Where politics and religion mix in
Japan By Jamie Miyazaki
TOKYO
- A perennial player in Japanese politics, and
considered a coalition king-maker, the New Komeito Party
is linked to a pacifist religious group that claims it
is the only true Buddhist religious organization. The
New Komeito Party currently is the enabling coalition
partner with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)of Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who sent troops to Iraq, but
speculation abounds that it might be wooed in the future
by the increasingly successful opposition Democratic
Party of Japan (DPJ).
Katsuya Okada, leader of
the DPJ, laid out his party's impressive electoral gains
in this month's Upper House elections and looked ahead
to the next Lower House parliamentary polls, to be
scheduled by 2007. With a shot at forming the next
Japanese government, many observers speculate that the
DPJ might consider a coalition government with New
Komeito in order to gain power. New Komeito
(translation: Clean Government Party) has been in
coalition with the LDP since 1999.
Rebuffing the
suggestion of a DPJ-New Komeito coalition and stressing
the DPJ's gradual and staggered "hop, skip, jump"
electoral strategy for power, Okada was somewhat irked
by the sudden barrage of questions about New Komeito and
that the DPJ might need its help.
The Upper
House has 115 seats. In this month's Upper House polls,
New Komeito had 10 seats up for grabs and gained 11 in
the proportional allotment system. It now holds a total
of 24 seats in the Upper House and 34 seats out of 480
in the powerful Lower House of the Diet, or parliament.
The governing LDP had 51 seats up for grabs, but only
won 49 in a small but significant setback in the Upper
House. The DPJ had 38 seats up for grabs and won 50, the
big winner in the Upper House.
To add insult to
injury for New Komeito, a post-election LDP report last
week warned of the dangers of relying on a party with
religious links in order to maintain its grip on power.
With the political field thinning out as smaller parties
either simply drop off the map or merge with one of the
two big parties, it isn't easy being a third party in
Japan these days. One could be forgiven for thinking
that the days are numbered for New Komeito: the last
significant third party, the others are minuscule,
without clout. Dismissing it, however, would be a
mistake.
In fact, despite the disparaging noises
coming from the DPJ and LDP, New Komeito is not just
surviving, it is holding its own, managing to gain an
extra seat in July's contest. Not a big victory, yet New
Komeito, alongside the opposition DPJ, were the only two
parties to increase their pre-election strength. More
important, these small numbers have a crucial multiplier
effect: the New Komeito party is the de facto king-maker
in an era of coalition governments.
Soka
Gakkai and New Komeito Founded in 1964 to further
the cause of the Buddhist Soka Gakkai sect, the then
Komeito Party embarked on an expansion beyond its
initial Tokyo base. A 1970 scandal in which Komeito
leaders attempted to prevent retailers selling a book
critical of the Soka Gakkai caused the Buddhist group
and the party ostensibly to go their separate ways. For
much of the 1980s the party spent its time in the
wilderness as one of the ineffectual opposition parties
in the face of LDP dominance.
Japan is fairly
irreligious, in the Western sense, and that may be what
spooks a lot of people about Soka Gakkai. The central
practice promoted by Soka Gakkai is chanting to the
Gobonzon, a scroll inscribed by Nichirin Daishonin, the
founder of Nichiren Buddhism. Komeito was originally
formed as a political shield to protect Soka Gakkai
interests as they came under serious discrimination in
Imperial Japan.
Today, both New Komeito and Soka
Gakkai want to eliminate nuclear arms and armed conflict
in general and they aspire to bring about the "dawn of a
new civilization of mankind".
It wasn't until
the 1990s that the original Komeito party's political
capital began to rise. Initially part of the short-lived
non-LDP coalition government in 1993, the party went
through a number of metamorphoses before emerging in its
present form, following a merger between Komeito and the
New Peace Party in November 1998. In October 1999, New
Komeito joined the Keizo Obuchi-led LDP coalition
government, and has been a coalition partner ever since.
It now holds 24 seats out of 115 in the Upper
House (winning 11 in the last election), and 34 in the
more powerful Lower House. Thus, New Komeito provides
the LDP the necessary seats (a majority - 50% plus
one)it needs to govern the world's second largest
economy.
New Komeito's role as junior coalition
partner, however, is not without some controversy.
Despite officially separating from Soka Gakkai in 1970,
the two organizations maintain strong ties and blur the
strict constitutional separation between state and
religion. After World War II, this rigid separation was
enshrined in the constitution. At the time, the United
States and framers of the Japanese constitution saw the
fusion of Shintoism and nationalism by the government as
a driving force for Japanese imperialism.
