Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution. The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan 9780824875428

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Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution

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Contemporary Buddhism MARK M. ROWE, SERIES EDITOR

Architects of Buddhist Leisure: Socially Disengaged Buddhism in Asia’s Museums, Monuments, and Amusement Parks Justin Thomas McDaniel

Educating Monks: Minority Buddhism on China’s Southwest Border Thomas A. Borchert

From the Mountains to the Cities: A History of Buddhist Propagation in Modern Korea Mark A. Nathan

From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas Daniel Veidlinger

Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan Levi McLaughlin

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Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan

Levi McLaughlin

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS HONOLULU

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© 2019 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19   6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: McLaughlin, Levi, author. Title: Soka Gakkai’s human revolution : the rise of a mimetic nation in   modern Japan / Levi McLaughlin. Other titles: Contemporary Buddhism. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2019] | Series:   Contemporary Buddhism | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018032850 | ISBN 9780824875428 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Soka Gakkai—Japan—History. | Religion and state—Japan. Classification: LCC BQ8412.9.J32 M35 2018 | DDC 294.3/9280952—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032850 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Cover art: Stylized version of Soka Gakkai flag by Lauren Markley

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Contents



vii

Series Editor’s Preface

ix Preface

1

CHAPTER ONE

S oka G akkai as M imetic N ation

35

CHAPTER TWO

F rom I ntellectual C ollective A H istory of S oka G akkai

68

to

R eligion :

CHAPTER THREE

S oka G akkai ’ s D ramatic N arrative

88

CHAPTER FOUR

P articipating in C anon : T he F ormation S acred T exts in a N ew R eligion

112

CHAPTER FIVE

C ultivating Y outh : D iscipleship S tandardized E ducation

137

of

through

CHAPTER SIX

G ood W ives , W ise M others , of C onversion

and

F oot S oldiers

A fterword : V ocational P aths



170



179 Notes



199



209 Index

Works Cited

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Series Editor’s Preface

ethnographically, Levi McLaughlin offers us a master class in understanding the “mimetic nation” that is Japan’s largest lay-centric religious organization. He adroitly places the Gakkai faithful center stage, providing hauntingly complex and textured ethnographic cases of members’ lives. A classically trained violinist, McLaughlin played with the group’s symphony orchestra, which allowed him to bypass the usual need for top-down introductions and directly access hundreds of local members. McLaughlin’s sense of music pervades the narrative and prose, revealing an appreciation not only for the main notes and major chords, but also for the silences and pauses that provide tension and meaning to these stories. There is drama here on both a broad historical and an intensely personal scale. Thus the grand narrative of Soka Gakkai’s rise that appears in what McLaughlin calls the “participatory canon” of the serial novel The Human Revolution stands in stark contrast to the intimate struggle of a second-generation Gakkai daughter who turns back to the teachings as a way to recover from years of abuse by her devout father. McLaughlin’s remarkably balanced approach and exhaustive research allows us to see the group as it functions in its power centers, cultural activities, outreach programs, and members’ most private spaces. IN APPROACHING SOKA GAKKAI BOTH HISTORICALLY AND

vii

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Preface

account of Soka Gakkai in Japan. Literally the Value Creation Study Association, Soka Gakkai began in the 1930s as a society of educators and developed after World War II into Japan’s largest modern religion. It now claims 8.27 million households in Japan and close to two million members in 192 other countries under Soka Gakkai International (SGI). Soka Gakkai is a lay Buddhist organization that emerged from Nichiren Shōshū, a denomination that grew out of a minority lineage that follows the medieval reformer Nichiren (1222–1282). However, as the name Value Creation Study Association indicates, Soka Gakkai comprises a great deal more than Buddhism and is instead best conceived as the product of what I term “twin legacies”: lay Nichiren Buddhism and modern Euro American humanist imports. In this book, I situate Soka Gakkai’s rise as a Buddhist and humanist enterprise within Japan’s transformation from an expansionist empire to a postwar democratic polity. My analysis suggests that Soka Gakkai can best be characterized as mimetic of the nation-state in which it took shape. Conceiving of Soka Gakkai as a mimetic nation-state makes sense of the full range of its component elements, which include its affiliated political party Komeito (Clean Government Party), a bureaucracy overseen by powerful presidents, a media empire, a private school system, massive cultural enterprises, de facto sovereign territory controlled by organized cadres, and many other nationstate-like appurtenances. The mimetic nation-state metaphor also does justice to the fact that Soka Gakkai remains a gakkai, a study association, because Soka Gakkai cultivates loyalty in its participants within ­legitimacy-granting educational structures that emulate those that undergird the modern nation from which it emerged. Despite Soka Gakkai’s scale and the ubiquity of its adherents, comparatively little sustained work has been done on its local Japanese communities. This dearth of research can be attributed in part to Soka Gakkai’s largely negative public image. Soka Gakkai grew notorious in Japan for reacting strongly to its critics, gained infamy for targeting its religious rivals in aggresTHIS BOOK PROVIDES A HISTORICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC

ix

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x  Preface

sive proselytizing campaigns, attracted controversy by engaging in electoral politics through Komeito, and became known for its adherents’ reverence for its charismatic leader, Honorary President Ikeda Daisaku. Publications on Soka Gakkai to date have tended to fall into two camps: harsh critiques, mostly in the form of tabloid exposés, and hagiographies published by Soka Gakkai itself or by writers who recapitulate messages provided to them by Gakkai representatives. Both camps have tended to focus on the Gakkai’s leadership at the expense of attention to the lives of its non-elite adherents. This book, by contrast, is the product of close to two decades of nonmember research I carried out mostly within local Gakkai communities. I set out neither to expose nor to celebrate Soka Gakkai. Instead, I use a twofold approach that combines ethnographic methods with text-based investigations to provide an account that privileges a grassroots-level perspective. My study proposes ways to understand why Soka Gakkai proved compelling to converts and why a group that is labeled a Buddhist lay association reproduces statelike enterprises within its constituent institutions. The fieldwork episodes I present here should be viewed as core samples from a crucial time span. My ethnography spans from 2000 to 2017, a period between Soka Gakkai’s 1991 schism with Nichiren Shōshū and the final years of Ikeda Daisaku’s life. Over the course of my ethnography, I interviewed more than two hundred members across Japan, in small towns and huge cities between Iwate Prefecture in the north and rural Kyushu in the south. I lived with Gakkai families for weeks at a time, studied for and passed Soka Gakkai’s introductory doctrinal examination (the nin’yō shiken), accompanied adherents on pilgrimages to key Gakkai sites, and spent years playing violin with a symphony orchestra organized by Soka Gakkai’s Young Men’s Division. Only a percentage of this fieldwork appears in this volume. A considerable portion of the ethnography in this book comes from 2007, right in the middle of my core samples. A decade of follow-up research has afforded me critical distance necessary to assess my findings and situate them within a theoretical framework. I supplemented my fieldwork with extensive use of primary and secondary sources, some of which I acquired through ethnographic work. The members who appear in this book are my friends. I reject the term “informant” as a disingenuous attempt to project impartiality. Some members I met who were school children in 2000 are now parents who are raising their own Gakkai families. Some have come to repudiate Soka Gakkai and some have died. With only a few exceptions, the people who appear in this book I met via local contacts and not through introductions from Gakkai administrators. However, throughout my years of research I have been aided by helpful representatives from Soka Gakkai’s administration, particularly staff from its Office of Public Relations (Kōhōshitsu) and its International

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Preface   xi

Division (Kokusaibu), who kindly organized opportunities for me to access key sites and interview veteran adherents. These administrators are also my friends. As is so often the case with friends, we do not see the world the same way. I am not a member of Soka Gakkai, nor have I ever been. None of my research received financial assistance from Soka Gakkai, and at no point has any of my work been vetted by the organization. My analysis is inevitably inflected by the personal connections I have forged with members, yet I consistently seek to retain an empathetic yet critical perspective on Soka Gakkai. My fieldwork was limited by the Gakkai divisions I could access by virtue of my age and gender, and by restricting my research to Japan. I devote attention to the Gakkai’s Married Women’s Division—the organization’s most active suborganization, and one I could spend time with without difficulty as a (relatively) young, married man—but it was not appropriate for me to forge close ties with the Young Women’s Division. The largest absence here is, of course, Soka Gakkai International. SGI is such a massive entity and so varied across the world that a proper study would require a level of commitment that lies beyond the scope of this project. Because the organization is now seeking to perpetuate itself past the lifetime of its honorary president, right now is an ideal time to reflect on Soka Gakkai’s remarkable rise. As attention turns to how the group will transform in the future, we must look to Soka Gakkai’s past to consider reasons why it attracted millions of converts and what accounts for its institutional development. Conventions and Abbreviations Japanese names follow the Japanese convention of family name, given name order. All names of Soka Gakkai members are pseudonyms, save those of published Gakkai leaders. I refer to members by given name or family name, depending on how I interacted with them. I render Sōka Gakkai as Soka Gakkai, the organization’s official name in English, and I render Kōmeitō as Komeito for the same reason. Other Japanese words use a macron for long vowels, save for Tokyo, Osaka, and others that are well known to English-language readers. At times, I refer to Soka Gakkai as the Gakkai, an abbreviation that members use. Dates from January 1, 1873, follow the Gregorian calendar and those before then use a day-month-year format. I only include Chinese characters (kanji 漢字) when specific characters are germane to the discussion. I refer to Soka Gakkai’s edition of Nichiren’s writings, the Nichiren Daishōnin gosho zenshū (New Edition of the Complete Works of the Great Sage Nichiren, or Gosho), first published on April 28, 1952. Scholarship on Nichiren Buddhism conventionally relies on the four-volume Shōwa teihon Nichiren Shōnin ibun (Shōwa Standard Edition of the Sage Nichiren’s Writ-

