Once the list is complete, they divide it along the organization’s fine-grained structure. For example, a Young Men’s block-leader would get the names of young men in the five or so families in his “block.” The Senior Division leaders would get their members’ names, and so on with the other divisions. The person in each division at the next level up, the “chiku-leader,” would get the lists of the three “blocks” under his supervision, and so on up the ladder. Each leader is responsible for contacting their members and verifying that they voted. Tellingly, though, while members are formally responsible to their immediate supervisor for that information, in fieldwork I often heard men complain that Fujinbu members continually pester them on their progress. In the same way as the newspaper sales anecdote illustrates how women manage that critical fund-raising activity, women manage electoral mobilization for the whole organization. The other women’s role is more difficult to assess. On the outside, Sōka Gakkai appears wholly committed to Kōmeitō campaigning, but fieldwork on the inside suggests there is a gender gap in enthusiasm. This showed up in the way women describe campaigning as “fun” (runrun suru, as one member put it at a Fujinbu meeting in 2007). They typically describe it in terms of meeting people and socializing, putting campaigning in a broader context of social interaction. The most common

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response from men, meanwhile, is along the lines of “well, it’s better than selling newspapers.”9 I have heard a variety of men—​from rank-and-file members in both the Young and Senior Men’s divisions to officials in the Kōmeitō and even at Sōka Gakkai headquarters itself—​express reservations about the pressure to contact everyone they know at election time. Some explain that they just “aren’t enthusiastic,” others rationalize that it may be counterproductive if it becomes harassment and alienates potential voters. When I asked some of them why the practice persists, why there isn’t a debate inside Sōka Gakkai about campaigning, they each separately pointed the finger at the Fujinbu, insisting that its commitment to the current campaign strategy is too strong to resist. As deep as the religious gap may be between secular housewives and the Fujinbu, their political differences come down to one key point. Observers agree that secular housewives are publicly active in volunteer and community organizations, but not in electoral politics. Members of the Fujinbu share that public activism, but it takes the form of being politically active in Kōmeitō electoral campaigns. This activism is crucial to Kōmeitō’s electoral fortunes. While Sōka Gakkai men are still more likely to engage in what we conventionally define as political participation, Kōmeitō political campaigns depend on a backdrop of Fujinbu organization and commitment. It is impossible to put a precise figure on how important the Fujinbu is to Sōka Gakkai electioneering, but I heard from a variety of sources within the organization that the Fujinbu is responsible for 70 to 80 percent of all Sōka Gakkai activity.10 When Ikeda Daisaku says, as he often does, that the Fujinbu is the “pillar” of Sōka Gakkai, he means that without that 70 percent, the rest falls. So it is with Kōmeitō election campaigns—​without the Fujinbu, Kōmeitō falls. Testing the Theory: Fujinbu Votes and Kōmeitō Policies This means we must take a fresh look at the relationship between Kōmeitō’s policies and its supporters’ political preferences. As I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, there appears to be a gap between the l­ ower-class economic interests of many Sōka Gakkai voters and the policies Kōmeitō has pursued in coalition with the LDP since 1999. While there is some debate about what this implies, analysts agree that the gap exists.11 They reach this conclusion through statistical looks at 9  The few men that were enthusiastic about campaigning tended to see it as an opportunity for personal growth, rather than as an enjoyable activity. 10  Levi McLaughlin, the author of chapter 3 in this volume, confirms that he consistently heard the same figure in his fieldwork as well. 11  Tamano (2010) argues that it presages dissension between Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō,

