Saito Tetsuo, leader of Japan’s Komeito Party, announced on Friday that Komeito will break from the ruling coalition headed by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) over concerns about corruption.
Komeito’s departure significantly increases the chances of recently-elected LDP leader Takaichi Sanae failing to get the support she needs to become prime minister.
“We’ve been together for 26 years and it was extremely disappointing, but this is how we ended up,” Takaichi sighed after Saito made his announcement.
Saito said there were three main factors in Komeito’s decision to break with LDP: Takaichi’s past visits to Yasukuni Shrine, her tough stance against mass migration, and most importantly her lack of “sincerity” in pledging to clean up LDP’s corruption scandals.
“The LDP’s response was that it will think about it, which was highly insufficient and extremely disappointing,” Saito said of the corruption issue. “We have decided to return to the drawing board and stop here. Our endeavor against money politics is the highest priority for the Komeito.”
The Komeito party was founded in 1964 by the leader of a Buddhist sect and has retained strong connections to Buddhism ever since. Komeito has addressed the issue of the party violating Japanese legal principles against the fusion of religion and state by insisting its principles are valid and rational on their own merits, including its devotion to pacifism and its emphasis on honest political leadership.
Takaichi, a hawkish conservative, has long prided herself on visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which honors soldiers who died fighting for Japan — including soldiers who were accused of committing war crimes while serving Imperial Japan in World War II.
Takaichi has said she would not visit the shrine while sitting as prime minister, and this week she said she might not attend the shrine’s autumn festival from October 17-19 this year, even though she is not prime minister yet. Political observers were certain this announcement was meant to placate Komeito, but the gesture was evidently insufficient.
Takaichi campaigned by recognizing the growing concern of Japanese voters about immigration, for which she has been lambasted as a hardliner and xenophobe by her detractors. Takaichi’s position on immigration is nowhere near as strict as the fast-rising Sanseito party, as she mostly campaigned against immigrants and tourists who break Japan’s rules, but she is well to the right of Komeito’s position on the subject.
The biggest problem Saito mentioned was corruption, and that will be the hardest of LDP’s problems for Takaichi to fix. The party has been mired in graft scandals for years, resulting in dizzying losses during the past few parliamentary elections and the downfall of Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru.
From the moment Takaichi won the LDP leadership race last weekend, it was clear that corruption could be the issue that drove Komeito away, especially if Takaichi floated the names of powerful LDP figures tainted by corruption scandals as potential cabinet ministers.
A large majority of the Japanese public told pollsters they did not want to see any tainted LDP members joining Takaichi’s administration. For that matter, a healthy share of voters said it was more important for LDP to ditch members accused of graft than to replace Prime Minister Ishiba, whose approval numbers were edging up before he resigned.
The specific issue that reportedly ended the LDP-Komeito alliance was Takaichi refusing to support sharp curbs on political donations from corporations. Komeito and another party, the Democratic Party for the People (DPP), drafted legislation earlier this year to limit corporate donations to political parties, in response to LDP’s “slush fund” scandals.
Komeito leaders were also said to be greatly concerned with Takaichi’s appointment of Haguida Koichi as deputy secretary general of the LDP. Koichi, like Takaichi, was a loyal member of the late Abe Shinzo’s wing of the LDP, but he was suspended from leadership posts for a year in April 2024 for his ties to the slush fund scandal.
Komeito is much smaller than LDP, the dominant force in Japanese politics since the end of World War II, but LDP’s thrashings in the past two elections left it without a majority in either house of the National Diet, so Takaichi will need a coalition partner to secure the prime minister’s office.
Saito made it clear that Komeito members would not vote for her, greatly complicating her path to victory. He also said Komeito would stop supporting LDP candidates in districts where Komeito cannot win by itself, which will be a huge blow to LDP, because Komeito has a formidable grassroots network.
The odds of Takaichi putting together a new coalition and getting the votes she needs to become Japan’s first female prime minister are still better than average, especially since most of the public — and the Japanese stock market — still wants to see her take the job.
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