The New Komeito was given the final say about making Mr Mori prime minister.
Instead of the originally announced Komura, Abe has sent the leader of the New Komeito Party, YAMAGUCHI Natsuo.
In inviting the New Komeito into the coalition, Mr Obuchi may find he has more on his hands than the couple of dozen upper-house votes he bargained for.
LDP, with its two small coalition partners, the New Komeito and the Conservative Party, a majority in the house and allow it to keep control of the main committees.
The other party Mr Obuchi needs to woo if he is to keep his grip on power is the New Komeito, which he lured into his ruling alliance last October.
Already, the Ozawa party seems likely to become the third largest in the lower house, the key parliamentary chamber, coming after the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) crowding out the New Komeito (NK).
That is why Mr Ozawa is in a huff this week, and why, ultimately, he will have to cave in on electoral reform and grudgingly make room for the New Komeito as well.
But the New Komeito has been alarmed that the 50 seats that Mr Ozawa wants to get rid of would be from the 200 in the lower house that are allocated by proportional representation.
He warned the lists might constitute a violation of election laws. (Such civil action is legal until election campaigning formally starts, which is June 12.) The New Komeito party, a coalition partner of the LDP, sent Wave 21 a note hinting it may file a defamation suit.
They even jumped into coalitions with the LDP, first the socialists, now the New Conservatives and the Buddhist-backed New Komeito, leaving voters distrustful of what they stand for.
That is, the three partners in the alliance - LDP, New Komeito and the defectors from Ozawa's group, now calling themselves the Conservative Party - will coordinate their campaigns and support each other's candidates.
But Mr Koizumi's junior coalition partner, the Buddhist-backed New Komeito, has balked at the idea.
But the Buddhist-backed New Komeito is still smouldering over Mr Mori's allusions to the ethnic purity of state-sponsored Shintoism, and may demand Mr Mori's head as the price for staying in the coalition.
The Buddhist-backed New Komeito's 24 upper-house seats would give Mr Obuchi the majority he needs.
In order to raise the tax to 10% by 2015, Mr Noda struck a deal with the LDP and its ally, New Komeito, which enabled the bill to pass the lower house in June.
ECONOMIST: An unusual militancy is creeping into mainstream politics
This is especially important because the assembly is the power base of the LDP's coalition partner, New Komeito, which gives the party its majority.
The LDP is strong in the countryside, while New Komeito is powerful in many urban districts.
But he is an outspoken critic of the ruling alliance with New Komeito Party, and thus its leader, Kanzaki Takenori, finds him unacceptable.
"Whether you choose us to lead the stable government that carries our reform platform or you choose an unstable chaotic government led by opposition parties is en-tirely up to you, " Kanzaki Takenori, leader of the ruling coalition's New Komeito, told voters.
The LDP and its ally, New Komeito, can muster enough support from other parties to cause gridlock.
If at any time before then New Komeito gambled on leaving the coalition, the government would fall immediately.
But New Komeito is resistant to the kinds of reforms that Mr Koizumi is billed as wanting to make.
In the next election, polls suggest, the LDP cannot win by itself, nor even only with the support of its old ally, New Komeito, a Buddhist-linked party.
"We can call them private visits all we want, but it's very obvious China and South Korea won't interpret them that way, " said Shigeki Sato, the head of the foreign policy and security committee of New Komeito, a small party that forms a coalition with Mr. Abe's LDP, in a television interview.
"We can call them private visits all we want, but it's very obvious China and South Korea won't interpret them that way, " said Shigeki Sato, the head of the foreign policy and security committee of New Komeito, a small party that forms a coalition with Mr. Abe's LDP, in a television interview Monday.
Tokyo metropolitan elections that month will command all the energies of the LDP's junior coalition partner, New Komeito.
Much of the pressure for the stimulus package came from the LDP's junior coalition partner, New Komeito, a Buddhist-affiliated party which hitherto has played an insignificant role.
But Mr Koizumi may ignore their pleas, despite New Komeito's growing clout in the eyes of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
He should really have been more respectful of New Komeito's main sponsor, the Soka Gakkai, whose founder, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, was imprisoned during the war because of his opposition to state-sponsored Shintoism.
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