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xii  Preface

ings); to accurately reflect Gakkai engagement with Nichiren’s teachings, I cite the Gosho. Acknowledgments This book began life as a significantly revised dissertation I completed at Princeton University in 2009. None of this work would have been possible without Jacqueline Stone’s guidance. Jackie supported my application for a fellowship from the Japanese Ministry of Education (then known as the Monbushō Fellowship) that enabled my studies at the University of Tokyo from 2000 to 2002, and her instruction at Princeton from 2004 taught me to read Nichiren’s writings, to situate my fieldwork within a Japanese Buddhist framework, and to cultivate the rigor and the compassion necessary to pursue this discipline. At the University of Tokyo, I was fortunate to have taken part in Shimazono Susumu’s seminar on modern Japanese religion between 2000 and 2002, and to have benefited from his advice since then. Between 2002 and 2004, Inoue Nobutaka invited me to work as a researcher and translator at the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics at Kokugakuin University. I am indebted to Nishiyama Shigeru at Toyo University, who allowed me to audit his seminar in 2001, and to Nakao Takashi, emeritus professor at Rissho University, who provided invaluable advice on Nichiren Buddhist history. Faculty and staff at Nanzan University, including Clark Chilson, Ben Dorman, James Heisig, and Paul Swanson offered hospitality at crucial times. My work in Japan, from this period and after I began at Princeton, was also enabled by friends inside and outside academic life. My thanks go to Kate Dunlop, Erik Abbott, Alison Krause, Furuko Masahito, Kondō Mitsuhiro, Ōyama Yūichi, Ōtsuka Shigeki, Norman Havens, Mizobe Mutsuko, Rick Berger, and others who made Japan home. At Princeton, I intersected with a combination of faculty and fellow students who served as exemplary models of scholarship and friendship. I thank Sheldon Garon, Buzzy Teiser, James Boon, Amy Borovoy, David Howell, Jeffrey Stout, Keiko Ono, and other professors for their instruction and for providing opportunities to learn through teaching. Invaluable support from Pat Bogdiewicz, Lorraine Furhmann, and other Department of Religion staff made my work possible. The 1879 basement crew—Susan Gunasti, Mairaj Syed, Lance Jenott, Rachel Lindsey, Geoff Smith, Joel Blecher, and others who joined our troglodytic redoubt—deserve special praise for fostering a perfect balance of conviviality and productivity during the dissertation writing phase. April Hughes, Anthony Petro, Kevin Wolfe, Joseph Winters, Erin Brightwell, Yulia Frumer, Maren Ehlers, Ian Chong, Steve Bush, Eduard Iricinschi, Amy Sitar, Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm, Ethan Lindsay, Emily Mace, Bryan Lowe, Moulie Vidas, and numerous others who joined me in Princeton semi-

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Preface   xiii

nars and workshops shaped the research that appears here. Paul Copp, Mark Rowe, Asuka Sango, Lori Meeks, Stuart Young, and Jimmy Yu set a high bar as my immediate East Asian subfield predecessors. I am particularly indebted to Micah Auerback, who commented on early iterations of these chapters, and to Jolyon Thomas, who made crucial interventions on later versions. A dissertation writing fellowship from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation supported my final Princeton year, and much of the fieldwork I draw on in this book was made possible by funding from the Japan Foundation. This book is the product of a long post-dissertation gestation that was enabled by support from numerous institutions and a large number of friends across the world. Colleagues at Wofford College, particularly Trina Jones and Dan Mathewson, welcomed me to my first teaching post and encouraged my research. I benefited greatly from several months in 2011 as a visiting researcher at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. During this fellowship period and in collaborations with ARI affiliates since then I have received feedback on my work from Prasenjit Duara, Michael Feener, Philip Fountain, and others. I am grateful for friendships with Morten Schlütter, Katina Lillios, Melissa Curley, Sonia Ryang, Fred Smith, and others that began during my 2011–2012 year as a research fellow at the University of Iowa. Since 2012, I have taught at North Carolina State University, where Anna Bigelow, Jason Bivins, Bill Adler, Karey Harwood, Jason Sturdevant, and Mary Katherine Cunningham, along with department chair extraordinaire Michael Pendlebury and administrator extraordinaire Ann Rives, create a wonderfully collegial environment for religious studies. David Ambaras, Nathaniel Isaacson, John Mertz, and others in East Asian studies, along with Eric Carter, Shay Logan, and a long list of other Philosophy and Religious Studies Department friends make my working life in Raleigh a true pleasure. I also benefit immensely from working with my UNCChapel Hill and Duke University colleagues Barbara Ambros, Richard Jaffe, Hwansoo Kim, Kristina Troost, and numerous others. Life in Raleigh is inconceivable without Melody Moezzi and Matthew Lenard. Melody clarified my prose, and Matt created the figures that appear in chapter one. None of the ideas that appear here would have taken shape had I not had the chance to explain them to a wide range of experts. The mimetic nation-state metaphor only really began to make sense to me through collaboration with political scientists. They have forced me to strive toward expertise in a new area and, through this, to deepen my insights into religion. I’m grateful to Steve Reed, Axel Klein, and Dan Smith, who are co-authors and co-­ editors par excellence. I am especially grateful for opportunities afforded me through the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation’s U.S.-Japan Network for the Future. My thanks go out to all of my fellow Network participants, and to Ben Self, whose work on this program has generated incalculable benefits.

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xiv  Preface

Presentations at Harvard, Oxford, Copenhagen, Toronto, McMaster, Manchester, Singapore, Heidelberg, Bayreuth, Michigan, Berkeley, Penn, Johns Hopkins, USC, UVa, Duke, Northwestern, Kokugakuin, Nanzan, and other universities sparked invaluable critiques, as did presentations for the American Academy of Religion, the Association for Asian Studies, and other conferences. Helen Hardacre, Ian Reader, Erica Baffelli, Monika Schrimpf, Inken Prohl, John Nelson, Jessie Starling, Heather Blair, Nakano Tsuyoshi, Orion Klautau, Ōtani Ei’ichi, and others who drive the study of Japanese religion forward have given me key insights. At the University of Hawai‘i Press, I am indebted to editors Stephanie Chun, Emma Ching, and Grace Wen, and to series editor Mark Rowe. Of course, none of the ideas that appear here would have developed had I not been able to interact with members of Soka Gakkai in Japan. Over the last two decades, literally hundreds of Gakkai members have invited me into their homes, spent hours talking bravely about their most intimate moments, provided me with places to stay, given me access to Gakkai experiences and texts, and otherwise made my research possible. They have demanded nothing in return. Protocol prevents me from thanking them by name, but I must emphasize my love and respect for the members who have taken me into their lives. My family in Toronto—mother Danielle, father Hooley, brother Reuben, sister Gabrielle, nieces Na’ama, Chavva-Tal, and Delphi, and everyone else—has unfailingly supported me. As this work developed, we lost my grandmother Leya Ludwig and my grandfather Jack Ludwig. Casting back over memories preserved in this research, particularly the recollections of veteran adherents, has made me think constantly about my grandparents. They were, like the members who appear in this book, treasure troves whose loss leaves a hole that cannot be filled. This book is dedicated to my wife Lauren Markley. I cannot do justice to the extent to which I depend on her fierce independence and her deep empathy for the world around her. Our more than twenty years together has made me a better person. For all its faults and all its costs, this book is for you, Lauren, with all my love.

