Kōmeitō

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Kōmeitō
Komeito
Parteivorsitz (Daihyō) Natsuo Yamaguchi
Deputy Chair Yoshihisa Inoue
Kazuo Kitagawa
Noriko Furuya
Secretary General Tetsuo Saitō
PARC Chair Noritoshi Ishida
Parliamentary affairs Yōsuke Takagi
Group chairmanship in the Sangiin Makoto Nishida
founding 1964/1998
Headquarters 17 Minamimotomachi, Shinjuku , Tokyo Prefecture
Members 462,085 (2016)
MPs in the Shūgiin
29/465
(October 2017)
MPs in the Sangiin
28/245
(July 2019)
Government grants 3.16 billion yen (2017)
Number of members 462,085 (2016)
Website www.komei.or.jp

The Kōmeitō ( Japanese 公 明 党 , literally "Justice Party"; English Komeito or Clean Government Party ) is a political party in Japan . It has been the coalition partner of the Liberal Democratic Party since 1999 and sees itself as more welfare state and more pacifist than it.

According to its own information, the Kōmeitō had 420,000 members in 2016, including 55,000 in their youth organization.

history

Direct voting share at nat. General Elections
15%
10%
5%
0%
'67
'69
'72
'76
'79
'80
'83
'86
'90
'93
-
'00
'03
'05
'09
'12
'14
'17
Relative Under
15%
10%
5%
0%
'00
'03
'05
'09
'12
'14
'17

Forerunner parties

Already for the lower house elections in 1956, as well as the upper house elections in 1959, some appendices of the Sōka Gakkai were running . In 1962, the group reached under the name of Kōmei Seiji Renmei ( 公 明 政治 連 盟 ; "League for clean politics") faction strength. In 1964 the Kōmeitō was formed from it. It is considered the political arm of the Buddhist -influenced new religious movement Sōka Gakkai ( Society for the Creation of Values ). The programmatic content of the party was humanitarian socialism with a strict demarcation from the communists. In December 1994, the Kōmeitō was dissolved after the alliance between Social Democrats and Liberal Democrats forced them into the opposition. Former party members immediately founded two parties, the Kōmei ( 公 明 ), which consisted of some upper house members, and the Kōmei New Party ( 公 明 新 党 ), which mainly consisted of lower house members. The latter immediately joined the Shinshinto , a forerunner of the later Democratic Party , whose greatest commonality was the opposition to the LDP. The Kōmei continued to exist independently with moderate electoral success. At the end of 1997 the Shinshintō disbanded and former Kōmeitō members (organized in the Reimei Club ( 黎明 ク ラ ブ ), reimei kurabu , "Dawn Club "), the Kōmei and the right-wing splinter party Heiwa Kaikaku ( 平和 ・ 改革 , "Peace and Reform") - even a merger of the Shintō Heiwa ( 新 党 平和 , “New Peace Party”) and the Kaikaku Club ( 改革 ク ラ ブ , kaikaku kurabu , “Reform Club”) - merged in 1998 to form the New Kōmeitō (it now describes itself in Japanese again as Kōmeitō , in English but until 2014 as New Komeito ).

New Kōmeitō

The new party is less clear in the formulation of its political program, also to take account of the new members, and has moved closer to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in its positions . From 1999 (then under the government of Keizo Obuchi ) she worked with the LDP in a coalition government after the previous parties were only involved in government in 1993-1994 when the LDP was forced into the opposition. In addition, the party attaches importance to the determination that it is financially and organizationally independent of Sōka Gakkai, even if it is supported by the organization and the regular electorate of political scientists is still settled with the members of the Sōka Gakkai. The vast majority of party members are also members of the Sōka Gakkai.

Under Prime Minister Jun'ichirō Koizumi , the Kōmeitō contributed his domestic political reforms to financial market regulation and the privatization of the state post, but turned against his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine . Koizumi's attempts to change pacifist Article 9 of the post-war constitution met with rejection within the party: while some members supported an explicit mention of the self-defense forces, the majority of the party opposed an amendment to the war prohibition clause. The party agreed to the Iraq deployment of the Self-Defense Forces, but stressed the humanitarian nature of the deployment.

In the 2009 general election , the ten-year coalition between the LDP and Kōmeitō was voted out by Japanese voters. The Kōmeitō had to accept a severe election defeat with a loss of 10 seats to 21 and lost all of their constituency mandates including that of their chairman Akihiro Ōta , who was not secured by the proportional representation list. As a result, he resigned from his post and was replaced by Natsuo Yamaguchi . In the upper house , the party decreed after the 2010 election with 19 MPs.

