Komeito 02 Religious Groups Klein Reed DO NOT CITE

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Chapter Two

Religious Groups in Japanese Electoral Politics 1

Axel Klein & Steven R. Reed

1. 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”

(Watanuki 1991: 75). We find no reason to doubt the standard wisdom with respect to

1 We wish to thank Levi McLaughlin, George Ehrhardt, and Daniel Markham Smith for their comments on earlier versions of this chapter. We also want to thank Yuki Abe for his diligent data collection.

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION voting behavior.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 West European electoral politics.

With respect to political parties, however, K ōmeit ō 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, K ōmeit ō might have been considered peripheral during that period.

However, even during the era of LDP dominance, the party won around 10% of the vote and was no more peripheral than the Japan Communist Party or the Democratic

Socialist Party. At least since the 1990s, however, K ōmeit ō has become a pivotal player in Japanese politics. One cannot understand Japanese politics since 1993 without understanding K ōmeit ō. On the other hand, K ōmeit ō is the only religious party to challenge the standard wisdom. Only one other religious party, Itt ōen, 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. Except for K ōmeit ō, religious parties are indeed peripheral.

With respect to supporting candidates nominated by other parties, however, 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” ( soshiki-hy ō) (Hori 1985; Klein 2012). The vote-mobilization capacity of religious groups is greater than such organizations as the construction industry, the medical professions or agricultural cooperatives, each of which are usually considered

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION powerful actors 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, K ōmeit ō towers over other groups. The S ōka

Gakkai (hereafter, SG), the religious group that forms the electoral base of K ōmeit ō, 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.

2. 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” ( sh ūky ō h ōjin ). The criteria for official assignment of this legal status are laid down in the Religious Corporations

Law ( sh ūky ō h ōjinh ō). It defines religious groups ( sh ūky ō dantai ) as those which main purpose is to spread a religious creed ( ky ōgi ), conduct ceremonies ( gishiki ), and educate believers ( ky ōka ikusei ). If such a group also has a place of worship, it can apply for the status of sh ūky ō h ōjin . 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 allergy to the involvement of religion in politics noted in Chapter One. Openly

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION 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 House of

Councilors, the national election that attracts a large number of ephemeral parties. In this tier, the electoral threshold (the minimum required to win one seat) is only about

1% of the vote nationwide. This tier is home to a large number of ephemeral parties which 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 protections, and gay rights. The need to protect the peace constitution is as well represented, as is 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 (Muller and Strom 1999). One might thus call them “non-electoral political parties.”

Searching through the myriad of minor parties that have run in the upper tier of the House of Councilors between the first postwar election of 1947 through 2010, we have been able to identify ten religious parties other than K ōmeit ō. Here we first

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION introduce all of the groups for which we were able to find sufficient information. We then discuss three newer parties that have run primarily in the lower house. Viewed from the perspective of the political parties usually studied by political scientists, the religious parties we introduce below may seem very strange indeed. In the context of the other ephemeral parties that run in the upper tier of the House of Councilors, however, the religious parties do not seem at all out of place.

The Women’s Party ( Josei-tō, known as the Atarashii Jidai o tsukuru-tō from

1993 to 1996 and not to be confused with the Japan Women’s Party, Nihon Josei-tō) gives no public indication of its religious character. Most people (including ourselves) are surprised to learn of the religious group that backs it ( Wah ōtai no kai , founded by

Nishiyama Eiichi who once belonged to SG) and further surprised to learn that the group runs a hotel and a cosmetics company ( Aisutaa ) ( Sh ūkan 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 ( Jiy ū Reng ō), which was based on a nationwide network of hospitals and clinics (Weiner 2003). The party won only one seat but their organizational base allowed them to run candidates nationwide.

Most of their candidates listed their occupations as doctor or nurse.

