In a highly unusual move, ruling coalition junior partner Komeito has said that it will continue talking with the Liberal Democratic Party about remaining in the coalition, as the party and its core supporters remain concerned about new LDP President Sanae Takaichi.

The refusal by Komeito to immediately endorse Takaichi, a hard-line conservative hawk, reflects deep apprehension among millions of Soka Gakkai members, the party’s main supporters in the lay Buddhist group, about her ideology and policies.

After meeting with Takaichi on Tuesday, Komeito’s leader Tetsuo Saito outlined a number of concerns the party and its Soka Gakkai members have with Takaichi, especially her desire to visit Yasukuni Shrine and the lack of LDP party executives with close ties to Komeito.

The meeting ended with promises to continue discussions, but in an interview with an online news site, the video of which was released Wednesday, Saito warned that Komeito’s support for Takaichi as the next prime minister in a parliamentary vote was not automatic.

“Unless we are in a coalition with the LDP, we won’t be writing down Takaichi’s name (on the ballot for prime minister),” Saito said.

Komeito’s attitude has therefore fueled speculation that 26 years after the LDP and Komeito joined forces, the relationship may finally have run its course.

In 1999, Komeito, originally a centrist party that promoted pacifism and social welfare policies, entered the ruling coalition with the more conservative LDP. Many Soka Gakkai members were unhappy with the alliance, but Komeito leaders said the party could act as a brake on conservative and hawkish LDP legislative proposals.

The relationship was severely tested in 2009, when the LDP and Komeito lost their majority and were forced into the opposition camp. That same year, however, Natsuo Yamaguchi became Komeito leader. He kept the 1999 partnership agreement with the LDP rather than enter the Democratic Party of Japan-led ruling coalition.

When Shinzo Abe was elected as prime minister after the 2012 election that returned the LDP and Komeito to power, there was concern in Komeito about his conservative, hawkish views, which were quite similar to Takaichi’s.

But Yamaguchi and Abe forged a good working relationship, and the coalition remained intact despite the ideological differences and deep concern within Soka Gakkai about the partnership after Abe convinced Komeito to help pass new legislation in 2015 that expanded Japan’s security role.

Komeito — now under Saito, who assumed the leadership post last year — is faced with Takaichi, an Abe protege, after relatively smooth relations with former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, a more moderate conservative who was a bitter rival of Abe.

But since the Yamaguchi-Abe era, much has changed, says Ko Maeda, a professor of political science at the University of North Texas.

“Abe and Takaichi share similar policy positions,” Maeda says, “but the circumstances are different. Komeito is becoming weaker, and its relative importance has declined. They’ve lost many seats in three consecutive elections (the 2024 Lower House election, the June Tokyo assembly contest and the July Upper House poll), and the party’s active members are increasingly older.”

Soka Gakkai says it has a membership of about 8.27 million households in Japan. Many members provide votes, and campaign support, to Komeito candidates. The votes are particularly critical for Komeito candidates running as proportional representatives, where winners are selected based on the number of votes their party receives.

But in last year’s Lower House election, Komeito received only about 5.96 million votes, its lowest total since the proportional representation system began in 1996. The party received just 5.21 million proportional votes in the July Upper House election, a 40% drop compared to the 2004 race, when it garnered 8.62 million votes.

Not all of those votes came only from Soka Gakkai supporters, but they paint a picture of a party in crisis.

In a report on its Upper House loss last month, Komeito admitted it has a problem because, unlike in the past, it failed to attract LDP supporters and independent voters, as well as younger voters from their teens to their 50s.

The report said that to regain support, Komeito needed to return to its principles. With Takaichi in mind, Saito said before the LDP presidential election that there was no point in tying up with an LDP leader who wasn’t aligned with Komeito’s moderate conservative views.

If Komeito were to leave the coalition, however, it would impact not only the party and its Soka Gakkai supporters, but also many LDP members who could suffer at the ballot box.

Maeda says if past proportional votes are used as a benchmark, then 2024 election data shows the average number of Komeito votes, and not just Soka Gakkai members, is roughly 20,000 per single member district. Of all the districts, about two-thirds had between 15,000 and 25,000 votes that went to Komeito.

“In last year’s Lower House election, 132 LDP candidates won in single-seat districts,” he says. “Among them, 52 would lose if Komeito’s promotional votes were subtracted from the total number of votes. But not all Komeito supporters voted for LDP candidates. So the true number of LDP candidates who owe their election to Komeito should be less than 52.”

Beside Takaichi’s conservative ideology, the appointment of former policy chief Koichi Hagiuda as executive acting secretary-general — after he was caught up in last year’s slush funds scandal within the party — is also worrying Soka Gakkai supporters. Appointments of scandal-tainted members like Hagiuda could be a major sticking point for Komeito, which has long billed itself as a “clean” party.