Tokyo assembly election: Meet the candidates (Part 5 of 10) – Haruhisa Tomotoshi

As the election looms, I am frantic to get these profiles done. To that end, tonight I will cover one of the New Komeito candidates: Haruhisa Tomotoshi (63). He is an incumbent and (like fellow Komeito candidate Nobuyuki Nakayama) has a near-certain chance of keeping his seat – LDP estimates of their party’s chances to keep control of the assembly assume that all 23 Komeito candidates will win.

Thanks to close ties with lay Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai, the Komeito enjoys a solid base of support among believers in Tokyo. Adachi-ku is also home to Akihiro Ota, the current president of the national New Komeito.

Some also speculate that the Komeito systematically inflates voter rolls by instructing Soka Gakkai followers across the country to move into election districts three months before the vote (the minimum residency period to become a valid voter). This may be true, but I would be kind of surprised if other parties didn’t at least try and employ similar tactics if they work so well.

Mrs. Adamu and I have a hard time supporting Komeito candidates because, like the Communists, they claim to be moderate but in fact have a hidden agenda. In the Komeito’s case, it is to protect the interests of Soka Gakkai, the Buddhist sect that provides election funding and sets their political agenda. The agenda itself tends to be quite mild, but I find the sum of their activities unacceptable: they inject religion into the political process, they maintain an aura of intense secrecy and refuse to explain why Soka Gakkai feels the need for political representation, and their activities appear to openly flaunt the democratic process to to protect a very narrow segment of society.

Anyway, let’s look at these guys.

Haruhisa Tomotoshi

From Tokyo Prefectural Assembly Election

As this poster might suggest, Tomotoshi “the man who really gets it done” does not feel he needs much introduction.

He is a veteran politician who spent five terms as an Adachi-ku assemblyman before moving on to the prefectural assembly, where he is currently on his second term. According to a JANJAN video, he was born in Manchukuo in 1945 just as WWII ended. He was never able to attend high school after his father died around 1960 when Haruhisa was 15. He had to work to support his mother and siblings before becoming an elected official at age 38.

One of the toughest fights of his political career was against Communist-backed Adachi-ku mayor Manzo Yoshida. Yoshida, who was mayor from 1996-1999, cancelled an unpopular building project and pushed to expand welfare services. Tomotoshi and other conservatives in the assembly fought Yoshida tooth and nail, and eventually successfully ousted him through a no-confidence motion.

As for his accomplishments, Tomotoshi takes some of the credit for completing the Tsukuba Express and Toneri Liner (two new train lines that run through Adachi).

It is unclear whether he is a Soka Gakkai believer.

In closing, watch this paranoid anti-Komeito propaganda video. They claim that the Komeito are being used by Soka Gakkai in an anti-Japanese plot to destroy the Japanese people’s lives:

Love the Final Fantasy-esque background music!