Nishida Tenk ō, the founder of Itt ōen mentioned above, a religious group based on J ōdo Shinsh ū (Pure Land Buddhism) and devoted to a form of self-cultivation, won a

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION seat in the first House of Councilors 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 K ōmeit ō has won a seat in any national election since 1947. In this narrow sense, Itt ōen is the second most successful religious party in postwar Japanese politics.

Single-candidate parties are common in the upper tier of the House of

Councilors and some of them have a religious tint. Some religious parties served as vehicles for a single candidate with a message. For example, It ō Yoshitaka, a Buddhist priest from Honganji (J ōdo Shinsh ū) ran unsuccessfully three times between 1956 and

1962 for a Buddhist party. Another such party was the Japan Christian Party ( Nihon

Kirisutoky ō-tō) founded by Mut ō Tomio, a Manchurian bureaucrat purged after the war.

His candidacy in 1977 caused some confusion because a 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

Rikken Y ōsei-kai (Society to Develop True Constitutionalism) bears some resemblance to SG. 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 Daijten 1995:

562). It enjoyed some success at the local level but has never come close to winning a seat at the national level. The Seikai J ōrei-kai (World Spirit Cleansing Society) ran

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION 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 (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. Seikai J ōrei- kai was one of the several which dropped out of electoral politics due to the increased cost of running ( Ch ūnichi Shimbun 17 July 1995).

In the 2001 election, Shirakawa Katshuhiko formed the “New Party Freedom and Hope” ( Shint ō Jiy ū to Kib ō). Shirakawa had just left the LDP after fighting its coalition with K ōmeit ō since 1999 (see Chapter Five) and losing his seat in Niigata in the 2000 general election. As an anti-Kōmeit ō activist and campaigning as the only party to fight “S ōka Gakkai’s political power” he acquired the support of SG’s religious rival, the Rissh ō K ōseikai (hereafter RKK). Although the 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 at the 2001 Upper House election (interview with Shirakawa Katsuhiko, 28 September

2010, Tokyo). 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.

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Another religious party of some note is that formed by Aum Shinriky ō. Aum established “Shinrit ō” (Truth Party) shortly before the 1990 general election. Shinrit ō ran 18 candidates in Tokyo and seven in neighboring prefectures. The party’s campaign was focused on Tokyo’s fourth district where the group’s founder, Asahara Sh ōkō, ran.

His election campaign featured campaigners dressed in yellow-red elephant costumes with wings, singing the “Guru March” ( sonshi m āchi ) 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% of the vote (2.69%). The party had gathered only a little more than 6,000 votes in total ( Sh ūkan Asahi 31 July 2009: 30). The rumor was nurtured within the group that authorities had tampered with the votes and stolen Asahara’s victory (interview with

Aum’s former spokesperson Juyo Fumihiro in Sh ūkan Gendai on 12 September 2009).

Electoral failure is believed to have been one factor that led Aum to change tactics and implement the terrorist attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995. Eight of the party’s candidates and Asahara were accused in 1996 of having planned and/or participated in the attacks ( 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” ( Kōfuku Jitsugent ō, hereafter HRP). The

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION religious group had been supporting LDP candidates but the North Korean missile launch that flew over Japanese territory in early 2009 triggered the establishment of their own party (interview with Satomura Eiichi, 7 October 2010, Tokyo). 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,

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 for the DPJ, and those who wanted to go to hell for the K ōmeit ō ( Sh ūkan Asahi 31 July 2010: 30).

HRP nominated ten candidates, all of whom finished last in their respective districts, gaining a total of 13,401 votes (0.73%).

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 Kōfuku no Kagaku claims of having eleven million members was wildly exaggerated. While religious groups (and political parties) regularly exaggerate their membership, few religious groups are able to mobilize their full membership. In addition, HRP politicians stress the fact that, in contrast to SG, they do no put pressure on the members of their religious mother organization to vote HRP

(interview with Tanaka Junk ō, 20 October 2009, Tokyo; Klein 2011).

