Aspiration for the good society - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 80

acquaintances. However, they also sometimes volunteer at election rallies,
helping as receptionists, guards, with directing tra c and generally taking

care of the logistics of Komeito s election campaign meetings held in town

halls and open to the public. Bigger meetings about the election at Soka
Gakkai facilities were few, and were meetings for Soka Gakkai members or
even leaders only. One such gathering, one of the largest I attended, was held
to mark the o

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cial start of the July 2004 Upper House election. Around
1,000 young women in their early twenties, mostly Soka University students,
had gathered to hear about the election and to watch a Komeito promotional
DVD. In it reasons for Komeito

s support for the dispatch of SDF to Iraq
were shown, as well as its continued focus on increasing child bene

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its Child

bene t was by then being seen as a measure to alleviate the declining birth

rate, a hot political topic that was having wider implications for the con-
tinually decreasing funds available for pension payments. After the DVD,
some of the young women talked about their struggles and victories in trying
to convince their friends and family to vote for Komeito. Such speeches
usually ended with a declaration to increase awareness about why voting for
Komeito was a good choice.
These campaigners had various experiences but one common issue was the
need to have courage to talk about politics. Often mentionedwere peers who were
disinterested in or apprehensive about even discussing current issues. Politics
being largely viewed as an inappropriate topic to bring up in conversation made
raising interest in politics and in voting hard work. Among friends who were
interested in politics di

cult questions sometimes arose about policy di er-

ence from other parties, or about Komeito being a party. Supporters

had to respond to the perception of suspect reasons for why a religious group
was supporting a political party. Yet criticism about this sometimes came
more from inside the organisation, from non-active Soka Gakkai members.
Taka, a third-year philosophy student of Soka University, explained when we
talked about his religious organisation supporting a political party that:

' religious '

The good thing is that we are trying to improve politics by putting
politicians with integrity (seijitsu) into the political world, people who are
good as human beings and to whom you can entrust politics. The bad thing
is that there is a lot of prejudice against Soka Gakkai because of this.
People tend to equate Soka Gakkai with Komeito, which means they
think that if they vote for Komeito it is like voting for Soka Gakkai.
Thus because we are a religious group, supporting a party is more di

…

cult.
(conversation with Taka, June 2004)

He did not himself think of this relationship as controversial, but was con-
cerned about the perception that Soka Gakkai was seeking political power for
its own sake. At

religious practice
and not at all interested in politics, something he now felt helped him to
understand his friends who were uninterested in politics, or religion for that

first he had been uninterested in his parents '