scholarly journals SOKA GAKKAI AS A CHALLENGE TO JAPANESE SOCIETY AND POLITICS

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-96
Author(s):  
Okuyama Michiaki
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soka Gakkai ◽  
Restructuring Process ◽  
The Cold War

A new Buddhist group Soka Gakkai started its movement in 1930. After World War II it grew rapidly to claim more than eight million families as its members in Japan in 2005. Soka Gakkai International (SGI), which Soka Gakkai organized as its international network in 1975, now extends to over 190 countries and areas worldwide, claiming twelve million members globally, according to their own calculations. Soka Gakkai started a domestic political movement in the early 1960s, establishing Komeito in 1964 that would mostly keep the third position between the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Social Democratic Party throughout the Cold War era. When the political scene in Japan saw a restructuring process in the 1990s, Komeito joined in the coalition government with the LDP in 1999. The general election in 2009, however, turned out to be a failure both to the LDP and Komeito, while the Democratic Party of Japan won the election to lead the new government, almost for the first time since the establishment of LDP in 1955. This paper tries to situate Soka Gakkai and Komeito in the context of Japanese politics and society and attempts an evaluation of the current situation after the 2009 election.

A Step Toward One-Party Predominance: Japan’s General Election of 20 October 1996

1997 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-64
Author(s):  
Takashi Inoguchi
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
General Election ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Frontier

THE GENERAL ELECTION IN JAPAN OF OCTOBER 1996 brought back the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to a position of predominance, if not preponderance, in the House of Representatives. Out of 500 seats, the LDP acquired 239, while the second largest New Frontier Party (FNP) won 156, the newly-formed Democratic Party 52, the Communist Party 26, the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ) 15, and the Sakigake New Party two seats. Prior to the general election, the LDP, the SDPJ and the Sakigake had cooperated in a coalition government with 211, 30 and 9 seats, respectively. After the election, the LDP formed a minority government without making a formal coalition arrangement with the much enfeebled SDPJ and Sakigake. Why was the LDP able to make this sort of comeback? Why have ‘reformist parties’, starting with the New Japan Party, the Renewal Party, the New Frontier Party and most recently the Democratic Party, experienced such a brief period of increased power before their fall (or stagnation)? These are the questions that this article addresses in describing and explaining Japanese politics today.

Voter Reactions to ‘Strange Bedfellows’: The Japanese Voter Faces a Kaleidoscope of Changing Coalitions

2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ikuo Kabashima ◽  
Steven R. Reed
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Party System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
The Social

On 30 June 1994 the Social Democratic Party of Japan (SDPJ, formerly the Japan Socialist Party) joined its historic enemy, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), to form a coalition government in a Japanese equivalent of Italy's ‘historic compromise’. Competition between the conservative LDP and the progressive socialists had defined the Japanese party system since 1955. In this paper we analyze voter reactions to this and other confusing events surrounding the end of the LDP's 38-year dominance. We find, first, that the Japanese electorate was able to make sense of these events. The political space reflected in public opinion mapped the political space reflected in the mass media remarkably well. Secondly, our findings support the idea that attitudes toward political parties are endogenous to the political process: strategic moves by political actors alter the political space within which they maneuver. Coalitions of strange bedfellows force voters to revise their perceptions of political space and reevaluate their attitudes toward the actors involved. Strange bedfellows seemed less strange, friendlier after they had been seen in bed together.

The Political Identity of the Japanese: A Hybrid of Religious and Secular

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 79-85
Author(s):  
Sergey V. Chugrov
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Political Activity ◽  
The Political ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Soka Gakkai ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
High Level ◽  
High Degree

The article analyzes the specifics of Japanese religious syncretism, which managed to adapt with great efficiency the norms of the Buddhist-Confucian complex and the autochthonous religion of Shinto. Japan is a vivid example of the harmonization of national identity, based not only on the high level of homogeneity of society, but also on the high degree of tolerance and ability to adapt and to adopt. In the political sphere, the Japanese post-secular system demonstrates the capacities of the Komeito party (Party of Pure Politics), which was created on the basis of Soka Gakkai Buddhist organization, which professes the humanistic ideas of Nichiren (1222–1282), set forth in the Lotus Sutra. Now the Komeito party plays an important role in shaping Japanese politics, coalescing with the dominant Liberal Democratic Party. The Komeito party, in particular, is effectively advocating the preservation of the 9th ‘pacific’ article of the constitution. The movement of laic Buddhists Soka Gakkai International (SGI), operating in 93 countries around the world, is widely known for cultural and educational activities and its struggle to ban nuclear weapons. Thus, Japan provides a pointed example of the combination of humanistic philosophy of human dignity and empowerment with political activity, which determines the nature of Japanese post-secular society.