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HRP also ran candidates in the 2010 Upper House election but won only about a fifth of the votes needed to gain a seat. It had, however, secured one seat before the election when Ōe Yasuhiro, a former Liberal Democrat, former Democrat and former member of the “Reform Club” ( Kaikaku Kurabu ) joined HRP in April 2010. After only six months, however, Ōe left the party again because of differences regarding HRPs stance on the governor’s election in Okinawa (interview with Ōe, 15 February 2011,

Tokyo). 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% of the votes). But despite this and other unsuccessful attempts to gain some political relevance, HRP has displayed remarkable staying power and continues to field candidates in most elections.

In short, except for SG, religious groups have not been successful in influencing politics by establishing their own political parties. Except for K ōmeit ō, religious political parties are indeed peripheral to Japanese politics. SG, on the other hand, has been hugely successful, K ōmeit ō often capturing over 10% of the vote in national elections and becoming the third largest 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 is the most successful of those survivors (Reed forthcoming). In 1999, K ōmeit ō joined a coalition government with the LDP, providing the LDP with both the seats needed to control the House of Councillors and the votes needed to win a majority of the single-member districts in the 2000 general election. A religious party was thus part of the government until the coalition lost the 2009 election.

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3. Supporting Candidates from Other Political Parties

With the exception of SG, religious groups have not founded successful political parties.

What religious groups have done is support candidates nominated by other parties.

From a political party’s point of view, religious groups are a potential “organized vote”

(see, for example, Hori 1985). 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.

3.1. Sponsoring Candidates from Other Parties

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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. Again the strategy is clearest in the upper tier of the House of Councilors. 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% of the vote nationwide, that translates 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 they have group 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

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION voice into the policy making process. For example, Shinsh ūren stopped sponsoring candidates when the electoral system used in the upper tier of the House of Councillors 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 them ( Shinsh ūky ō Shimbun 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 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 candidates and religious groups often keep a low profile, it is hard to sponsor a candidate in secret.

Most obviously, one must let group members know who 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 cut at an accurate classification.

Tenriky ō sponsored candidates from the first House of Councilors election in

1947 through 1960. None of these candidates ran for a major party but rather as independents or for non-party groups like the Green Breeze Society ( Ryokuf ūkai ). About

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION 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 Shinsh ū 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 It ō

Yoshita, a priest from Nishi Honganji, the head temple of the sect J ōdo Shinsh ū

Honganji-ha, ran unsuccessfully for a Buddhist Party ( Bukky ō Minwa-tō). With the founding of the LDP, two J ōdo Shinsh ū groups, Higashi (Eastern) and Nishi (Western)

Honganji, each sponsored candidates and electing 78% 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 interviews with knowledgeable insiders, would be required to understand these events.

Jōdo Shinsh ū stopped backing candidates between 1986 and 1998 presumably due to the introduction of the electoral system that forced voters to choose a party

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION instead of a candidate. Once the system was changed to open list PR 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 Seich ō 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 House of Councilors by the obstetrics professional association, both elected on the LDP ticket (Norgren 2001). From 1962 through 1998, the group supported LDP candidates, 60% 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 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% 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% of their elections. Shinsh ūren, of which RKK is the largest

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION 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

Shinsh ūren successfully sponsored five candidates all running for the DPJ.

Between 1956 (the first House of Councilors election fought by the LDP) and

2004, candidates sponsored by religious organizations other than SG accounted for an average of just over two LDP seats per election. This puts religious groups on a par with agriculture or 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 House of

Councilors, we illustrate with Figure 2.1 that SG elects three or four times more PR candidates than all other religious groups combined.

Kōmeit ō 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 K ōmeit ō, SG sponsored 16 candidates, running with no party affiliation, electing 14 for a success rate of 87.5%. In

1959, they elected five, and in 1962, they elected seven. K ōmeit ō 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 PR in 1983, K ōmeit ō began running 17 candidates but with no expectation of electing them all so the success

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION rate of under 50% should not be counted as failures. 2 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 sponsored by other religious groups hovered around 75%. K ōmeit ō 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.

