The party was established in January 1962 as the Kōmei Seiji Renmei (Clean Government League) by the Sōka Gakkai, an organization that promoted Nichiren Buddhism.
He was taken into custody in his capacity as Sōka Gakkai's Youth Division Chief of Staff for overseeing activities that constituted violations of elections law.
He spent two weeks in jail and appeared in court forty-eight times before he was cleared of all charges in January 1962.
[13] 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.
The others, i.e. local assembly members and the rest of the Upper House chairs, formed Kōmei and independent friend of the New Frontier Party.