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Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution

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1

Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation

“A social formation only reproduces itself as a nation to the extent that, through a network of apparatuses and daily practices, the individual is instituted as homo nationalis from cradle to grave, at the same time as he or she is instituted as homo oeconomicus, politicus, religiosus . . .”

capacity as a representative of the kanbu (executive or administration), as one of thousands of salaried employees who dedicate their lives to service within Soka Gakkai’s massive bureaucracy. An intelligent and compassionate man in his mid-­ forties who listens to others carefully and chooses his own words with equal care, Iizuka seems perpetually conscious of his responsibility to represent Soka Gakkai’s professional face to the world. Dark suit, shiny black shoes, crisp white shirt no matter the weather, sharply parted hair, and never a hair out of place, he is a bit of an anachronism, a throwback to Japan in the immediate postwar years when Gakkai representatives were eager to overcome the group’s image as a religion of the poor. At every encounter with fellow adherents, Iizuka provides them with a behavioral and sartorial model that implicitly urges conformity to a rigidly disciplined ideal. I have seen a member of the Young Men’s Division jerk to attention and run to put on a tie when he saw Iizuka coming, and an older Gakkai man apologize reflexively to him for his “slovenly appearance” when he was just wearing casual clothes. Every weekday morning, Iizuka wakes before dawn at his home in western Tokyo to make the first train to the center of the city. He travels for well over an hour to arrive at the Gakkai’s headquarters in Shinanomachi, MR. IIZUKA FIRST APPROACHED ME IN HIS

1

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2  Chapter 1

central Tokyo. At precisely 7:00 a.m., he joins thousands of his fellow Soka Gakkai employees and ordinary adherents in morning gongyō, the devotional chant that comprises the Gakkai’s Nichiren Buddhist practice: chapter 2, “Expedient Means,” and sections of chapter 16, “Life Span” of the Lotus Sutra, the putative final teaching of the historical Buddha. He and his fellow chanters follow this approximately twenty-minute liturgy with repeated incantations of namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, the title of the Lotus known as the daimoku. Iizuka spends at least an additional hour every morning chanting daimoku, a practice that members typically treat as an opportunity to direct the power of the chant toward specific aims. His concerns include the continued academic success of his eldest son, a talented biology student; care for his elderly mother, who is descending into dementia; and the happiness of the two young children of his younger sister, who died suddenly of cancer several years ago. Like that of all members, Iizuka’s gongyō session includes prayers for the health and well-being of Ikeda and Kaneko Daisaku, Soka Gakkai’s honorary president and his wife. For decades, Ikeda Daisaku has towered within Soka Gakkai as its unquestioned authority in all matters, and since Soka Gakkai split from its parent temple Buddhist sect Nichiren Shōshū in 1991, everything associated with Ikeda has taken on an ever-deepening significance for the group’s devotees. Shinanomachi began as an administrative hub but today functions as a sacred space. Every year, millions of Gakkai adherents make pilgrimages from all over the globe to Shinanomachi to connect directly with Ikeda by engaging in devotional activities at the site associated with his person. Iizuka, like other headquarter employees, treats his daily commute as part of this pilgrimage ritual. Born in Sasebo, a working-class port city in Nagasaki Prefecture dominated by a US military base, and raised in poverty by parents who converted to Soka Gakkai, Iizuka committed himself to two stark choices as he finished high school: drop out of school and work in menial jobs to support his mother, who was teetering on the brink of divorce from his father, or seek to study at Soka University. Iizuka did not apply to any other universities because he only considered study at the school founded by Honorary President Ikeda as a meaningful alternative to no postsecondary education. When Soka University accepted him, he was overcome with gratitude, and when he made it through the competitive hiring process to gain a position in Soka Gakkai’s salaried administration, his commitment to the organization hardened into an indestructible core. For Iizuka, the entire world, even nature, makes sense to him in Gakkai terms. During a long car trip through Fukushima Prefecture I took with him in June 2013, Iizuka talked about how he had spent the previous ten years learning to identify the types of flowers, trees, insects, and animals

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  3

that thrive on Soka University’s capacious grounds. He reflected on how he deepened his bonds with the university and its founder by memorizing seasonal changes at the campus. “If it’s a plant that grows at Soka University, I know it,” he declared to me and our driver, Mr. Akabashi, who was, like Iizuka, a salaried Gakkai administrator. For members of the kanbu, the dedicated inner circle within Soka Gakkai’s already rarefied sphere, all things in the world, down to the minutiae of nature, reveal their meaning when they are regarded as constitutive of their religion. From mundane phenomena up to life-­altering undertakings, all acquire heightened significance as they are woven into Soka Gakkai’s narrative. Each one provides the organization’s employees with another opportunity for self-sacrifice through service, another chance to demonstrate dedication to Ikeda Daisaku and the institutions he cultivated. A Tale of Twin Legacies and the Rise of Ikeda Soka Gakkai has exceeded the capacity of other modern Japanese religious organizations to build institutions and attract adherents. Today, the group claims 8.27 million households in Japan and close to two million adherents in 192 countries under its overseas umbrella organization Soka Gakkai International, or SGI.1 These self-declared figures are exaggerated. Survey data point instead to a figure in the neighborhood of between 2 and 3 percent of the Japanese population, fewer than four million people, who most likely self-­ identify as committed Gakkai adherents. But even the most conservative estimates allow us to surmise that virtually everyone in Japan is acquainted with a member, related to a member, or is a member of Soka Gakkai. Soka Gakkai presents itself as a paradox. It began as a humanistic organization that came to embrace the teachings of Nichiren, a famously intolerant Buddhist cleric, and it grew into Japan’s fastest-growing religion in the decades after World War II, the very period when self-identification as being religious began to wane among people in Japan. More important than confirming Soka Gakkai’s membership numbers is making sense of these paradoxes. Doing so means investigating its wide range of institutions and making sense of why they proved compelling. Though most scholarly sources categorize the group as a lay Buddhist organization, Iizuka’s life story, and the accounts of other members who appear in this book, demand that Soka Gakkai be understood as heir to twin legacies: first, a tradition of self-cultivation derived from lay practice under the minority temple Buddhist sect Nichiren Shōshū, and, second, intellectual currents that flourished in late nineteenth to early twentieth century Japan that valorized standardized education and philosophical ideals aimed at the elevation of the individual, all inspired by Euro American traditions generally associated with “culture.”

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4  Chapter 1

Soka Gakkai’s development attests to the formative impact of these twin legacies. The organization marks its founding as November 18, 1930, when Makiguchi Tsunesaburō (1871–1944), first president of the prewar incarnation Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai, or Value Creation Education Study Association, published the first volume of his four-volume Sōka kyōikugaku taikei (System of Value-Creating Educational Study). The group originated as a modest-sized association of petty bourgeois educators and intellectuals, one of many such gatherings in the imperial Japanese capital. Born in a small fishing village in northern Japan and trained as a pedagogue, Makiguchi worked as a schoolteacher and elementary school principal and wrote on geography, education, and ethics early in the twentieth century. The character of Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai began to transform after Makiguchi, along with his disciple and fellow teacher Toda Jōsei (1900–1958), became lay adherents of Nichiren Shōshū in 1928 and turned thereafter to Buddhist activism. It was not until the late 1930s that Makiguchi and Toda’s group adopted a clearly religious character, and later still that their Nichiren Buddhist views hardened into absolute commitments. Soka Gakkai is categorized as a shinshūkyō, or New Religion, a term applied in Japan primarily to lay-focused religious groups founded after 1800.2 Soka Gakkai falls into the Nichiren-kei (Nichiren-type) category by virtue of Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai’s early transformation into a Nichiren Shōshū lay association. Nichiren Shōshū (Nichiren True Sect) is a temple-based Buddhist denomination that emerged from a minority lineage that follows the teachings of Nichiren (1222–1282), a medieval Buddhist reformer. Trained primarily in the Tendai Buddhist tradition, Nichiren abandoned established temples early in his life to preach exclusive faith in the Lotus Sutra, understood commonly within East Asian Mahāyāna Buddhism to be the historical Buddha Śākyamuni’s final teaching. Nichiren urged the rejection of all other teachings and taught that the practice of chanting the title of the Lotus in the seven-­ syllable formula namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, known as the daimoku, was the only effective way of achieving salvation in the age of mappō, the degraded “latter days of the Buddha’s Dharma.” He castigated the “false teachings” and “evil monks” of other sects; he petitioned the military government in Kama­ kura, the power center during his lifetime, to abandon support of Tendai and all other temples save his own; and he otherwise challenged the established order of the day, leading authorities to exile him twice and attempt to execute him once. In willingly undergoing persecution, Nichiren established a model for lay and monastic followers of upholding an ideal of self-sacrifice in a struggle against corrupt worldly authority in defense of a transcendent truth.3 He also established a concern among his followers for conceiving of their practice as engagement with government—one that inspired political activism by modern Nichiren-based organizations.

