July 2009 to July 2010 - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 181

to change society. Komeito had been pushing the LDP to promote a shift in
the general attitude towards the work family balance and on the important

issue of environmental sustainability, and had made some attempts to cause a
shift in thinking in the business community. Perhaps it had not done enough,
as critics maintained, and had been co-opted to various degrees by aligning
itself too closely with the LDP. Yet Komeito also had succeeded in making
the LDP more moderate.
Komeito supporters had to know the nuances of these arguments in order,
also, not to be swayed by what seemed Minshut -

-

s attractive proposals of
decreasing taxes while increasing cash hand-outs to parents. They carefully
studied the details of such arguments in order to be able to understand why they
were unfeasible, as Komeito claimed, to be able to explain this to potential
voters and to themselves. Yet although they stressed the well-thought-through
policies of Komeito to potential voters, it was not easy to get people to sup-
port them when cash-hand-outs and easing taxes were on the agenda. While
the unfeasibility of Minshut -

'

s key pledges had become apparent by the 2010
election, in the euphoria for seiken k - tai in 2009, Komeito and its supporters

'

'

claim that Minshut - s proposals were a collection of indiscriminate (bar-

amaki) promises fell mostly on deaf ears. Furthermore, despite both Hatoyama
and Ozawa being under suspicion for violation of the political funds law,
these leaders were represented as leading the democratic party (Minshu t - )for
the people (minsh - ). The blurring of meaning of such words had to be
understood by supporters if they were to agree with Komeito

'

'

s claim that
when it said shomin no mesen kara (from the perspective of the people), their
proposals were indeed more substantiated than Minshut -

' s claim to lift taxes

minsh - for the sake of s claim to

shomin no mesen kara was rooted in policies but also in the 3,000 local poli-
ticians. Such grassroots connections were rather di

' ' (the people). For supporters, Komeito '

erent to the popularity of

Minshut - driven by the media.
However, there were also Komeito supporters who viewed such slogans as
shomin no mesen kara as questionable, as they began to view the last 10 years
while Komeito had been part of the government as the cause of increasing
economic inequality (kakusa). Koizumi had received overwhelming support
for his reform of the postal services in the 2005 election, but in 2007 the
media had begun to represent such policies as primarily neo-liberal and as the
creator of economic inequality and urban/regional disparity. This may indeed
have been a contributing factor, but the reforms Koizumi advocated were also
a way to end clientelism, the special interest maintained through economic
ties between the bureaucracy, big business and politicians. This was something
that was epitomised in the postal services organisations, or in the quasi-
public-driven construction projects. These were complex, not straightforward
economic realities to understand and interpret for most people and some
supporters began to see Komeito as part of creating economic inequalities.
Komeito kept stressing that to be a party of and for the people, the starting
point must be ' to realise clean government ' (seiketsuseiji wo jitsugen). There