With the victory of the LDP under the leadership of Shinzō Abes in the lower house election in 2012 , the Kōmeitō entered a coalition with this again and thus made it possible for her to obtain the two-thirds majority in the lower house that was necessary to overvote the upper house and amend the constitution . The Kōmeitō itself was able to regain its lost 10 seats and placed the land and transport minister in the second Abe cabinet with its former chairman Akihiro Ōta . During a cabinet reshuffle in October 2015 , Ōta was replaced by the previous PARC chairman Keiichi Ishii . As a member of the government, the Kōmeitō voted in Kokkai in 2015 for the highly controversial Collective Self-Defense Act , which expands the powers of the Japanese armed forces to the extent that they are now part of a collective defense system under the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and the United States States is no longer limited solely to defending Japan. As with Koizumi, the party is critical of an amendment to Article 9 of the constitution planned by Prime Minister Abe.

Party bodies

Nominally the highest decision-making body is the state party congress ( zenkoku taikai ), which meets regularly every two years. He determines the party chairman ( daihyō ) and, on his suggestion, the other members of the “central board ” ( 中央 幹事 会 , chūō kanjikai ) of the Kōmeitō. In the time between the party congresses, the smaller "national delegates conference" ( 全国代表 者 会議 , zenkoku daihyōsha kaigi ) is convened, which also decides on the composition of the board in the event of early elections.

Natsuo Yamaguchi has been the party chairman since 2009 , and Tetsuo Saitō is general secretary . The party executive committee also includes two vice-chairmen. Together with Akihiro Ōta as chairman of the "national delegates' conference" and 19 other members, they form the "central board " ( chūōkanjikai ), which in its function roughly corresponds to the executive council of other parties. The Chairman of the Political Research Council ( seimuchōsakai ), which works with ministries and parliamentary committees on draft laws, is Noritoshi Ishida , Chairman of the Committee for Parliamentary Affairs Yōsuke Takagi .

In the "old" Kōmeitō before 1994, the board was called chūō shikkō iinkai ( 中央 執行 委員会 , "Central Executive Committee") and the party chairman was chūō shikkō iinkai iinchō .

literature

  • Ehrhardt, George, Axel Klein , Levi McLaughlin, Steven R. Reed (eds.): Kōmeitō - Politics and Religion in Japan. Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2014.
  • Ronald Hrebenar: The Komeito: Party of 'Buddhist' Democracy . In: Peter Berton, Ronald Hrebenar (Eds.): The Japanese Party System: From One-party Rule To Coalition Government . Westview Press, Boulder 1986, pp. 147-180.
  • Ronald J. Hrebenar: The Komeito Returns: The Party of 'Buddhist Democracy' . In: ders. (Ed.): Japan's New Party System . Westview Press, Boulder 2000, pp. 167-200.
  • Manfred Pohl: The political parties . In: Manfred Pohl, Hans Jürgen Mayer (Eds.): Country Report Japan . Federal Agency for Civic Education, Bonn, 1998, p. 86 ff .: “Buddhist Politics”? A religious community and its party: Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō
  • James W. White: The Sokagakkai and Mass Society . Stanford University Press 1970.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Sōmu-shō : 平 成 28 年分 政治 資金 収支 報告 書 の 要旨
  2. Sōmushō , April 3, 2017: 平 成 29 年分 政党 交付 金 の 交付 決定
  3. komei.or.jp - 公 明 党 は 福祉 の 党 (Japanese), accessed December 4, 2019
  4. komei.or.jp - 「平和 の 党」 が 金 看板 (Japanese), accessed December 4, 2019
  5. 党 概要 ( Memento of the original from March 29, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 13, 2018 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.komei.or.jp
  6. Paul Kevenhöster: Japan's political system, Vs Verlag of Social Sciences, 1969, p 100, ISBN 978-3-322-97895-0
  7. George Ehrhardt: Rethinking the Komeito Voter . In: Japanese Journal of Political Science . Vol. 10. Cambridge University Press, 2009, pp. 1-20 , doi : 10.1017 / S1468109908003344 .
  8. Thomas Weyrauch: The party landscape of East Asia . Longtai, Heuchelheim 2018, p. 74, 80 ff., 90 .
  9. George Ehrhardt: Rethinking the Komeito Voter . Cambridge University Press 2009, pp. 17-19.
  10. Tetsushi Kajimoto: New Komeito to emphasize noncombat SDF role in Iraq. In: The Japan Times . June 20, 2004, accessed April 15, 2010 .
  11. The Japan Times : In landslide, DPJ wins over 300 seats (English)
  12. ^ The New York Times : Japan Moves to Allow Military Combat for First Time in 70 Years
  13. ^ The Japan Times : Abe's Cabinet approves more muscular SDF peacekeeping role , accessed January 13, 2018
  14. 'Manifesto' era may be over but election campaigns still rife with rosy pledges and vague bottom lines. In: The Japan Times . October 19, 2017, accessed January 13, 2018 .