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Sōka Gakkai, finding that its members are predominantly self-employed or blue-collar, and have lower educational attainment than the national average.12 This is true, if we see Sōka Gakkai only as a statistical aggregate and ignore the evidence that Kōmeitō support is driven by a subset of Sōka Gakkai members. The presence of a large subgroup within Kōmeitō’s supporters who have different preferences from the conventional class-based analysis implies an alternative hypothesis about Kōmeitō motives. Within the limits imposed on a junior coalition partner, Kōmeitō policy goals will be similar to those of its largest coherent support group—​housewives. Replacing the assumption of a homogenous Sōka Gakkai with a more nuanced understanding of differences within the organization allows us to tie Kōmeitō policies to portions of the religion. The central puzzle in this chapter is why Kōmeitō pursues the policies it does: as LDP-pleasing measures to ensure its acceptance in the ruling coalition, or as voter-pleasing measures to ensure continued Fujinbu support. Fortunately, Kōmeitō’s time in the ruling coalition offers an opportunity to test these competing theories of Kōmeitō goals. If the party’s policy agenda matches that of housewives, that will provide evidence that it seeks those policies desired by its supporters—​as do secular political parties worldwide. Our earlier summary of the literature on housewives policy preferences in Japan provides a baseline against which to compare Kōmeitō policies: they should emphasize social welfare, education, political corruption, environmental protection, and consumer protection, while being willing to compromise on foreign policy, industrial policy, and administrative reform. And if Kōmeitō policy goals do not match that list, then we will have evidence that the conventional wisdom is correct about Kōmeitō’s seeking power for the sake of power. This section provides an overview of Kōmeitō policy as a ruling party from 1999 through 2009, which can be compared to what we know of Fujinbu preferences (readers interested in a more complete picture of Kōmeitō policy can find it in chapter 10 in this book). To understand Kōmeitō policy, though, we need to look at two different aspects: the content of its policy stances and the kinds of issues on which it takes a stance.

but Matsutani (2009) thinks that is unlikely because religious rhetoric takes precedence over economic interests among Sōka Gakkai voters. 12  In an interesting contrast between politicians and academics, Kōmeitō Diet member Takagi Yōsuke interprets these results differently, pointing out that the average is an abstract number, and that actual Sōka Gakkai members include “company presidents, housewives, retirees, the disabled, straddling every social class” (AERA, 8 November 2004, 30).

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Kōmeitō Issues

Broad surveys that measure the content of parties’ stances on national issues, like those analyzed by Kabashima and Matsutani, miss something important about the kind of issues Kōmeitō cares about: the party pursues a collection of small issues, not an overarching worldview.13 If you listen to Kōmeitō party rhetoric from both national and local politicians, the phrase “politics that listens to those on the front lines” (genba no koe ga todoku seiji) crops up again and again, and it reflects the way Kōmeitō politicians see their comparative advantage over other parties in solving problems in daily life, not wrestling with macrolevel issues. While this sounds like the constituent service that all politicians engage in, Kōmeitō candidates use this phrase in the slightly different context of solving small-scale collective problems rather than intervening for individuals. This seems much like generic campaign rhetoric, which I did not fully appreciate until I heard a campaign speech by Hamada Masayoshi, a Kōmeitō candidate in the 2010 Upper House election. The biggest issue of the election was a proposed sales tax hike, and he did talk about that, but he spent much more time on a peculiar issue—​handwriting. Apparently, the Ministry of External Trade and Industry has a subsidy program for small businesses, but Hamada received a constituent complaint that it was too difficult to apply for. Securing a copy of the application, he decided that it was so long (three pages) that the small business owners he knew would give up before they finished. Who can stand filling out a three-page form? he asked rhetorically. So he scanned the form into his computer and did some editing, shrinking the boxes so it all fit on a single side of a page. When he took it back to METI, the bureaucrats refused to use it, insisting that petitioners would write so small they would not be able to read it. Hamada countered that the business owners could take it to an unemployment office, where the clerks could fill it in neatly. The bureaucrats agreed, he announced, and now life is (apparently) easier for small business owners. Nor was this the only example. He spent equally long talking about how he had done fieldwork at electronics stores to see whether they numbered their receipts so he could arrange for an “eco-star appliance” reimbursement program to be backdated three months. Accustomed to ideological politics and generic stump speeches, I was stunned. A national politician making it a priority to boast about the time he spent photoshopping a 13  Tamano Kozushi, one of the few Japanese academics who study Kōmeitō, goes so far as to predict (2010) that after Ikeda’s death, it will abandon national politics altogether and be content as the country’s largest collection of local politicians.

