Komeito quits Japan coalition, leaving LDP way short of majority

After a ninety-minute Friday meeting with LDP leader Sanae Takaichi, Komeito leader Tetsuo Saito announced that his party would not renew its coalition with the LDP.

The centrist Buddhist party, backed by the religious organization Soka Gakkai, has been in coalition with the LDP since 1999, and stuck with the LDP even in opposition from 2009-2012.

This is an inflection point for the Japanese political system, not only reflecting years of gradual change – demographic shifts affecting Komeito disproportionately, the steady erosion of public trust in the LDP after two major scandals, the frustration of Komeito supporters at the compromises required to maintain the coalition – but also opening the door to further change and instability.

What happened?

Komeito, with 24 seats in the House of Representatives and 21 in the House of Councillors, announced that it would no longer join the LDP in a ruling coalition. The LDP, already heading a minority government, is now twenty-five seats short of a majority in the upper house and thirty-seven seats short of a majority in the lower house, complicating its ability not only to manage the legislative process but even to elect Takaichi, its newly chosen president, as prime minister in place of Shigeru Ishiba.

The ruling coalition faced significant challenges through its twenty-six-year history. It was particularly tested during the nearly eight years of the second Abe administration, when Komeito had to compromise with an ambitious, assertive conservative prime minister. And then the years following Abe’s assassination in 2022 imposed severe strains on the coalition, starting with the exposure of LDP links with the Unification Church and then the revelation of an LDP slush fund scandal.

Meanwhile, Komeito’s absolute and relative electoral support has been falling, from more than 6.5 million votes and 13% of the vote in the 2019 upper house elections to 5.2 million votes and 5.37% of the vote in this year’s upper house elections. Some of the decline is due to demographics and some is due to changes within Soka Gakkai, particularly around the death of longtime leader Daisaku Ikeda, but the party also believes that it has paid a significant price for its association with the LDP.

Before the LDP leadership election, Tetsuo Saito warned that the party would not be able to join a government led by Takaichi or by Takayuki Kobayashi. It was difficult to know how seriously to take this threat but, as it turns out, Komeito was entirely serious.

Some of Takaichi’s early maneuvers – a secret meeting with Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) leader Yuichiro Tamaki shortly after her victory, before the LDP and Komeito had discussed terms; her willingness to include the scandal-implicated Koichi Hagiuda in her leadership team; and her overall reluctance to prioritize campaign finance reform – were received as “slaps in the face” by Komeito.

It probably does not help that Takaichi is dependent on the support of Taro Aso, who referred to Komeito as a “cancer” in the ruling coalition in 2023, and, more generally, that the LDP right has long viewed the party as an obstacle to achieving its ambitions. The upshot is that Takaichi had little room to maneuver.

What does this mean for Takaichi becoming prime minister?

The Diet was supposed to convene for an extraordinary session this month to receive Ishiba’s resignation and choose a new prime minister. That session, originally expected for October 15 was pushed back as the LDP and Komeito struggle to conclude a coalition agreement.

CDP leader Yoshihiko Noda speaks to the news media on Friday, 10 October. Photo: CDP

The vote itself is now uncertain.

While this makes sense on paper, it is much more complicated in practice. For starters, no single opposition party has enough seats on its own to deliver a majority to the government. Any opposition party would be signing up for participation in a minority government that would still need to negotiate with the opposition to realize policies.

Meanwhile, neither the DPFP nor Ishin no Kai has been eager to join the LDP, for reasons not unlike Komeito’s reasons for leaving. Neither wants to join the LDP and pay the reputational cost of propping up LDP rule. They are open to negotiations to move policies through the Diet but they do not want to be constrained by partnership with an LDP in crisis.

Additionally, the DPFP has been hearing from organization labor federation RENGO, its principal backer, that it is firmly opposed to the DPFP’s supporting the LDP-led government.

Can the opposition parties really cooperate to elect an alternative?

While we have seen a multi-party coalition drive the LDP into opposition before, the 1993-1994 coalition is a cautionary tale of the difficulty of uniting a disparate group of opposition parties with at best loose agreement on a policy agenda.

Even before Friday’s announcement, the CDP was talking with opposition parties to drum up support not for CDP leader Noda but for Tamaki. Noda on Friday said the opposition has a “once-in-a-decade” chance to drive the LDP from power.

The DPFP was skeptical about this effort, citing the significant policy differences with the CDP, but Tamaki responded to news of the ruling coalition’s breakdown by announcing his interest in becoming prime minister.

Ishin no Kai’s leaders, meanwhile, have suggested that if the DPFP is interested, they might be open to discussing as well.

And Komeito’s position is unknown. The party has said that it will not vote for Takaichi, but whether it would participate in an effort to elect an alternative is unclear.

There is reason to be skeptical about the ability of the opposition parties to overcome their differences, but they do have a window of opportunity to negotiate a short-term coalition that would, say, pass political reform legislation and a supplemental budget and then call a snap election.

Could that really happen?

It seems far-fetched but the reality is that Japan’s political situation is a highly fluid one in which the principal actors may be willing to make alliances and deals that would have been unthinkable not too long ago.

At the very least, the LDP and Takaichi look significantly damaged. Whatever hopes she had of boosting the LDP’s support and signaling a new era for the LDP have likely been dashed.

What if a general election were held today?

It is hard to see the LDP regaining a majority; it would probably lose seats.

The Nikkei Shimbun ran a simulation that found that if the LDP and Komeito had split before last year’s general election, the LDP would have won 20% fewer seats and the CDP would be the largest party in the House of Representatives.

As such, if there is a general election in the near term, the LDP will have to contest it without Komeito’s backing. Saito said that the party will neither endorse LDP candidates nor seek LDP endorsements for its candidates, though there may be some individual candidates it could support.

LDP candidates would then have to contest an election without Komeito support while facing pressure on the right – from the DPFP and Sanseitō – and from the center, since a Noda-led CDP may be able to pick up votes from, say, moderate LDP voters who opposed Takaichi.

The CDP, with more candidates than the other opposition parties, could actually perform better than expected, particularly if the right-wing vote should split among multiple parties.

Where does Komeito go from here?

Komeito has been in coalition with the LDP for so long that it is difficult to imagine what role it will play in the political system. Saito said that the party will not become a mindless opposition party – it will work with the LDP on issues of mutual interest. But over the longer term, the party now faces a serious identity crisis.

At the national level, without the coalition with the LDP, Komeito may have a harder time winning single-member constituencies. The party may increasingly look like the Japanese Communist Party, commanding a diminished but not incapable electoral machine that can still mobilize voters for proportional representation seats.

The party may also still be a presence in sub-national politics, contesting local elections in Tokyo, Osaka and other urban centers. And it is certainly not impossible that it could find itself in government again, particularly if Japan is on the brink of a new era of fluid multi-party coalitions. But it is unlikely to wield the influence it had as the LDP’s junior coalition partner, which gave it meaningful veto power over the direction of policy.

What does this all mean for Japan?

Japan’s political instability is likely to get worse before it gets better. The reality is that no party is able to muster a majority to govern the country. It is unlikely that weak governments will be able to make some of the politically difficult decisions on such pending questions as fiscal consolidation, defense spending, social security reform and agriculture reform.

It also means that Japan’s voice could be missing in efforts by peer democracies to shore up regional and global institutions.

Of course, the failure of established parties to govern may create more room for an anti-establishment party like Sanseito to gain more support.

Longtime Japan politics and policymaking analyst Tobias Harris heads Japan Foresight LLC.

This article was originally published on his Substack newsletter Observing Japan. It is republished with permission.