This chapter analyzes how Komeito’s decision to leave the ruling coalition obstructed the historic emergence of Japan’s first female prime minister, exposing contradictions between the party’s stated commitment to peace and women’s rights and its actual behavior.
It also examines media bias that uniformly attacks Sanae Takaichi while ignoring dissenting voices within Komeito, and critiques the selective surname debate, showing how China and Korea’s deep-rooted misogynistic traditions differ from Japan’s historical customs in which women held greater autonomy, including the right to initiate divorce in the Edo period.
The chapter argues that current gender discussions are distorted by foreign cultural assumptions and media manipulation.

November 19, 2025.
This is the continuation of the serialized chapter in the monthly magazine WiLL.
Masayuki Takayama again proves that he is the one and only journalist, scholar, and writer in the postwar world.

A Truly Self-Destructive Act
The Asahi Shimbun is malicious.
It has dragged Japan down for decades.
Now that Takaichi, who is close to Shinzo Abe, has become party president, no one knows what insidious attacks they will launch next.
Takaichi faces rough roads ahead.
Komeito has decided to leave the coalition.
As of October 15, it is Komeito and Soka Gakkai that have effectively blocked the birth of Japan’s first female prime minister.
It is a stain on history.
The person who made that decision, Komeito leader Saito Tetsuo, is a habitual offender of political fund misreporting, a dirty politician already in the sights of the prosecutors.
For such a man to loudly accuse others of “money and politics” and then slam down a divorce letter is something more malicious than mere contempt for women.
Yet the media reports only criticisms of Takaichi’s leadership and ignores voices within Komeito that opposed leaving the coalition.
Komeito, without Ikeda Daisaku and with an aging membership, appears to be headed toward the same fate as the now-vanished SDP unless it clings to Takaichi.
The core doctrine of Soka Gakkai is based on Nichiren.
During the Kamakura period, amid epidemics and disasters, Nichiren wrote Rissho Ankoku-ron, earnestly praying for national peace.
But today’s Soka Gakkai walks the exact opposite path.
Komeito constantly claims to prioritize peace and women’s rights, yet the moment Takaichi becomes party president, they leave the coalition.
It is utterly contradictory.
If they cite misreporting of political funds as their reason, then it would not have been strange for them to hint at leaving the coalition during the Ishiba administration.
It is not as though Ishiba produced meaningful results.
Isn’t Komeito’s intent to block Takaichi from becoming prime minister far too blatant?
Komeito strongly supports the introduction of selective separate surnames for married couples.
The Civil Code already states that when a couple marries, they may choose either the husband’s or the wife’s surname.
Nowhere does it say, “It must be the man’s surname.”
If women insist so strongly on keeping their own surname, then they should simply require men to adopt the woman’s surname.
If the man dislikes that, then he should not marry.
Soka Gakkai gives guidance on family matters, after all.
But instead of such straightforward discussion, they leap directly to the argument that “women are unfairly discriminated against.”
It is debate for the sake of debate.
Japan is said to be a male-dominated society, but history shows this is entirely wrong.
In the Edo period, women could initiate divorce based on their own free will.
There are countless surviving divorce letters written by wives to their husbands, and there were even refuge temples for women.
The representative example is Tokeiji in Kamakura.
The ideology that proclaimed male supremacy was a Chinese import—Zhuxue (Neo-Confucianism), which influenced the samurai.
In China, wives were simply tools for producing offspring.
Thus, they had no names.
Because they were birthing tools, they were not absorbed into the husband’s family (surname).
This is why wives continued to use their natal family’s surname.
Korea imitated China, and couples married with separate surnames.
Even Empress Myeongseong, consort of King Gojong, the 26th king of the Joseon dynasty, entered the palace as the consort of the Min family, and even she had no personal name.
In other words, in China and Korea, because deep-rooted contempt for women lies at the foundation, married couples keep separate surnames.
It has nothing to do with individuality or personal independence.
In contrast, Japan welcomes the wife as “kanai”—“a person of one’s home,” a member of the family.
Wives themselves accepted this status, and had no resistance to taking the husband’s surname.
This chapter continues.