[Figure 2.1 near here]

2 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. In order to attract as many voters as possible for its list, K ōmeit ō 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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3.2. Endorsing Candidates from Other Parties

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 above, 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 House of

Councillors. For example, in the 1977 House of Councillors election the LDP ran 22 candidates in the national district. Of these 14 were supported by religious groups, eleven of whom won seats. Of these 14, 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 2 nd district Ishihara Shintar ō (at the time a popular novelist who had entered politics and who later was elected governor of Tokyo) lost almost 40,000 votes from the previous 1976 election, though still managing to win re- election. The explanation was that the PL Ky ōdan 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 2 nd already included

Kōmeit ō and the DSP candidate Ōuchi Keigo, who was endorsed by RKK.

Such stories are not uncommon but once again stories about the importance of the SG and K ōmeit ō support in determining election outcomes are far more common and often 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 this district lies with K ōmeit ō voters. Lower House member

Hirasawa Katsuei, for example, estimated SG support for LDP candidates in SMDs in

2009 to be worth on average 20,000 votes (interview with Hirasawa, 11 November

2010, Tokyo).

Kōmeit ō 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 K ōmeit ō supporters, over

91% voting for NFP. K ōmeit ō thus played its assigned role as the solid base vote for the

NFP. The other components of the NFP could not do as well. Only 64% of supporters of

Shinsei, Ozawa Ichir ō’s party in 1993, voted for the NFP as did 46% of former Japan

New Party supporters and 35% of former DSP supporters ( Yomiuri 5 November 1996).

After the NFP dissolved K ōmeit ō re-emerged as an independent party. Since the 2000 election, the party has endorsed LDP candidates. Kōmeit ō supporters have again proved more loyal to LDP candidates than were LDP supporters ( Yomiuri 12 September 2005 and 14 September 2009). By all accounts, SG can mobilize a large number of votes not only for K ōmeit ō candidates but also for candidates from other parties.

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A recent example of K ōmeit ō organizational capacity comes from the 2010

House of Councillors 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 Nikky ōso (The Japan Teachers’ Union), where he started his career. Nikky ōso is a powerful organization in its own right, long a mainstay of the Japan Socialist Party, now supporting the DPJ. The LDP fielded a 30-year-old female teacher to run against the 74-year-old Koshi’ishi in an effort to split the Nikky ōso vote. The DPJ countered this strategy in various ways but one was to seek support from K ōmeit ō. They bartered

Kōmeit ō voters to Koshi’ishi in the prefectural district for DPJ voters to K ōmeit ō in the

PR tier. Such barters have been common between K ōmeit ō and the LDP ( Yomiuri 14

July 2010), but the coalition had been defeated in the 2009 general election. The LDP had also angered K ōmeit ō by running a well-known and Yamanshi-born former baseball manager in the PR tier, thus reducing the number of LDP voters who might otherwise voted K ōmeit ō in the PR 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 , Yamanashi edition, 14 July 2010). Discussions of the organized vote often refer to similar vote-trading bargains but K ōmeit ō bargains appear to be the most reliable.

Stories like these lead to charges that K ōmeit ō 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 K ōmeit ō support never reaches 100%. Second,

Kōmeit ō dislikes snap elections. As Ehrhardt describes in Chapter Six, the party has an

More than most other groups and political parties, SG and Kōmeit ō mobilize voters through grass roots campaigns that feature interpersonal contact. For example, a poll by the Asahi Shimbun (30 August 2010) asked voters if 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 K ōmeit ō 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, Maraffi, and Segatti looked at

Bulgaria, Greece, Hong Kong, Uruguay, USA, Chile, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and Japan.

Among these countries, Japanese religious groups stand out as particularly political, with 65% of their members report getting 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. On the other hand, 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 State 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).