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government form? Or visiting appliance stores? Amid all the problems Japan faces he wants us to know about his intervention for three months of appliance sales? This makes no sense in terms of a broad party agenda or ideology, but it helps put the question of Kōmeitō’s alliance with the LDP instead of the DPJ into the proper perspective. A trivia-filled campaign speech makes perfect sense if we recognize that Kōmeitō is beholden to a constituency that prioritizes neighborhood problems over national macrolevel issues. Hamada’s speech owes little or nothing to Buddhist theology or social justice, but it’s dead-on for talking to the women in Steel’s (2004) focus groups, who tuned out national politics but perked up when the conversation turned to narrow daily life issues. None of these evince a grand vision for Japanese society, nor do they suggest any overarching ideology that voters might share. They do not offer the analyst any leverage for placing the party on a standard political continuum. They do, on the contrary, seem designed to answer the particularistic concerns of Japanese housewives. This explains the contradiction between this chapter and arguments by Kabashima, Matsutani, and others, that Kōmeitō’s party agenda does not match that of its voters. That literature relies on survey research measuring the distance between Sōka Gakkai voters and Kōmeitō policies, particularly on two national surveys, the “Japan General Social Survey” (JGSS) and the “Japan Election Survey” (JES), which are conducted every few years. Both surveys ask respondents to position themselves on two-dimensional conservative/progressive scales, or to rate their views on national issues, like the U.S.–​Japan alliance.14 Critically, their national scope means that they cannot ask about specific local problems, except in the most generic terms. Similarly, they cannot address issues that most respondents have not heard of, like backdating eco-star reimbursement, or the number of pages in small-business subsidy applications. That kind of survey research is valid if voters base their party allegiance on national, macrolevel ideological issues. However, if voters base their allegiance on politicians’ demonstrated interest in solving specific issues in their daily lives, national surveys like JGSS and JES will never find a connection, regardless of whether actually one exists or not. As a result, their research is suggestive, but not definitive. Actually understanding Kōmeitō’s goals requires a deeper understanding of the party and its voters. 14  Future survey researchers should note that Sōka Gakkai organization—​the PR office, at least—​insists that its members’ beliefs are not on that scale, that it needs another axis coming up from the middle. Whether or not that is accurate, to the extent they share these views with the membership, all such questions have a crippling validity problem.

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Kōmeitō Policy Content

Kōmeitō’s piecemeal approach to policy supports the contention that it draws its goals from the Fujinbu in a “bottom-up” fashion, but broader policy issues are also worth considering. During its first ten years as a junior partner in the ruling coalition, Kōmeitō has supported policies that run counter to both its stated principles and the interests of poor and marginalized workers. Such is the fate of all junior coalition partners. The question is how Kōmeitō does triage. Which issues does it push, which issues does it sacrifice, and where does it draw the line on participation in the coalition? More on Kōmeitō policy making in coalition can be found in chapter 10, but this chapter focuses on so-called women’s issues. Women’s issues are an interesting context for two reasons. First, they often reveal the extent to which religious beliefs are affecting political preferences. In Japan, religious groups have traditionally opposed progress on women’s issues: Klein and Reed in this volume describe religious lobbying for conservative social policies; Hardacre (2005) recounts how they have pushed to repeal the gender equality clause in Japan’s constitution; and Chan-Tiberghien (2004) describes how religious organizations opposed adopting the Convention on Rights of the Child, for example (see also Métraux 2007). Since Sōka Gakkai doctrine is similar to that of some of the groups implicated here, we can test the influence of religious beliefs on Kōmeitō policies by identifying where it stands. The second reason is that, empirically, Kōmeitō has a mixed record on women’s issues. It seems to support some, but not others, and Suzuki (2010) argues that this implies the party has no guiding principles, asserting that it compromises on the basis of LDP preferences, not its own. Understanding this give and take on women’s issues is critical to seeing the relationship between the party and the Fujinbu. On the one hand, Kōmeitō has a history of taking the progressive side on some women’s issues. In a discussion of the gender equality clause, for example, Hardacre mentions how Kōmeitō prevented the LDP from tampering with the clause. Furthermore, after joining the ruling coalition in 1999, the party has supported a number of women-friendly laws, such as the 2000 Antistalking Law. In a work on the policy implementation of women’s rights, Chan-Tiberghien (2004) explicitly raises this conundrum—​wondering why “major legal changes concerning child prostitution, stalking, and domestic violence continued,” even though the ruling coalition became “much more conservative” after Kōmeitō replaced the Social Democratic Party. The reality is that there is no puzzle here—​ Kōmeitō’s policies on these issues have always diverged sharply from the stereotypical conservatism of Japanese religion.