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  5

Nichiren Buddhist commitments clashed with civic responsibilities imposed in wartime Japan. During the Pacific War, government policy required all Japanese subjects to pay allegiance to the Grand Shrine at Ise, but Makiguchi and Toda unrepentantly defended their exclusive commitment to Nichiren’s teachings and repudiated the government’s mandate that they enshrine Ise kamifuda (deity talismans). As a result, they endured severe state suppression. Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai dispersed after their arrest in July 1943, and Makiguchi died of malnutrition at Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison on November 18, 1944. Released shortly before Japan announced its defeat to the Allied forces on August 15, 1945, Toda reformed the organization in May 1946, renaming it Soka Gakkai, the Value Creation Study Association. The new Gakkai was more broadly defined than its education reformminded predecessor. Under Toda, Soka Gakkai attracted converts with a combination of results-oriented pragmatism and the promise of contributing to Nichiren Buddhism’s eschatological ideals. Beginning with a few dozen families in urban Tokyo, Soka Gakkai grew quickly in the immediate postwar years, appealing primarily to the working poor who flooded into Japan’s cities seeking material security, social infrastructure, and spiritual certainty. New members assembled at convivial gatherings at neighborhood homes where local leaders expounded on Nichiren’s writings, the Lotus Sutra, and a life-­ affirming philosophy of value that drew on Kant, Bergson, and other Western thinkers. From the 1950s, Soka Gakkai under Toda organized local-level converts into a sophisticated, centrally controlled hierarchy that grouped adherents collectively by household and individually by age, gender, geography, vocation, and other demographic data. The group’s organizational structure was reshaped by the leadership’s decision to run candidates for election from 1955, shifting to a vertical hierarchy that bonded members in local areas and facilitated rapid mobilization. Success in electoral politics galvanized the organization as it contributed to the legitimacy of the group in the eyes of converts. Soka Gakkai claimed no more than five thousand families in 1951; driven by a well-organized conversion campaign and growing political relevance, its membership surpassed one million households by the time of Toda’s death in 1958. Soka Gakkai’s membership continued to expand dramatically under the leadership of Ikeda Daisaku (1928–) who took the post of third Soka Gakkai president on May 3, 1960. Armed with Gakkai publications filled with techniques to persuade people to abandon other religions, encouraged by their group’s burgeoning political power, and otherwise inspired by Gakkai leaders to expand the organization into all aspects of Japanese life, members promoted a massive conversion campaign with the aim of ultimately realizing the Nichiren Buddhist goal of kōsen rufu. For centuries, kōsen rufu—to “declare [the Lotus] far and wide” and realize the mission of converting all people to

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6  Chapter 1

Nichiren’s Buddhism—had persisted as a far-off ideal within Nichiren-based organizations. However, as Soka Gakkai began to attract significant numbers of enthusiastic adherents, kōsen rufu solidified within the Gakkai as an achievable objective. Driven by ingenious organization that balanced central administrative control with local initiatives, centered on uncompromising teachings that rejected Japan’s conventional religious pluralism, and roused by a clarion call for institutional expansion, Soka Gakkai spread, in the words of one Osaka-based veteran member I interviewed, “as if it were an epidemic” (densen mitai). Rapid growth incurred notoriety. Fierce conflict with religious and political rivals escalated as the Gakkai gained both converts and enemies through its hard-sell conversion practices and in particular because of its ­electioneering—a practice critics regarded as a dangerous transgression of the 1947 Constitution, which guarantees the separation of religion and government. Under Ikeda, the Gakkai’s electoral forays expanded into the founding of the political party Komeito (Clean Government Party) in 1964, which by the end of that decade became the third-largest party in the National Diet. Ikeda Daisaku also expanded Soka Gakkai overseas: he established chapters in North and South America, Europe, elsewhere in Asia, and eventually across the entire world under an umbrella organization that in 1975 took the name Soka Gakkai International. Soka Gakkai claimed more than seven million adherent households in Japan by 1970. Ikeda also led Soka Gakkai to expand dramatically beyond Nichiren Buddhism. He oversaw the Gakkai’s increasing engagement with issues of global concern, such as nuclear disarmament and world peace, and he guided the organization’s increasing emphasis on a culture mission that valorized literature, classical music, and high art. Members were trained to regard The Human Revolution, a serial novel that narrates the history of the Gakkai’s founding and subsequent growth, as an authoritative history and the core of a new de facto Soka Gakkai canon. Ikeda’s writings became the central focus of a massive publishing and media enterprise centered on the Gakkai’s newspaper, Seikyō shinbun. And, from the late 1960s, Soka Gakkai began building a private educational system that would eventually allow adherents to educate their children from kindergarten through university exclusively within accredited Gakkai schools. By the early 1970s, rapid membership growth leveled off after a series of scandals forced the official separation of Soka Gakkai and Komeito. The Gakkai’s widening purview under Ikeda also contributed to friction with the Gakkai’s parent temple Buddhist denomination. The small, tradition-­ oriented Nichiren Shōshū was not well matched with the expansive vision and charismatic leadership developed by Toda and radically amplified by Ikeda. The reverence Ikeda Daisaku commanded among Gakkai adherents and the

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  7

direct challenges he leveled at Nichiren Shōshū’s claim on doctrinal authority led to heightened conflict by the mid-1970s. Ikeda was effectively forced from the presidency in 1979, when he took the title honorary president and remained president of Soka Gakkai International. Rather than marginalizing him, this administrative shift had the effect of apotheosizing Ikeda in the eyes of his followers. Ikeda’s elevation to the post of honorary president intensified affective connections between him and local-level adherents, who increasingly came to regard him as a righteous truth-teller who persevered against hidebound clerics, in keeping with the biographical model set by Nichiren. In April 1981, Soka Gakkai registered as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, part of Soka Gakkai’s intensifying shift toward peace, culture, and education— three principles that are now officially the group’s pillars. From January 1983, Ikeda began to issue annual “peace proposals,” long published essays that call for mutual understanding across cultural divides, and his practice of engaging in dialogues (taiwa) with international luminaries intensified. Members who came of age during these years reflect nostalgically on their participation in massive sekai heiwa bunkasai (world peace culture festivals) where thousands danced and sang in choreographed, casts-of-thousands spectacles. This period saw a turning away from expanding Soka Gakkai through conversion toward cultivating generations born into Gakkai households within cultureand education-oriented discipleship under Honorary President Ikeda. Ikeda’s ever-intensifying role as Soka Gakkai’s absolute leader contributed to a schism between Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shōshū. On November 28, 1991, Nichiren Shōshū Chief Abbot Abe Nikken decreed that only those who would affirm noninvolvement with Soka Gakkai would be permitted to enter the sect’s temples or enter the head temple Taisekiji, where Nichiren Shōshū’s, and then Soka Gakkai’s, principal object of worship is enshrined. This measure effectively expelled every member of Soka Gakkai from Nichiren Shōshū; the sect, in effect, excommunicated the vast majority of its parishioners in a single day. The 1991 split divided Soka Gakkai communities, and reverberations from the rift still ripple through both organizations. Since the schism, the Gakkai administration has focused ever more intensely on cultivating members as Ikeda Daisaku disciples. Perpetuating a tendency that can be traced to the 1960s, Soka Gakkai has transformed from an organization headed by Ikeda to a group dedicated to him. Children raised in Soka Gakkai families are encouraged to fuse their personal objectives with those promoted by Ikeda and to regard meeting the Gakkai’s (mostly Ikeda-centric) institutional goals as ways to satisfy personal aspirations. At present, Soka Gakkai sits at a crucial juncture: the end of Ikeda Daisaku’s life and a future without a living charismatic leader. It faces a daunting task of routinizing Ikeda discipleship in a new generation of adherents, ones whose

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8  Chapter 1

aspirations and anxieties differ from those of the first- and second-generation members who built the massive enterprise that is Soka Gakkai. Lay Nichiren Buddhism as Soka Gakkai’s Daily Practice Soka Gakkai’s composition today reflects its twin Nichiren Buddhist and modern humanist legacies. Its Nichiren Buddhist elements include the following: Chanting. Adherents intone morning and evening prayers in front of their home altars in a chanting performance called gongyō (to exert oneself in practice). Soka Gakkai’s twice-daily chant now includes chapter 2, “Expedient Means” (Hōben), and sections of chapter 16, “Life Span” (Juryō) of the Lotus Sutra, shortened in 2002 from a more demanding practice that included more recitation of the Lotus text. The sutra sections are followed by repeated incantations of the sacred title of the Lotus known as the daimoku (great title), which consists of the seven syllables namu-myōhō-renge-kyō.4 Members routinely engage in shōdai, long sessions of repeated invocations of the daimoku. They also cooperate in assemblies called shōdaikai that combine their tallies of daimoku repetitions. Targets of one million daimoku aimed at a specific goal frequently serve as individual or group objectives. Reverence for the gohonzon. The daigohonzon (great object of worship) is a calligraphic mandala with the syllables namu-myōhō-renge-kyō running down its center. It is said to have been inscribed by Nichiren on the twelfth day of the tenth month of 1279 for the sake of all humanity. For decades, membership in Soka Gakkai was confirmed by receiving a gohonzon, a replica of the daigohonzon, which is enshrined at Nichiren Shōshū’s head temple Taisekiji, near Mount Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture. Because Gakkai members have been barred from access to the daigohonzon since the 1991 schism, the Soka Gakkai administration found other ways of producing gohonzon replicas, basing them instead on a 1720 copy made by Nichikan, the twenty-sixth Shōshū abbot. Policies changed again after the installation of the kōsen rufu no gohonzon on November 5, 2013, at the Hall of the Great Vow, Soka Gakkai’s new general headquarters. Controversies over the legitimacy of the post-1991 objects of worship rage between Soka Gakkai and rival Nichiren groups. Shakubuku. Translated literally, the Nichiren Buddhist term shakubuku can be rendered “break and subdue,” the strong implication being that harsh tactics were to be exercised on those who maintained attachments to inferior teachings, meaning anything other than exclusive embrace of the Lotus. Shakubuku was promoted by Nichiren as the only appropriate propagation method for lands in which people slandered the Dharma, a violation Nichiren regarded as most egregiously evident in Japan. Recent decades have