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A final, and particularly convincing, refutation of the robot claim is the fact that it took at least three elections after the LDP–Kōmeit ō coalition was formed before

Kōmeit ō support in all districts was directed toward the LDP. In 2003, three DPJ candidates were disciplined for instructing their supporters to vote for K ōmeit ō in the

PR tier while others maintained some K ōmeit ō 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).

3.3. Which Candidates and Parties Do Religious Groups Support?

There is no significant religious cleavage among Japanese voters but religious groups 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 SG into the political arena represented by the founding of

Kōmeit ō.

The Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is both a symbol of prewar militarism and also serves 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

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION here are soldiers who died during World War II. 3 The shrine became a major political and very controversial issue after the souls of 14 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 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 towards Japan’s war history and the related constitutional issue, but also about the status and standing of religions in Japan. Jinja Honch ō (the umbrella organization for Shint ō groups) and Shint ō Seiji Renmei (the political arm of Jinja Honch ō) support Yasukuni and contributed to the eventually unsuccessful attempts by some Liberal Democrats to turn the shrine into a state-run memorial. Many Buddhist groups, on the other hand, not only disagree with this particular attitude towards Japanese history but are also uncomfortable with increase in Shint ō’s role in Japan’s 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 Seich ō no Ie, Tamaki Kazuo, attempted to unify Seich ō no Ie, RKK, PL Ky ōdan, Jinja Honch ō and several other religious groups behind the LDP to counter balance the influence of SG and K ōmeit ō ( Asahi 22

December 1977). This effort failed because he was unable to bridge the gap between the

3 On its official website, the shrine states that 2,466 million “sacrificed their precious lives in order to protect the country” (www.yasukuni.or.jp/history/index.html; accessed November 2011).

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Shint ō and Buddhist groups over the Yasukuni issue ( Asahi 2 May 1983). His “Study

Group for Religion and Politics” ( Sh ūky ō Seiji Kenky ūkai ), 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). 4 Yet the Yasukuni Shrine issue does not prevent religious groups on opposite sides from supporting the same party. Religious groups other than SG all supported LDP candidates, though not necessarily the LDP as a party, during the LDP’s long period of dominance. Since the 2000 election, SG 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 towards SG and K ōmeit ō. When SG created a political party it violated the standard interpretation of the separation of religion and politics. Religious organizations (including SG until it founded K ōmeit ō) 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 Five. Here we will merely note that RKK was vehemently opposed to the formation of a religious party.

The “religion and politics” cleavage thus sets SG against RKK, with most other groups siding with RKK with varying degrees of enthusiasm. When K ōmeit ō joined the LDP in coalition, SG’s rivals shifted their support to the DPJ, though again to varying degrees.

4 Tamaki’s legacy reappeared in the person of the above mentioned Ōe Yasuhiro (see Section 2 of 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.

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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 J ōdo Shinsh ū newsletter reported on candidates supported and group members who are running before the election. Adding candidates formally supported by K ōmeit ō, which is public information reported in the 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 K ōmeit ō differs from that for the other groups. These data concern the political party K ōmeit ō, not the religious group SG. As official data they are more complete than the data for other groups but may also be less meaningful. Official K ōmeit ō support for an LDP candidate covered a wide range of actual relationships and did not necessarily mean avid support by K ōmeit ō or SG. 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

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION 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 K ōmeit ō and J ōdo Shinsh ū are positive.

Most notable is the high correlation between Shinseiren and K ōmeit ō. The two groups not only disagree on Yasukuni but Shinseiren also opposed the participation of K ōmeit ō in government. The two groups also take opposing positions on many other issues as well. Though divided on the issues, both groups support the LDP. K ōmeit ō joined the coalition with the LDP despite the fact that the two parties disagree on many issues. As part of the political bargain, K ōmeit ō wound up supporting candidates who take issue positions opposed by both the party and by SG. Similarly, Shinseiren opposed the formation of K ōmeit ō 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 election (a policy long supported by K ōmeit ō) and allowing women to keep their maiden names after marriage. In this case, bargains struck with the

LDP overrode policy differences.

