The Kà Âmeità  (), also known as Kà Âmei Seiji Renmei, the Kà Âmei Party, and Clean Government Party (CGP), was a political party in Japan, initiated by Daisaku Ikeda, and described by various authors as the "political arm" of Soka Gakkai. Kà Âmeità  was considered a centrist, as well as centre-left, political party of the progressive camp until the 1990s. Its successor party Komeito had become politically closer to the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and became a centre-to-centre-right conservative party. This ended in 2026 when Komeito merged with the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan to become the Centrist Reform Alliance.
The party was established in January 1962 as the KÃ Âmei Seiji Renmei (Clean Government League) by the SÃ Âka Gakkai, an organization that promoted Nichiren Buddhism. Running as independents, three members of the SÃ Âka Gakkai had been elected to the House of Councillors in the 1956 elections, with the 1959 elections seeing nine members elected. It also had several members elected to local assemblies. In 1957, a group of Young Men's Division members campaigning for a Gakkai candidate in an Osaka House of Councillors by-election were arrested for distributing money, cigarettes, and caramels at supporters' residences, in violation of elections law, and on July 3 of that year, at the beginning of an event memorialized as the "Osaka Incident", Daisaku Ikeda was arrested in Osaka. He was taken into custody in his capacity as SÃ Âka 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.
Amongst its policies, the new party supported the 1947 constitution and opposed nuclear weapons. Headed by Harashima Kà Âji. In the July 1962 elections the new party won nine seats in the House of Councillors. On 17 November 1964 the party was renamed Kà Âmeità Â. 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. It eventually broke apart based on promises to segregate from Soka Gakkai.
In 1969, the Kà Âmeità  became the third political party in Japan. In the 1980s discovered that many Soka Gakkai members were rewarding acquaintances with presents in return for Komeito votes, and that Okinawa residents had changed their addresses to elect Komeito politicians. It was also revealed that while the party was technically separate from the Soka Gakkai, monetary donations made that were tax exempt were being funneled into funding for the Kà Âmeità  party as revealed by an expelled Kà Âmeità  member of the Tokyo municipal assembly. It was usually supportive of the Japan Socialist Party, and opposed the LDP (Liberal Democratic Party), the major ruling party at that time. Ideologically, Kà Âmeità  proposed a mild form of what it called "humanitarian socialism", which its one-time secretary general Hiroshi Hojo defined as "a Buddhist version of Christian Democratic socialism".
Kà Âmeità  did quite well, and in 1993, when the LDP was for the first time declared an opposition party, the Kà Âmeità  became one of the ruling parties, headed by the liberal Japan New Party, but which also included the Democratic Socialist Party, Japan Renewal Party, the New Party Sakigake, and the Japan Socialist Party. In 1994, the latter two parties left the coalition, and in July they took over the rule, making another coalition with the LDP. The Kà Âmeità  was again thrown into opposition. On December 5, 1994, The Kà Âmeità  split into two parties. The Lower House chairs and some of Upper House chairs formed Kà Âmeità  New Party, and five days later joined into the New Frontier Party. The others, i.e. local assembly members and the rest of the Upper House chairs, formed Kà Âmei and independent friend of the New Frontier Party. In 1998, the New Frontier Party dissolved, and former Kà Âmeità  members formed New Peace Party and Reform Club. They merged with Kà Âmei in the same year and then became known as the NKP (New Kà Âmeità  Party). The NKP adopted a more conservative agenda than the former Kà Âmeità  and in 1999 they supported the ruling party, the LDP.