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  9

seen Soka Gakkai leaders encourage a move away from hard-sell shakubuku proselytizing in favor of shōju (accommodation). Shōju is frequently glossed in English by practitioners as “gentle persuasion through reasoned argument.” Despite this official shift, members in Japan tend to speak of converting others to Soka Gakkai as shakubuku, although interpretations of the term have transformed over time. Members have also come to refer to proselytizing in terms of taiwa (dialogue). Kōsen rufu. The call—kōsen rufu—to “widely declare and spread [the truth of the Lotus Sutra]” is used within Soka Gakkai to describe any activities that promote the organization. It is typically equated either with conversion or with expanding Soka Gakkai’s institutional reach. Mappō. East Asian Buddhist tradition divides history into the three stages of shōbō, or true dharma (the millennium after the lifetime of the historical Buddha); the age of zōhō, or semblance dharma (the millennium after shōbō); and the final age of mappō (the latter age of the dharma), understood to have begun in the year 1052.5 Gakkai members uphold Nichiren’s injunction that release from suffering through rebirth can only be achieved in mappō through universal embrace of the Lotus and the rejection of all other teachings. Nichiren. Followers in the Nichiren Shōshū tradition, including Soka Gakkai members, regard Nichiren as the earthly avatar of the eternal Buddha and the manifestation in Japan of the Buddha of the age of mappō. Nichiren’s writings, collectively called the Gosho, are thus considered by Gakkai followers to bear scriptural authority surpassing even that of the teachings of the Buddha Śākyamuni. His biography is taken as an exemplary model, and objectives attributed to Nichiren left incomplete at the end of his life were adopted as Soka Gakkai institutional goals. Conversion. Conversion to Soka Gakkai is formalized by the ritual bestowal of a gohonzon replica. Before the 1991 schism, this ritual was carried out as a gojukai ceremony, literally to “receive the precepts,” performed by priests at Nichiren Shōshū temples. Today, conferral takes place at Gakkai culture centers, where converts join a nyūbutsushiki (Buddha entrance ceremony) at gatherings called nyūkai kinen gongyōkai (memorial gongyō assemblies for entering the Gakkai). During the heady years of the Gakkai’s rapid growth from the 1950s into the 1970s, people sometimes received a gohonzon after attending a single Gakkai meeting. Today, membership is ordinarily bestowed after a would-be convert fills out a kibō kādo (wish card), an application form that includes the person’s photograph and formalizes her or his desire to gain membership. This paperwork is meant to be completed only after the prospective convert attends local meetings for three months, demonstrates an ability to chant the Gakkai’s twice-daily liturgy, and maintains three months of a subscription to the daily newspaper Seikyō shinbun,

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10  Chapter 1

though prospective converts are at times urged to join before this. Conversion in Japan also requires hōbōbarai (cleaning out slander to the dharma), which entails ridding the new member’s home of all religious material deemed heterodox from a Gakkai perspective. Comprehensive hōbōbarai persisted until fairly recently, though Soka Gakkai has relaxed this requirement in recent years.6 Mobilizing Human Resources Soka Gakkai leaders, and some scholars, attribute the Gakkai’s capacity for institutional expansion to the Nichiren Buddhist principle of zuihō bini, a term Nichiren used to mean the precept of adapting to local customs. Zuihō is a redaction of the term zuihō zuiji (adapting to follow the times) and bini is a Japanese rendering of the Sanskrit vinaya (the regulations for the Buddhist order). In a missive from 1264 titled “Recitation of the hōben and juryō Chapters,” Nichiren justified adapting teachings to the locale: “If one does not go against the heart of the precepts, even if one departs ever so slightly from the teachings of the Buddha, one should avoid going against the customs of the country.”7 Zuihō bini enabled Gakkai adherents to introduce suppleness into rigidity as it allowed members to fit exclusive Lotus adherence into local customs and to adapt shakubuku conversion techniques to suit situational mores. Yet zuihō bini does not explain why Soka Gakkai adopted its particular institutional framework, or why this framework proved compelling to its members.8 It also does not explain why Soka Gakkai attracted more adherents than other Nichiren Buddhism–based organizations. An analysis of Soka Gakkai’s distinctive appeal must explain how the Gakkai’s twin legacies, not just its Nichiren Buddhism, shaped its development. The group is not structured as a temple-focused lay confraternity but is instead run by an administration formulated along modern bureaucratic lines. Soka Gakkai is headed by Honorary President Ikeda, who is attended by an elite circle of male and female functionaries called the Daiichi Shōmu, the First General Affairs Division. The Daiichi Shōmu mediates between the office of the honorary president and the Gakkai’s regular administration, which most closely resembles a modern government’s civil service, peopled by employees such as Mr. Iizuka, who are enjoined to treat their job as a vocational calling. The Gakkai’s massive pyramidal bureaucracy is topped by a president (the sixth, Harada Minoru, since November 2006) who oversees approximately three hundred vice presidents, a board of regents, and several thousand lower-ranked salaried administrators who manage working equivalents of education, executive and judicial organs, taxation, personnel and facilities management, security, the control and distribution of information, and other functions akin to those of a nationstate. This structure creates a specific Soka Gakkai ­administrative culture,

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FIG. 1  Soka Gakkai’s national administration (Soka Gakkai website, https://www.sokanet.jp, August 2017)

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FIG. 2  Soka Gakkai’s regional administration (Soka Gakkai website, https:// www.sokanet.jp, August 2017)

one that allows kanbu (administration) members to overcome regional or personal differences. Mr. Iizuka and Mr. Akabashi, the members we met in the opening of this chapter, had never met before, but they quickly adopted an attitude of easy familiarity thanks to their shared kanbu culture. Much of Soka Gakkai’s institutional expansion can be attributed to the efficiency of its carefully cultivated administrators. All Gakkai members, salaried employees and volunteers alike, are grouped according to age, gender, marital status, geographic location, vocation, and other demographic categories. The primary suborganizations are the Future Division, which includes both girls and boys up to the age of eighteen; the Young Men’s Division, whose members range in age from eighteen to forty; the Young Women’s Division, whose members join at eighteen and “gradu-

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  13

ate” (sotsugyō) to the Married Women’s Division either when they marry or around the age of forty; the Men’s Division (from age forty); and the Married Women’s Division.9 Married women under forty join a Married Women’s Division subdivision called Young Mrs. (Yangu Misesu). These basic divisions are sometimes reduced in Gakkai parlance to the yonsha (four folks): Men’s, Married Women’s, Young Men’s, and Young Women’s Divisions, the four key components of what members refer to as their jinzai (human resources). Veteran O.B.s and O.G.s (Old Boys and Old Girls) from the Men’s and Women’s Divisions will at times take part in Young Men’s and Young Women’s Division events in ways that emulate the participation of school graduates in special events for their alma mater. Soka Gakkai’s human resources conserve a gendered division of labor that perpetuates social norms that were in place during the organization’s formative decades. As they take on roles dictated by their gender and marital status, members also shoulder responsibilities distributed by a Gakkai administration that relies on the setai (or shōtai), the household, as its basic unit. The setai—the same unit used in Japan’s national census—is predicated on a nuclear family that consists of a married heterosexual couple and their children. Gakkai households are integrated upward into bureaucratic levels of increasing size, expanding outward in geographic range, from block (burokku) to district (chiku), chapter (shibu), regional headquarters (honbu), ward (ku or ken), and prefecture (ken). This multistage vertical structure is replicated in thirteen national zones. Leadership from the block upward is restricted to men, though local Gakkai levels include a Married Women’s Division leader (block Married Women’s Division leader, district Married Women’s Division leader, and so on) who wields considerable regional influence. Members also take up responsibilities in a wide range of other subdivisions, such as the Students’ Division and Culture Division. Many also belong to vocationally specific subgroups, such as the Doctors’ Group, the Education Division (for teachers), or the Artists’ Group. Beyond the top administrative levels, subdivision posts are filled by unpaid volunteers. Adherents frequently take on multiple administrative roles and as a result attend a large number of subdivision meetings. A particularly committed member might attend at least one Gakkai meeting every day, or even more. Local-level meetings always include at least one member with yakushoku (official duties), thereby reinforcing the imperative that reports on local activities make their way up the chain to the Gakkai’s administrative center. Soka Gakkai maintains practices that cohere strongly with civic functions. These include the following elements: Study meetings. Gakkai members meet in their local areas at zadankai (monthly discussion meetings or study roundtables). Zadankai