[Table 2.1 near here.]

Based on the religion and politics issue, one would expect negative correlations between K ōmeit ō support and all other groups. What we see instead is positive

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION correlations for all but RKK. Jōdo Shinsh ū is much less concerned than RKK about the religion and politics issue and thus supports many LDP candidates despite opposing the coalition with K ōmeit ō. Moreover, the negative coefficient between K ōmeit ō 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 Shimbun–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 shrine 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 should visit Yasukuni Shrine?” with 1 being “agree” and 5 being “disagree”) captures the religious aspect of the issue but, unfortunately, was only asked 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”). SG and Kōmeit ō 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

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION

DPJ separately to determine whether issue positions explain the choice of candidates within party. The results are reported in Table 2.2.

[Table 2.2 near here]

Analyzing the LDP and DPJ candidates together leads to the conclusion that both K ōmeit ō and Shinseiren support candidates who favor a stronger defense, the

Prime Minister visiting Yasukuni and those who oppose local voting rights for foreigners. These stances are consonant with Shinseiren issue positions but violate the stated positions of SG and K ōmeit ō. K ōmeit ō thus supports LDP candidates 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.

RKK appears to oppose the positions of Shinseiren and K ōmeit ō 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. J ōdo Shinsh ū 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.

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The interaction between policy preferences and party support is complex but our data clearly indicate that, for K ōmeit ō, Shinseiren or RKK, the candidate’s party affiliation is more important than her 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 SG 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 K ōmeit ō first entered the government in 1993 as part of the Hosokawa coalition government, it was flexible enough to agree to the list of policies set up by

Hosokawa as a precondition for participation and never put forward any original policy proposal of its own while in the coalition (interview with Takemura Masayoshi, May

2010, Tokyo). When K ōmeit ō entered into coalition with the LDP, it again committed to supporting candidates whose issue positions differed significantly from their own. This is politics.

In sum, we find that neither of the cleavages that systematically divide religious groups from one another prevents them from supporting the same party or the same candidate. Politics involves compromise. Many religious groups, including SG, prove

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION remarkably adept at compromise. Those groups which find it difficult to compromise either remain small and irrelevant or soon exit the political arena.

4. 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 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 K ōfuku no Kagaku. Several of the

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION older peripheral religious parties also focused on some single issue. In each of these cases, policy preferences are a major incentive to get involved in elections. On the other hand, it is hard to pinpoint a particular policy issue that motivates SG 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 these groups’ 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 which 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 Shinriky ō released sarin gas into Tokyo’s subway system in March 1995, the LDP government began discussing a revision of the law on religious organizations which 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 set of reasons for a religious group to get involved in politics because this set of motivations is

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION 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 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 Asahi Shimbun (6

June 1971). 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 turn-out 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 Three, election campaigning in itself is regarded a religious activity within the SG and this holds for other religious groups as well. Seikai J ōrei-kai, 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.

5. 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

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION 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 K ōmeit ō. Since 1993, however, no case can be made for considering K ōmeit ō 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 SG, have been intimately involved in electoral politics for many decades, acting as an organized vote for candidates nominated by other parties. Even excluding SG, religious groups have been as influential as, for example, the construction industry or agricultural cooperatives. In addition, SG organized votes is around four or five times larger than all other religious groups combined. SG 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 has declined in recent years, SG and other religious groups have declined little if at all.

Speaking of Japanese historians, Sheldon Garon notes that, “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” (Garon 1986: 273). Political scientists studying Japanese elections have been making the same error. If one removes one’s modernization theory

Chapter prepared for „Komeito: Politics and Religion in Japan“ Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, forthcoming DO NOT CITE WITHOUT AUTHORS PERMISSION 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.

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