[2] In 1981, when Yano was the party's secretary-general, he echoed Komeito and chairman Yoshikatsu Takeiri's shift away from a stringently dovish foreign policy towards accepting the legitimacy of the Japan Self-Defense Forces by arguing that the Soviet Union's military power had become excessive and was now a genuine threat to world peace.

[5] In 1988, Yano denied allegations that his party had kicked out maverick lawmaker Toshio Ohashi, who had accused Soka Gakkai and Daisaku Ikeda of asserting excessive control over Komeito, as a means of crushing dissent, instead arguing alongside other party leaders that he was removed because he had been found accepting bribes as high as $264,000 (in 1988 USD, as reported by AP News), as well as for womanising behaviour.

[6] In January 1987, there was some suspicion that Yano's former secretary was among those implicated in the so-called Meidenko incident, which involved a purchase of 1 billion yen stock being sold by the company.

[8] Later on in May, the Asahi Shimbun pursued suspicions that 200 million yen had been exchanged at Yano's home in connection with the stock trading of a company affiliated with Meidenko.

In October of the same year, he announced the publication of a report entitled the "Secret Memo for All to See" to Bungei Shunjū magazine, for which he obtained the Bungeishunju Reader Award.

In December 2007, the Tokyo District Court ruled in the parliamentarians' favour by awarding them with 6.6 million yen in damages, and also required the publisher (Kodansha) and Yano to place an apology advertisement.

As a result of his legal accusations against Soka Gakkai, Yano left the group on 1 May 2008, saying that the religious organisation "has strong political influence" and that he "cannot overlook its antisocial behavior anymore.

On 11 March 2015, he helped to co-found Satoyama / Sōmō no Kai, a political organisation that focused on issues such as regional revitalisation and solving income inequality.

Some of its other co-founders were former prime ministers Tomiichi Murayama and Yukio Hatoyama, as well as prominent politicians Hirohisa Fujii, Masakuni Murakami, and Taku Yamasaki.

[21] He also claimed that Soka Gakkai had been monitoring his activities and tried forcing Yano to sell his home in order to make a donation of 200-300 million yen for the group.

Tanigawa claimed that the charge was completely false, and his lawsuit against Yano requested ¥11,000,000 in damages and a published apology advertisement in the magazine and national newspapers.

A court investigation found that the core element of the Business World Nippon article, disregarding peripheral details, was true, and that Yano's counter-claims lacked evidence, and dismissed all of them on 26 August 2009.