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14  Chapter 1

usually describes an academic gathering. Under Makiguchi’s leadership, Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai convened jissen shōmei zadankai (study roundtables for practical evidence).10 Culture centers. Soka Gakkai maintains in excess of 1,200 culture centers of various sizes across Japan that are used for in-person assemblies and satellite broadcasts that feature speeches by Honorary President Ikeda (delivered in absentia after May 2010). Study-oriented meetings also take place at Gakkai facilities called kinen kaikan (memorial meeting halls) dedicated to Ikeda and the first two founding Gakkai presidents. Some of Soka Gakkai’s largest facilities are called kōdō (lecture halls), further confirming the group’s school orientation. Examinations and ranks based on modern standardized education. Members are encouraged to study for and take doctrinal tests, beginning with the nin’yō shiken. Literally an appointment examination, the name nin’yō shiken would otherwise be used for civil service placement. Those who pass are awarded the rank of joshi (instructor). Examinees who pass higher-level tests become assistant professor, associate professor, and finally professor, confirming thereby the equation of doctrinal mastery with school-based study and the appeal of this system to educational aspiration. Electioneering. No matter the level of the election, from a seat in a small municipal council up to the National Diet, members of Soka Gakkai mobilize votes for Komeito. Gakkai members have also electioneered on behalf of candidates for Komeito’s government coalition partner, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and other political allies. Since 1999, Komeito has operated as the junior partner with the LDP in the national government. Although Soka Gakkai and Komeito severed official institutional ties in 1970, Gakkai adherents treat electioneering for Komeito, and now for the LDP, as an integral component of their practice, on par with chanting the Lotus or carrying out shakubuku. Soka Gakkai’s administration carefully records vote solicitation by keeping a tally of f-tori (friend-getting). Each nonmember vote for Komeito garnered by a Gakkai member qualifies as one f-tori, and each district sets a target f-tori number for each election.11 Soliciting subscriptions for Gakkai publications. Members regularly gather subscriptions to periodicals produced by Gakkai-affiliated media outlets. Primary among these is the daily newspaper Seikyō shinbun. Soka Gakkai calls this practice shinbun keimō (newspaper enlightenment), which uses keimō, the European term for enlightenment or civilization, and not a Buddhist term, such as satori, to celebrate the awakening of readers to Soka Gakkai. The paper is available only via delivery by a Gakkai adherent, is not for sale at newsstands, and has no evening edition. This imposed limitation places responsibility for information distribution squarely on local-level practitioners, and shinbun keimō is treated as a principal way of facilitating

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  15

shakubuku. Like the Gakkai’s vote-gathering, newspaper enlightenment is measured by a point system. Members gain one pointo (point) for each month of each Seikyō shinbun subscription. Newspaper enlightenment yields tremendous results: Seikyō shinbun claims a daily circulation of 5.5 million copies, the third-highest newspaper subscription rate in Japan. A media empire. Soka Gakkai’s publishing and audiovisual companies produce a comprehensive library of texts that shape members’ lives as they bring in vast amounts of capital. Media production is grounded in the Seikyō shinbun and includes the publication of hundreds of books that bear Ikeda Daisaku’s name. Gakkai publishing companies also produce numerous magazines, including the study guide Daibyaku renge (Great White Lotus), the woman’s magazine Pumpkin, and the cerebral monthly Ushio (The Tide). The Gakkai’s enormous print media output is supplemented by videos, audio recordings, and online content. Shinano Kikaku produces most of the videos members screen at zadankai and other meetings and also makes anime and feature films. Maximally devoted members can receive most or even all of their information via Soka Gakkai as they deliver and read Gakkai newspapers, study Ikeda’s writings, watch Gakkai-produced videos, and otherwise fill their homes with Gakkai texts, images, and sounds. A comprehensive school system. Soka Gakkai has built a comparatively small yet respected private educational system that begins at preschool and culminates in Soka University (founded 1971) in Hachiōji (western Tokyo) and Soka University of America (founded 2001) in California. Since the 1970s, the organization has relied increasingly on its private school system to staff the ranks of its bureaucracy and select Komeito candidates. Most younger Gakkai administrators have attended at least one Gakkai school, and not a few have spent their entire lives within Gakkai institutions. Soka University is comparatively young by Japanese standards, yet its graduates have already earned respect, and Gakkai school alums tend to do well in job searches and graduate education, inside and outside Soka Gakkai’s institutions. Cultural activities. For decades, Gakkai members participated in massive bunkasai, or culture festivals. Like many other Gakkai practices, bunkasai originated in school events. They started under Second President Toda Jōsei as an annual Gakkai undōkai (athletics meet)—a staple event at Japanese schools—and transformed under Ikeda’s leadership into elaborate spectaculars. Soka Gakkai’s vocational groups in fact originated as kurabu (clubs) modeled on extracurricular organizations, which are an important part of Japanese school life.12 Soka Gakkai bunkasai performances in Japan dropped off after the turn of the millennium, yet culture has continued as a Gakkai mainstay. Members enjoy performances sponsored by the Gakkai’s Minshū Ongaku Kyōkai (People’s Music Association), or Min-on, which stages thousands of music and dance performances across Japan each year

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16  Chapter 1

and maintains the Min-on Music Museum at the Shinanomachi headquarters. At local zadankai, members are encouraged to purchase tickets to exhibitions of art and photography that travel between culture centers, and every year thousands of adherents visit the Gakkai’s Tokyo Fuji Art Museum in Hachiōji. Members are otherwise introduced to culture through musical performances, mostly Western classical music and concert band, by musicians from the Young Men’s Division Ongakutai (Music Corps) and Young Women’s Division Kotekitai (Fife and Drum Corps). Culture is reinforced at culture centers, most of which share a near-identical look and feel: light-colored tiled exterior with salmon and sandy yellow hues within and without, lined on the interior by halls hushed with carpet and decorated with framed copies of photographs taken by Ikeda Daisaku that hang beside charming clocks and paintings of bucolic scenes, mostly of landscapes outside Japan. Gakkai interiors evoke the aesthetic of a well-to-do family home in mid-twentieth-century Japan, a welcoming space that expresses refined gentility of a type celebrated in Ikeda Daisaku’s speeches and writings. With the exception of a prayer hall with a tatami-mat floor that houses an altar with the gohonzon, the average Gakkai facility exhibits no obvious Buddhist, or even traditionally Japanese, elements, and instead corresponds more closely to the modern, aspirational aesthetic Ikeda promoted throughout his leadership. Soka Gakkai’s Nation-Like Features Taken together, Soka Gakkai’s appurtenances resemble, most of all, features of a modern nation-state. The most obvious of these is the Gakkai’s influence on government through electioneering and its affiliated political party Komeito. However, we must look beyond Komeito to understand the comprehensive extent to which Soka Gakkai replicates nation-like institutions and practices. These include the following: A Soka Gakkai flag. Since 1988, a red, yellow, and blue tricolor Soka Gakkai flag has been the Gakkai’s main symbol. The flag appears to reproduce the first three vertical stripes of the five-color 1885 International Buddhist Flag, extracted to isolate a three-bar pattern reminiscent of European national flags. Members refer to the Gakkai symbol as the sanshoku or sanshokki (tricolor or tricolor flag), the Japanese term for the French tricoleurs. Some sanshokki versions bear a stylized eight-petaled lotus blossom in the middle, a Gakkai symbol since 1977, which symbolizes the traditional eight scrolls of the Lotus Sutra, but many leave out this Buddhist referent. Anthems. Members learn Soka Gakkai songs and sing them regularly