Following the Aum Shin Ri Kyo subway attack in
1995, a new religious corporation law was drawn up
enabling the government to investigate the finances of
religious organizations - ostensibly to target Aum,
which it did very successfully, but Shizuka Kamei, a
prominent right-wing member of the ruling LDP, in his
usual style, claimed it could be used to investigate
Soda Gakkai as well. So far, it hasn't happened.
Soka Gakkai's 8 million Japanese members provide
the overwhelming bulk of the party's electoral base and
many New Komeito legislators were Soka Gakkai faithful
before joining the party. Since 1970, however,
individuals have been prohibited from holding posts in
both organizations. Indeed, New Komeito makes no secret
of its close ties with the group, comparing the
relationship to that of left-wing parties and labor
unions.
This in itself would not be particularly
controversial were it not for persistent rumors and
accusations surrounding Soka Gakkai. The organization
has billions of dollars in assets and is dominated by
its enigmatic and reclusive spiritual leader, Daisaku
Ikeda, giving him serious political and financial clout.
Ikeda, who does not give interviews, is often said to be
New Komeito's de facto head. More worrying has been the
group's reputation for intolerance of its critics and
internal dissenters, sometimes resulting in incidents of
violent intimidation, critics say. Indeed, while it
might be unfair to label the group a cult, the Soka
Gakkai, with its heavy emphasis on fund raising, and
claims as the only true Buddhist organization, has some
disturbing authoritarian religious strands.
Strange bedfellows Public suspicion of
Soka Gakkai is also ironically shared by more than a few
members of the LDP. Noted right-wing LDP politician
Shizuka Kamei once rather discourteously remarked,
"Japan is finished if Soka Gakkai takes over." Indeed,
New Komeito's and Soka Gakkai's pacifist philosophy and
lower-middle class support base contrast with the more
right-wing hawkish elements of the LDP, which dispatched
troops to Iraq on a mission that has deeply divided the
nation. Fortunately, small matters such as ideology have
never much got in the way of marriages of convenience in
politics.
In an era in which floating voters now
constitute an increasing share of the electorate, New
Komeito has a critical asset, the very strength that
arouses controversy - a core disciplined electoral bloc
of Soka Gakkai members. With traditional LDP electoral
blocs, such as farmers, postal workers and the like
crumbling, New Komeito's ideologically indoctrinated
members represent one of the largest vote-gathering
machines in the country: 8 million reliable votes. The
legion of housewives who constitute the backbone of Soka
Gakkai's electoral machine can deliver New Komieto, or
alternatively New Komeito-endorsed candidates, between
20,000 and 30,000 votes in every major constituency. In
urban areas where floating voters are prominent, and in
low-turnout races, this can often decide elections.
However uneasy some LDP members may be about New
Komeito's ideological affiliations, the LDP's viability
as the party of government has become entwined with the
fortunes of New Komeito. In fact, despite calls to
become less dependent on their coalition partners, the
LDP is quite careful these days to tone down its
anti-Soka Gakkai rhetoric and has dropped assertions
that New Komeito represented a breach in the
constitutional separation of state and religion. It
needs New Komeito and Soka Gakkai voters.
The
New Komeito paradox New Komeito's appeal is
essentially limited to Soka Gakkai faithful, and this
makes it unlikely to break out beyond its narrow
electoral support base. Herein lies the paradox of New
Komeito: it is unlikely to disappear any time soon
because of its core constituency, but it will also
probably never expand enormously beyond its current
clutch of seats. This is what makes it such an important
player in Japan's political field. Thirty or so seats in
the Lower House and 20 or so in the Upper House are for
all intents and purposes not up for grabs, they belong
to New Komeito, the LDP can count on them.
Moreover, when one looks at the remarkable gains
made by the opposition DPJ in the recent election (11
seats) it was mainly at the expense of the Communist
Party that lost 12 seats, and there was no LDP rout.
This perhaps suggests that the future lies in a
consolidation of votes around the LDP, DPJ and New
Komeito. Consequently, New Komeito could increasingly
come to hold a more important swing position, unless the
two major parties can successfully steal each other's
core voters or capture an overwhelming number of
floating voters.
This raises intriguing
questions about DPJ leader Okada's wish to form an
independent DPJ government by the next election. Given
the nature of Japan's electoral system and the size of
Soka Gakkai, this may well not be feasible. Moreover,
LDP wishes to distance itself from its coalition partner
may be equally unfeasible. One thing to count on,
though, is that since its establishment in 1930, Soka
Gakkai has consistently managed to confound its critics,
and it is likely to continue baffling
them.
Jamie Miyazaki is an analyst of
North Asian political and strategic affairs.
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