The Social Democratic Party

2020 ◽  
pp. 277-295
Author(s):  
Rasmus Mariager ◽  
Niels Wium Olesen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Central Elements ◽  
The Cold War

The Social Democratic Party is the biggest and historically most influential Danish political party. From the 1920s to the 1980s, the party led more than twenty Danish governments. During this period, the party took on the main responsibility of protecting the Danish democracy when other European countries came under pressure from undemocratic political forces. From the 1930s onwards, the party was thus the main actor behind the formation and consolidation of the Danish welfare state, and during the Cold War period, the Social Democratic Party was a firm and solid supporter of the Atlantic Alliance, even though the party opposed central elements in NATO’s policies towards the Warsaw Pact in the 1980s. Since the the turn of the century, the party has undergone significant changes, and the present-day Social Democratic Party could be characterized as ‘conservative’ as well as ‘pragmatic’. It is conservative because the party argues that it won the twentieth-century Danish political struggle, the results of which the party now needs to preserve, and pragmatic as the party has shown a remarkable willingness to adjust its policies to the challenges of the new century.

Elections in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan under the Single Non-Transferable Vote: The Comparative Study of Embedded Institution. Edited by Bernard Grofman, Sung-Chull Lee, Edwin A. Winckler, and Brian Woodall. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. 495p. $74.50.

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 236-237
Author(s):  
Tun-jen Cheng
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Allied Occupation ◽  
Fifth Republic ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Unique System ◽  
Ann Arbor ◽  
Political Act

Under an electoral system of single nontransferable vote (SNTV) with multiple-seat districts, each voter can cast only one vote and only for one candidate, surplus votes cannot be transferred between candidates, and seats go to those candi- dates with the plurality of votes. Initially crafted by Japanese oligarchs in 1900, this unique system was continuously em- ployed for Japan's lower house elections till 1995, with a brief interlude during the Allied occupation. The SNTV system has been in use in Taiwan since World War II and was adopted in Korea during the Fourth and the Fifth Republic (1973­88). It is ironic that academic interest in this electoral system should increase just when it is being abandoned in its birthplace, Japan, in a fin-de-siecle political act that also ended political dominance of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

Supportive Participation with Economic Growth: The Case of Japan

1984 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ikuo Kabashima
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Economic Equality ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Party Support

Whether political participation is positively related to economic equality is still a paradox. This paper explores the relations among political participation, economic equality, and economic development in Japan after World War II. There was little income bias in political participation in Japan during its period of rapid growth, partly because farmers who benefited inadequately from economic development participated more in politics. This rural bias in participation allowed significant redistribution of income from the urban to rural sector through the budgeting system, thus preventing the natural tendency of widening income inequality at the early stage of development. However, high rural participation did not undermine the rate of growth because it was supportive participation. Farmers overwhelmingly supported the incumbent Liberal Democratic Party, support that enhanced government's continuity and in turn nurtured growth.

Japanese foreign economic policy: the domestic bases for international behavior

1977 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 723-774 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.J. Pempel
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Economic Behavior ◽  
Foreign Economic Policy ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
External Pressures ◽  
Formal Policy ◽  
The Face

By many criteria, Japan is weak internationally. As a consequence one would expect its foreign economic policy to have been marked by limited choice, weakness, and constant vacillation in the face of external pressures. The domestic political structures of the country, however, have for most of the period since World War II permitted wide choice, strength, and consistency. A corporatist coalition of finance, major industry, trading companies, and the upper levels of the national bureaucracy, coupled with the consistent rule of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, the systematic exclusion of organized labor from formal policy-making channels, and the lack of social overhead spending, has permitted the Japanese state to function as official doorman determining what, and under what conditions, capital, technology, and manufactured products enter and leave Japan. The strengths acquired from such past policies make it likely that the Japanese state will remain capable of dealing with the increasing domestic and international threats to its capacity to make relatively autonomous choices about Japan's international economic behavior.

Germany's Postwar Socialism: Nationalism and Kurt Schumacher (1945–52)

1965 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Stanley Vardys
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Socialist Movement

Although the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) did not officially abandon Marxism until the Bad GodesbergParteitagin 1959, both intellectually and politically the party's ideology was revised under the leadership of Kurt Schumacher whose “passion, intellect, and will” dominated the SPD for seven years following World War II (1945–52). The final disintegration of German Marxism under Kurt Schumacher can be demonstrated by examining the three crucial elements of Marxist socialist ideology: (1) motivation for socialism, (2) theory of the socialist movement, and (3) relations between German nationalism and socialism.

Kōmeitō: The Party and Its Place in Japanese Politics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Klein ◽  
Levi McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Political System ◽  
Liberal Democratic Party ◽  
Japanese Politics ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Soka Gakkai ◽  
Comparative Political Science

This chapter surveys the history, operation in coalition, support base, and key policies of Kōmeitō (the Clean Government Party). It begins with an overview of party typologies and argues that Kōmeitō is not easily placed in any comparative political science category. The chapter then delves into the party’s history, detailing its origins in 1964 as an outgrowth from Sōka Gakkai, an influential Japanese lay Buddhist organization. It discusses Kōmeitō’s increasing institutional disaggregation from Sōka Gakkai after its formal separation in 1970, its role in changing Japan’s political system in the 1990s, and its entrée into governmental coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) from 1999. The analysis extends to the present and draws on elections data, party publications, interviews with Kōmeitō politicians, ethnography within Sōka Gakkai, and other sources to track ways the party has relied on Gakkai vote-gatherers to secure a pivotal position within Japanese politics, even as its adherent supporters have become increasingly diverse and liable to critique the party their religion founded. It concludes by considering challenges Kōmeitō faces from within Sōka Gakkai, from the LDP, and from Japan’s demographic, political, and societal shifts.

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