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  17

at meetings. Gakkai songs, such as the member favorite “Ifu dōdō no uta” (Song of Indomitable Dignity), tend to reinforce the group’s perennial themes: a righteous minority that perseveres to victory and the transcendent glory of personal transformation through self-sacrifice in the name of a mission that is greater than the self. These songs are typically military marches written for optimal performance by singing in unison over brass band ­accompaniment. Soka Gakkai territory. This includes more than 1,200 culture centers, along with memorial lecture halls and numerous other facilities. The buildings that make up the Shinanomachi headquarters in Shinjuku Ward in central Tokyo cover more than a square kilometer of some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Gakkai buildings are patrolled by trained special cadres from the Young Men’s Division: the Gajōkai (Fortress Protection) on the outside and Sōkahan (Value Creation Team) inside, supplemented by trained staff from other divisions. Particularly sensitive sites, notably those associated directly with Honorary President Ikeda, are guarded by salaried security forces.13 Calendar. Gakkai administrators frequently set quantified goals for newspaper enlightenment and other objectives to be met by the end of a shihanki (quarter), a calendar period generally used by businesses and governments for tax purposes. Soka Gakkai otherwise structures the calendar year around key dates in its history. Some dates correspond with the nenchū gyōji (annual cycle of activities) of temple-based Nichiren Buddhism, such as Nichiren’s declaration of the daimoku in 1253 (April 28) and his promulgation of his treatise Risshō ankokuron (On Bringing Peace to the Land [by Establishing the True Dharma]) in 1260 (July 16). Members today gather in their largest numbers to commemorate important dates in Ikeda Daisaku’s biography, such as his birthday (January 2), his appointment as third Gakkai president (May 3), and his conversion to Soka Gakkai (August 24). February is dedicated to kōsen rufu (institutional expansion) to celebrate Ikeda’s conversion of households in Tokyo’s Urata Ward in 1952 while he was still a young leader. In effect, Soka Gakkai has formulated a new nenchū gyōji, one that employs a quarterly calendar period adopted from finance and government that encourages members to plan their lives around annual commemorations of events in Ikeda’s life story. Economy. Soka Gakkai maintains a thriving internal economy that depends on a practice the organization labels zaimu (finances), a term used for monetary donations from members. Gakkai representatives promote Soka Gakkai as a religion that does not cost money, in that members are not required to pay to convert and their income is not tithed. However, members do regularly donate money and material goods to the organization. Members call direct cash donations gokuyō (honored memorial), which they perform on pilgrimages to Shinanomachi and other Gakkai sites. Culture centers are

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18  Chapter 1

filled with clocks, paintings, and other member gifts that cohere with Soka Gakkai’s aesthetic. To fulfill zaimu expectations, members are encouraged to donate money via bank transfer, ordinarily in December, a month in the Gakkai calendar designated for a yearly fundraising campaign. They report to me that the administration will not issue a receipt for income tax purposes unless the donation exceeds ¥10,000 (approximately $100), a practice that encourages sizable donations. In exchange for zaimu, the Gakkai administration sends small gifts to generous donors, mostly of comparatively low monetary value, always characterized as heartfelt thanks sent directly by Ikeda Daisaku. In the eyes of their most devoted recipients, these return gifts are the equivalent of contact relics to be displayed to fellow members. The zaimu practice relies on the model of government taxation, yet it transcends associations with paying taxes because it inspires a cycle of exchange that binds adherents with the honorary president, affectively and materially. Currency. Soka Gakkai’s economic reach extends to the rough equivalent of a currency called chiketto (tickets). Chiketto were vouchers issued by the headquarters that were honored by shops and restaurants in the Shinanomachi area in lieu of Japanese yen, to be used in businesses that displayed a tricolor-emblazoned sign that declared membership in the Shinanomachi Shop Owner’s Promotion Society (Shinanomachi Shōten Shinkōkai). Although chiketto were not the precise equivalent of money in the mainstream economy, they were a visual symbol of the expansion of Soka Gakkai’s sphere of influence, and the image of its sovereignty, from the religious into the monetary. Finances. Registered a religious juridical person (shūkyō hōjin) since May 1952, Soka Gakkai is not subject to taxation. Soka Gakkai’s finances remain opaque, given that it is politically influential and registered not with the national government but the Tokyo Metropolitan government, which maintains only a few staff members responsible for keeping tabs on numerous shūkyō hōjin. Soka Gakkai’s finances remain an object of endless speculation by the popular press; a conservative estimate published in the magazine Shūkan daiyamondo in June 2016 posited the Gakkai’s corporate assets, which include fourteen Gakkai-owned corporations and investments in 331 other companies, at just under $18 billion, and the value of its buildings and real estate holdings of its Shinanomachi headquarters at approximately $1.64 billion. Estimates about Soka Gakkai’s financial assets remain unsatisfactory because they cannot accurately assess the full value of the Gakkai’s thousands of facilities, its stocks and other investments, its holdings overseas, or Ikeda Daisaku’s personal wealth. Most relevant to the analysis here is that even imprecise measurements of Soka Gakkai’s financial assets reveal that the group maintains the capacity to build institutions and carry out activities that equal, or even eclipse, state enterprises.

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  19

Cemeteries. Soka Gakkai maintains thirteen massive memorial parks, a number that corresponds to its thirteen national administrative zones. These gravesites vary in size, and each contains thousands of identical marble headstones. Loudspeakers broadcast daimoku and gongyō chants over the remains of deceased members, which are interred in long lines behind family graves for Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda at all thirteen parks. The parks are tremendous financial and engineering undertakings. Staff at one facility north of Tokyo in October 2007 told me that Soka Gakkai spent the equivalent of $400 million to flatten a mountain, fill surrounding valleys, and build an access road to construct a gravesite filled with thousands of family graves and a large eternal memorial (eitai kuyō) collective ossuary. In a quest for design inspirations, staff members toured Arlington Cemetery outside Washington, DC; they told me they regarded Arlington’s graves as miserly (kechi) compared with the uniform marble headstones they created for their members. Soka Gakkai thus seeks to improve on national models as it draws on its deep resources to bind its adherents to its institutions in death as it does in life. Textual canon. Soka Gakkai narrates its history through an oeuvre inspired by modern Romantic literature. Though adherents still study Nichiren—whose teachings are routinely presented within Ikeda Daisaku’s writings—Soka Gakkai has focused with increasing intensity on creating the working equivalent of its own canon, a vast corpus that operates as the equivalent of a national literature. At the heart of the Gakkai’s canon lies the serial novel The Human Revolution (Ningen kakumei) and its sequel The New Human Revolution (Shin ningen kakumei), novelized treatments of the lives of Toda Jōsei and Ikeda Daisaku and how they constructed the organization in Japan and abroad. Members are cultivated to treat The Human Revolution as the Gakkai’s “correct history” (tadashii rekishi) and to regard it as de facto scripture that transmits butsui bucchaku (the true intent and true teachings of the Buddha). The Mimetic Nation-State Metaphor I propose that Soka Gakkai can be conceived as a mimetic nation-state. That is, Soka Gakkai makes itself intelligible and attractive by emulating the institutions, activities, and ideologies perpetuated by nation-state enterprises. Its mimesis of the nation-state’s authority-bearing institutions and practices— particularly those rooted in modern standardized education—proved compelling to converts who flock to Soka Gakkai, especially those who joined in the decades following World War II. The Gakkai’s mimesis of the nation-state suggests an extension of what Emilio Gentile refers to as the “sacralization of politics,” wherein modern democracies borrow from religious referents to

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20  Chapter 1

confer a sacred quality on political institutions.14 Soka Gakkai reverses the polarity of Gentile’s observation: it is a religion that models itself on an idealized vision of the nation-state. A key reason for Soka Gakkai’s development along these lines was its founding as a gakkai (study association). Even as Soka Gakkai transformed into a lay Nichiren Buddhist organization under Makiguchi and Toda and then grew beyond these parameters into a broadbased network of institutions under Ikeda, school-based pedagogy continued to inform core Soka Gakkai practices, and the organization as a whole depends on members who uphold the conventions of modern standardized education, much in the same way that the modern state depends on educational structures to cultivate its subjects and staff its bureaucracies. In previous publications, I describe Soka Gakkai as an adjunct nation: that is, neither a state within a state nor a separatist institution, but an adjunct network of schools, bureaucracy, economy, and myriad other legitimate forms that make up modern Japan.15 Positing Soka Gakkai as mimetic of rather than adjunct to the modern nation-state avoids the mistaken impression that Gakkai members regard their organization as secondary in any way.16 Focusing on mimesis recognizes that Soka Gakkai’s institution-­building does not recapitulate every formal aspect of a modern nation, or a state. It also liberates the analysis from the need to constantly differentiate between nation and state. Indeed, because the nation-state serves here as a guiding metaphor, and because definitions of the two terms necessitate a degree of ambiguity, nation and state necessarily blur in this investigation. Most basically, the mimetic nation-state metaphor explains why Soka Gakkai looks and acts the way it does and why it has proven compelling to so many converts. From its tricolor-draped territories and reverence for founding presidents who oversee a massive bureaucracy modeled on a civil service, to its cadres who bond in shared memory through anthem-like songs and a novelized canonization of their past, down to paths taken by individual members, membership in Soka Gakkai is conceived as participation in a mission of world-historical significance, one that resonates with the mission of the modern nation-state. This is an appropriate point at which to dip into debates that churn around nation and state to determine implications of a mimetic nation-state. First, I take my cue from Max Weber’s definition of a nation as being self-­ justified as a “specific ‘culture’ mission” anchored in the irreplaceable values that are to be preserved and developed only through “the cultivation of the peculiarity of the group.”17 An aporia hangs over the terms at the center of this metaphor. Eric Hobsbawm emphasizes uncertainty that surrounds the concept of the nation, given that it persists as a social entity in flux, a fluid phenomenon that manifests at the intersection of politics, technology, and social transformation that may be constructed from above but cannot be understood

