Former Komeito Chairman Koshiro Ishida, who helped establish a coalition government in 1993 that put a temporary end to the Liberal Democratic Party's nearly four-decade monopoly on power, died Monday morning, his family said. He was 76.
Ishida was director general of the old Management and Coordination Agency from August 1993 to June 1994 under the coalition governments led by Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa and Prime Minister Tsutomu Hata.
A native of Sapporo, Ishida was chairman of the party backed by Soka Gakkai, Japan's largest lay Buddhist group, from May 1989 to December 1994 when the party split into two blocs. Komeishinto, one of the two blocs, was later absorbed into a new opposition party called Shinshinto (New Frontier Party), and Ishida became deputy chief of the new party.
In November 1998, two opposition parties, comprising former Komeito party members, merged to launch New Komeito under the leadership of Takenori Kanzaki. New Komeito is now the junior partner of the ruling LDP.
Ishida was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1976 from a district in Aichi Prefecture and served 10 terms before retiring from politics in 2000.