TheKōmeitō (Japanese:公明党), also known as theKōmei Party andClean Government Party (CGP), was a political party inJapan, initiated byDaisaku Ikeda, and described by various authors as the "political arm" ofSoka Gakkai.^[9]

Kōmeitō was considered acentre^[10]-to-centre-left political party of theprogressive camp until the 1990s.^[11] Its successor partyKomeito has become politically closer to the right-wingLDP and has become a centre-to-centre-rightconservative party.

The party was established in January 1962 as theKōmei Seiji Renmei (Clean Government League) by theSōka Gakkai, an organization that promotedNichiren Buddhism. Running as independents, three members of the Sōka Gakkai had been elected to theHouse of Councillors in the1956 elections, with the1959 elections seeing nine members elected. It also had several members elected to local assemblies.

In 1957, a group of Young Men's Division members campaigning for a Gakkai candidate in an Osaka House of Councillors by-election were arrested for distributing money, cigarettes, and caramels at supporters' residences, in violation of elections law, and on July 3 of that year, at the beginning of an event memorialized as the "Osaka Incident", Daisaku Ikeda was arrested in Osaka. He was taken into custody in his capacity as Sōka Gakkai's Youth Division Chief of Staff for overseeing activities that constituted violations of elections law. He spent two weeks in jail and appeared in court forty-eight times before he was cleared of all charges in January 1962.^[12]

Amongst its policies, the new party supported the1947 constitution and opposed nuclear weapons. Headed byHarashima Kōji. In theJuly 1962 elections the new party won nine seats in the House of Councillors.^[13]

On 17 November 1964 the party was renamedKōmeitō.^[13] In 1968, fourteen of its members were convicted of forging absentee ballots in Shinjuku, and eight were sentenced to prison forelectoral fraud. In the 1960s it was widely criticized for violating theseparation of church and state, and in February 1970 all three major Japanese newspapers printed editorials demanding that the party reorganize. It eventually broke apart based on promises to segregate from Soka Gakkai.^[14][15][16]

In 1969, the Kōmeitō became the third political party in Japan.^{[clarification needed]}

In the 1980sAkahata discovered that many Soka Gakkai members were rewarding acquaintances with presents in return for Komeito votes, and thatOkinawa residents had changed their addresses to elect Komeito politicians.^[17] It was also revealed that while the party was technically separate from the Soka Gakkai, monetary donations made that were tax exempt were being funneled into funding for the Kōmeitō party as revealed by an expelled Kōmeitō member of the Tokyo municipal assembly.^[18]

It was usually supportive of theJapan Socialist Party, and opposed the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), the major ruling party at that time.

Ideologically, Kōmeitō proposed a mild form of what it called “humanitarian socialism,” which its one-time secretary general Hiroshi Hojo defined as “a Buddhist version of Christian Democratic socialism.”^[19]

Kōmeitō did quite well, and in 1993, when the LDP was for the first time declared an opposition party, the Kōmeitō became one of the ruling parties, headed by theliberalJapan New Party, but which also included theDemocratic Socialist Party,Japan Renewal Party, theNew Party Sakigake, and theJapan Socialist Party. In 1994, the latter two parties left the coalition, and in July they took over the rule, making another coalition with the LDP. The Kōmeitō was again thrown into opposition.

On December 5, 1994, The Kōmeitō split into two parties. The Lower House chairs and some of Upper House chairs formedKōmeitō New Party, and five days later, they joined into theNew Frontier Party. The others, i.e. local assembly members and the rest of the Upper House chairs, formedKōmei and independent friend of the New Frontier Party.

In 1998, however, the New Frontier Party dissolved, and former Kōmeitō members formedNew Peace Party andReform Club. They merged with Kōmei in the same year and then became known as the NKP (New Kōmeitō Party). The NKP adopted a more conservative agenda than the former Kōmeitō and in 1999 they supported the ruling party, the LDP.^[20]

House of Representatives

Election	Leader	No. of candidates	Seats			Position	Constituency votes		PR Block votes		Status
			No.	±	Share		No.	Share	No.	Share
1967	Takehisa Tsuji	32	25 / 486		5.1%	4th	2,472,371	5.4%			Opposition
1969	Yoshikatsu Takeiri	76	47 / 486	22	9.6%	3rd	5,124,666	10.9%			Opposition
1972		59	29 / 491	18	5.9%	4th	4,436,755	8.5%			Opposition
1976		84	55 / 511	26	10.7%	3rd	6,177,300	10.9%			Opposition
1979		64	57 / 511	2	11.1%	3rd	5,282,682	9.78%			Opposition
1980		64	33 / 511	24	6.4%	3rd	5,329,942	9.03%			Opposition
1983		59	58 / 511	25	11.3%	3rd	5,745,751	10.12%			Opposition
1986		61	56 / 512	2	10.9%	3rd	5,701,277	9.43%			Opposition
1990	Kōshirō Ishida	58	45 / 512	11	8.7%	3rd	5,242,675	7.98%			Opposition
1993		54	51 / 511	6	9.9%	4th	5,114,351	8.14%			Governing coalition (until 1994)

• Japan Socialist Party
• Liberal Democratic Party (Japan)
• Komeito
• Politics of Japan
• Reformist party (Japan) (Before 1990s)^[11]
• Social Democratic Party (Japan)
• Sōka Gakkai

• Soka Gakkai
• Buddhism in Japan
• Buddhist democratic parties
• Centrist parties in Japan
• Conservative parties in Japan
• Defunct political parties in Japan
• Economic progressivism
• Political parties established in 1962
• Political parties disestablished in 1998
• Progressive parties in Japan
• 1962 establishments in Japan
• 1998 disestablishments in Japan
• Komeito

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Japanese-language text
• Wikipedia articles needing clarification from March 2021