Editing Komeito (section)

===Opposition before 1993===
Komeito began as the Political Federation for Clean Government in 1961, but held its inaugural convention as Komeito on 17 November 1964.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Harano |first1=Jōji |title=Kōmeitō Turns Fifty: A History of Political Twists and Compromises |url=https://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00145/komeito-turns-fifty-a-history-of-political-twists-and-compromises.html |website=Nippon.com |publisher=The Nippon Communications Foundation |access-date=12 May 2019|date=2014-11-25 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=About Us: History |url=https://www.komei.or.jp/en/about/history.html |website=Komeito |access-date=12 May 2019}}</ref> The three characters 公明党 have the approximate meanings of "public/government" (公 kō), "light/brightness" (明 mei), and "political party" (党 tō). The combination "kōmei" (公明) is usually taken to mean "justice".<ref>{{Cite web |title=justice - Jisho.org |url=https://jisho.org/search/justice |access-date=2022-07-10 |website=jisho.org}}</ref>{{Additional source needed|date=October 2024}}
Komeito's predecessor party, [[Kōmeitō (1962–98)|Kōmeitō]], was formed in 1962, but it had begun in 1954 as the Kōmei Political League. It lasted until it merged with the NKP in 1998.<ref>{{Cite web |title=History {{!}} About Us {{!}} KOMEITO |url=https://www.komei.or.jp/en/about/history.html#anc04 |access-date=2022-07-10 |website=www.komei.or.jp}}</ref>

In 1957, a group of Young Men's Division members campaigning for a Soka Gakkai candidate in an Osaka Upper House by-election were arrested for distributing money, cigarettes, and caramels at supporters' residences, in violation of election law, and on July 3 of that year, at the beginning of an event memorialized as the "Osaka Incident," [[Daisaku Ikeda]] was arrested in Osaka. He was taken into custody in his capacity as Soka Gakkai's Youth Division Chief of Staff for overseeing activities that constituted violations of election law. He spent two weeks in jail and appeared in court forty-eight times before he was cleared of all charges in January 1962.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.has.vcu.edu/wrs/profiles/SokaGakkai.htm |title=Commitment to Privacy |access-date=2015-02-19 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140512222047/http://www.has.vcu.edu/wrs/profiles/SokaGakkai.htm |archive-date=2014-05-12 }}</ref>

In 1968, fourteen of its members were convicted of forging absentee ballots in Shinjuku, and eight were sentenced to prison for [[electoral fraud]]. In the 1960s it was widely criticized for violating the [[separation of church and state]], and in February 1970 all three major Japanese newspapers printed editorials demanding that the party reorganize. It eventually broke apart based on promises to segregate from Soka Gakkai.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kabashima |first1=Ikuo|last2=Steel|first2=Gill|title=Changing Politics in Japan |date=17 August 2012 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-0801457630 |page=38 |quote=Other smaller parties include Komeito (the party officially became known as New Komeito in 1998), a party that Soka Gakkai formed in 1964 from its precursor, the Komei Political League.}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last1=McCormick |first1=John |title=Comparative Politics in Transition |date=2012 |publisher=Cengage Learning |isbn=978-1111832575 |page=179}}</ref><ref>Jeffrey Haynes ''Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics'' Page 17 "Talking to young Japanese people one normally gets very little sense of enthusiasm about Buddhism, and few people seem to take seriously the notion that the New Komeito Party is a Buddhist political party. The Komeito or 'Clean Government Party' ..."</ref>

In the 1980s, ''[[Shimbun Akahata]]'' discovered that many Soka Gakkai members were rewarding acquaintances with presents in return for Komeito votes and that [[Okinawa Prefecture|Okinawa]] residents had changed their addresses to elect Komeito politicians.<ref>{{cite book|last=Kira|first=Yōichi|title=Jitsuroku: Sōka Gakkai = Nanatsu no daizai|date=1986|publisher=Shin Nihon Shuppansha|location=Tōkyō|isbn=4406013881|edition=Shohan.}}</ref>