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On the other hand, Kōmeitō does not uniformly support the progressive woman’s agenda that traditionally left-leaning parties like the DPJ or JSP do. When it was an opposition party, it regularly cosponsored broad legislation on women’s issues with the Socialist Party, like a stronger version of the 1985 Equal Opportunity in Employment Act (Horie 2005). Once it tasted power, though, this cooperation faded. Miura’s work on Diet deliberations, for example, argues that Kōmeitō Diet members have not supported child care for working women; Suzuki’s research (2008) echoes this, adding that Kōmeitō lacks interest in the broader issue of “work-life balance” for women (see also Miura 2003). At first glance, then, Kōmeitō’s behavior looks uncommitted—​the party moves on some women’s issues, but not others. If we assume that there is no connection between the party’s constituents and its specific policy agenda, as observers typically do, then all these choices appear to be for expedience, with no underlying rhyme or reason other than what the LDP will tolerate. If we look more closely, however, there is a common thread tying these policies together—​ housewife preferences. Consider child care as a case where housewife preferences diverge from traditional women’s issues. Suzuki explores how Kōmeitō has refused to push the Ministry of Labor into combining kindergartens with day-care centers. Doing so, he suggests, would offer working women more child-care opportunities, but threaten the educational mission of kindergartens—​which matters more to housewives. Similarly, instead of increasing the number of public child-care facilities, Kōmeitō’s agenda for child care remains the jidoteate—​monthly payments to families with small children—​which fits the needs of a housewife who can care for her own children but lacks the income of a two-career family. In listing of accomplishments, the party continues to advertise its leading role in originally passing the jidoteate in 1972 and subsequently increasing the program’s coverage. Suzuki’s discussion (2008) of the policy process makes clear that the push to expand the jidoteate program came solely from Kōmeitō, in the face of LDP resistance. Chan-Tiberghien’s work (2004) on women’s gains under the LDP and Kōmeitō is also suggestive. The causes that she finds have advanced—​ ­antistalking legislation, domestic violence protection, and prostitution—​ are relevant to housewives, who are threatened by all of these. At the same time, career women’s issues like sexual harassment and lifting the glass ceiling—​which are not as relevant to housewives—​do not appear on her list of gains. Even when addressing issues that are not women’s issues per se, Kōmeitō finds a way to make them relevant to the Fujinbu. Its 2008 campaign video for Sōka Gakkai viewing pushed health care, like the Dr. Heli

