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Paper short abstract

This paper revisits Komeito’s role in Japan’s security politics using LDP–Komeito policy meeting data from 2013–2023. It shows that Komeito is neither simply a pacifist brake nor convergent junior partner, but selectively allocates attention across security dimensions.

Paper long abstract

Komeito has long occupied an ambiguous position in Japan’s security politics. As the junior partner in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-led coalition, it has been widely viewed as a pacifist brake on conservative security reform. At the same time, more than two decades of coalition participation have raised the question of whether Komeito has gradually converged with the LDP’s security agenda. This paper revisits this question by shifting attention from policy outcomes to party agenda allocation.

The paper analyzes an original dataset of foreign and security policy meetings held by the LDP and Komeito from 2013 to 2023. These internal party meetings provide a rare window into how governing parties organize policy attention before issues appear as cabinet decisions, Diet debates, or public campaign messages. This article disaggregates Japan’s security agenda into four dimensions: strategic competition, immediate threat response, alliance management, and normative security. These dimensions capture different aspects of post-2012 Japanese security politics, from rivalry with China and regional strategic competition, to North Korean threats, U.S.–Japan alliance coordination, and normatively framed themes such as peace, restraint, and constitutional principles.

The findings show that Komeito’s role cannot be understood as either simple pacifist resistance or wholesale convergence. Compared with the LDP, Komeito devotes less organizational attention to senior-owned strategic competition, remains engaged but less prominent on immediate threat response, converges more closely with the LDP on alliance management, and places greater emphasis on normative security. Komeito’s security agenda is therefore selective rather than uniformly dovish or uniformly convergent.

By focusing on agenda allocation, the paper contributes to the study of Japanese coalition politics and security policymaking in two ways. First, it shows how Komeito preserves a distinctive identity while remaining embedded in LDP-led security governance. Second, it demonstrates that Japan’s coalition security politics should be analyzed below the level of the broad “security policy” domain. The LDP–Komeito coalition is not characterized by a single pattern of restraint or convergence; instead, the junior partner manages its role through dimension-specific attention within the security agenda.