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program for increasing the number of helicopter ambulances or funding centralized prefectural EMT (emergency medical technician) dispatch stations. It did so, though, after reminding viewers of the way pregnant women had died while driving around in an ambulance trying to find a hospital that would admit them for delivery. The same appeal to housewife interests appeared during the 1986 legislative debate on imposing a sales tax; when the issue of granting exclusions for one-income households came up, and some complained that it might discriminate against working women or women with part-time jobs, Kōmeitō legislators supported the exclusion, saying that “there may be 4 million working women, but there are 14 million full-time housewives” (Horie 2005, 384). The quote makes clear where Kōmeitō believes its interests lie. Kōmeitō confuses observers because it resembles a social democratic party in some respects, like claiming to represent the poor and promoting welfare, but diverges in other respects, like its lack of support for working women. This leads some to claim that Kōmeitō’s rhetoric is a front for pursuing policies of expediency and power-seeking, but the coherence of Kōmeitō legislative action suggests otherwise. Kōmeitō is a political party, and just like every other political party, it responds to its constituents by pushing policies they support. Since taking power, the party has consistently pursued policies that meet the needs of its largest support group—​ the housewives of Sōka Gakkai’s Fujinbu. Given the messy nature of politics, this focus cannot be absolute, and coalition politics forces the party to support policies that many of its constituents may not agree with, but overall there is clear evidence that Kōmeitō has swung from supporting theocratic or urban worker interests in the 1960s and 1970s to supporting housewife interests in the 1990s and 2000s. Religion, Gender, and the Public Sphere From a comparative politics perspective, this is a very simple story. A social movement spawns a political party that represents the movement’s members; over fifty years’ time the members’ needs change, and the party shifts goals to accommodate its current supporters rather than the ones who founded it. From a gender studies perspective, though, it is not that simple. Earlier in the chapter I described the extensive literature showing that housewives avoid the electoral arena and Japanese New Religions (like Sōka Gakkai) suppress female participation in the public sphere even further. According to that research, then, Fujinbu members should never have become such inveterate campaigners. So what happened?

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One possible explanation is that Sōka Gakkai membership increases political activity for members in general, whether male or female.15 This does explain part of the story, but only part, because the effect of membership turns out to be much larger for women than for men. This is visible in table 8.2, which expands the data presented earlier in table 8.1 to add comparisons between men as well. The darker-printed rows labeled “gender gap” show the difference between men and women among Sōka Gakkai members and in the population at large, as a percentage of male participation. The gap shrinks by more than a third in three of the four measures. In addition, comparing the statistical tests for each category show how our confidence in the existence of gender gaps shrinks. In 2007, I personally conducted a similar survey of Sōka Gakkai cadre and found even higher levels of political activity among both male and female leaders in the organization. In fact, among those individuals, the gender gap largely disappeared: 62 percent of self-identified housewives feel that campaigning is very important to them, the same percentage as males.16 In short, Sōka Gakkai membership provokes a much larger change among women than it does among men. Legitimizing Housewife Politics

Sōka Gakkai does this, it would seem, by legitimizing the transformation of housewives’ willingness to participate in collective action into a willingness to participate in electoral action. We know that housewives actively participate in collective action—​nonpolitical volunteer organizations—​but avoid politics for two reasons: a cultural sense of distance from the political arena and a rational calculation that political parties do not serve their interests. Sōka Gakkai overcomes both of these barriers by connecting politics to believers’ individual lives and by arguing that Kōmeitō serves their interests. Culturally, the shared language of public caring justifies breaking down the barriers keeping them out of public life, and their commitment to religious practice gives them leverage over male believers who might not otherwise support housewife political preferences. Their faith, one can often hear Sōka Gakkai women say at meetings, teaches them to care for others beyond the limit of their family. This may seem like a strange thing for a housewife to say, since their days are filled with caring for others, but it can also be understood as imbuing their activity with a higher purpose. 15 

Chapters 3 and 5 in this volume explain how and why this happens. I describe this survey in more detail in Ehrhardt (2009). Predictably, Student Division members were the lowest, at 14 percent. 16 

Table 8.2 Gender and political participation Measures of political participation

Population at large

Sōka Gakkai members

Attend political rally Males

37%

60%

Females

21%

46%

Gender Gap

44%

23%

Test of Difference

t=-5.08, p