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  21

unless it is also analyzed from below.18 The nation’s ambiguity can be productive: Prasenjit Duara notes interpretive flexibility inherent within modern national identities and points out that “nationalism is rarely the nationalism of the nation, but rather marks the site where different representations of the nation contest and negotiate with each other.”19 This allows a range of actors to treat “the nation-state and nationalism as the means whereby a state or social formation seeks not only to become competitive, but to leverage its way out of the periphery of the world system into the core” (emphasis added).20 Soka Gakkai can be viewed productively as a social formation that seeks mainstream recognition by emulating what Étienne Balibar calls the “nation form,” the most persuasive means by which social formations seek ­legitimacy.21 Conceptually speaking, nation precedes state formation, and in fact inspires a range of articulations not limited to the nation-state. As Craig Calhoun explains, nationalism is “a discursive formation that gives shape to the modern world.”22 Before nations exist as objective entities they exist discursively, as articulations that evoke passions in defenders who are willing to die for their communities. And nation-states, once formed, exist, as Timothy Mitchell points out, simultaneously as material force and ideological construct, as they seem both real and illusory. Mitchell draws on (and simultaneously critiques) Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power to describe a two-dimensional effect cultivated within schools, armies, the civil service, and technological institutions: on the one hand are individuals and their activities, and on the other is a “state effect” created by seemingly inert state structures that somehow give the appearance of preceding individuals and providing a framework for their lives. “In fact,” Mitchell concludes, “the nation state is arguably the paramount structural effect of the modern technological era.”23 Since it coalesced as a cohesive entity from the end of the eighteenth century, the nation-state has risen to the point that its authority appears beyond compare. In Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson begins his exploration of modern modes of social solidarity by stating that “nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time.”24 In his interpretation, religion remains relevant as a cultural system that provides a taken-for-granted frame of reference for revolutionaries. Nationalism replaces religion as sacred language gives way to the vernacular of “print-­capitalism,” led by the proliferation of newspapers and the modern novel—both formats at the heart of Soka Gakkai’s self-narration. This useful neologism “nationness” helps us understand nationalism’s discursive dimensions: the nation not exclusively as an administrative framework but as a quality that can be expressed. Focusing on the -ness of nation-ness suggests that modern religions may be expressions of nationalism. One can regard Soka Gakkai as a particularly successful exponent of nation-ness, a producer of mimetic equivalents to national structures that project authority and inspire loyalty.

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22  Chapter 1

The mimetic nation-state metaphor, of course, has limits. An analysis of Soka Gakkai as either a nation or a state performed by political scientists keen to check off each nation or state feature will reveal shortcomings. Perhaps most obviously, there is no evidence that Soka Gakkai seeks formal statehood. The ideal-type nation set out by Craig Calhoun calls for a clear establishment of sovereignty, “or at least the aspiration to sovereignty, and thus formal equality with other nations, usually as an autonomous and putative self-sufficient state.”25 Early in its postwar history, Soka Gakkai maintained eschatological Nichiren Buddhist objectives that required governmental affirmation of its goal to convert the populace, yet after 1970 the group abandoned the “national ordination platform” objective that would have required state support (see chapter 2). And, despite accusations that Soka Gakkai sought to replace Japanese democracy with theocracy, it has never been clear that Soka Gakkai sought a status independent from the Japanese nation, or to usurp it. Komeito’s operation as a normal political party in government coalition refutes accusations of crypto-theocracy, and consistent efforts on the part of Gakkai members to contribute to civic and governmental functions indicates that adherents seek to populate and perpetuate existing systems, not replace them.26 Positing a religion as a mimetic nation also risks collapsing national and religious formations into an undifferentiated whole. Talal Asad’s research demonstrates that modern states have policed religion through ideological and legal processes that disaggregated religion from the modern secular state.27 In the chapters that follow, I remain attentive to the fact that nation-states and religions are indeed different entities as I propose the mimetic nation as an explanation for Soka Gakkai’s morphological similarity to national institutions. Finally, a key aspect about the mimetic nation-state framework is that Soka Gakkai leaders do not themselves claim to follow national models. The mimetic nation metaphor functions as a useful etic way to explain the full range of Soka Gakkai’s structural features; it is not an emic framework. Although it is a scholarly and not a native category, its analytical utility is confirmed by observing that Soka Gakkai maintains working equivalents of most nation-state components, such as those that Calhoun set out. These include territorial boundaries, delineated by Gakkai property; a notion of indivisibility, observable in the Gakkai emphasis on shitei funi (indivisible bond of mentor and disciple); culture (including some combination of language, shared beliefs and values, habitual practices); temporal depth (a notion of the nation as such existing through time, including past and future generations, and having a history, preserved in Soka Gakkai’s canonization of its past); and, finally, special historical or even sacred relations to a certain territory evident in adherents’ pilgrimages to Shinanomachi and to other locations they connect with Ikeda Daisaku.28 It must also be pointed out that Soka Gakkai, like a state, exerts

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  23

coercive power. Coercion is often equated with violence, and violence brings to mind Charles Tilly’s conception of a national state as a relatively centralized, differentiated organization that successfully claims control over legitimate violence.29 Tilly hearkens back to Max Weber’s definition, in his 1918 lecture “Politics as a Vocation,” of the modern state as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.”30 But violence, as Raymond Geuss notes, is to be distinguished from coercion and power.31 One can act violently without coercing anyone, while power, as Bertrand Russell defined it, is best understood as the “the production of intended effects,” a process in which physical threats may be absent.32 Physical conflicts have flared up at times since Soka Gakkai’s postwar revival, yet threats more potent than physical violence tend to emerge in members’ accounts as principal coercive measures. Following Louis Althusser, we might best understand compliance with Gakkai authority in terms of ­interpellation—“answering the hail” of a hegemonic authority that intercedes through a combination of explicit and implicit power mechanisms to shape people’s subjectivity and perpetuate its institutions. According to Althusser, modern states assert their authority on the one hand through repressive state apparatuses (RSAs), which include the government, police, courts, and other explicit implementers of coercive power, and on the other by ideological state apparatuses (ISAs), which appear as numerous forces that shape subjects’ loyalties and dispositions: religion, education, communication, the family, and others. ISAs are far more persuasive than RSAs; that is, the latent and actual violence demonstrated by RSAs proves less effective than the work ISAs perform to solidify lifelong commitment to the state. By complying with ideology promoted via a comprehensive range of ISAs, individuals are interpellated: they are recruited via ideology and transformed into national subjects who, in turn, perpetuate the systems that created their self-understanding as subjects.33 When we examine Soka Gakkai for its mimetic reproduction of both ISAs and RSAs, we find that it represents a remarkably complete iteration of the state’s apparatuses. Gakkai members answer the hail of the Gakkai’s system—which includes a great deal more than just religious ISAs—as they convert or grow up within a Gakkai family. Its Buddhist and modern pedagogical practices, maintained within a bureaucratic structure that stresses institutional expansion and uses the family home as its basic unit, mirror multiple ISAs, even as its emphasis on security for its leaders and territory suggests that Gakkai members may be simultaneously hailed by RSAs. This is not to say that Gakkai members do not resist interpellation; ethnographic episodes in the following chapters introduce members who complicate Gakkai ideology through their participation or outright refusal to answer Soka Gakkai’s

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24  Chapter 1

hail. However, immersion in Soka Gakkai predisposes members to recognize themselves in terms of their Gakkai identities and to perpetuate the Gakkai’s institutions, which in turn create more Gakkai-defined subjectivities. Soka Gakkai may in fact represent something of a perfection of historical processes Althusser describes. Althusser argues that, in the precapitalist period, states were dominated by the religious ISA, but have since been replaced by the school ISA. Education, rather than politics, is key to the perpetuation of the modern state, and “the School-Family couple has replaced the Church-­ Family couple.”34 Soka Gakkai may represent a compelling merger of schooland church-family dyads. It implicitly repudiates the notion that modernity necessitates the demise of religion because it eliminates the need to choose between school and religion as the recognized method of social belonging. Members typically comply with Gakkai authority because they fear exclusion from the group rather than consequences of persisting within it. They fear exile from the practices, people, and institutions that define their subjectivity. Though there is violence in Soka Gakkai’s history—as discussed in chapter 2—power in Soka Gakkai tends to be exerted rhetorically and enacted through social practices. Resistance to authority can result in the exclusion of a vulnerable person from her or his place within the Gakkai’s mutually supportive community. For example, from 2015, a number of Gakkai members organized to protest publicly against Komeito’s support of new security legislation. These members reported being ostracized by their fellow adherents; they were expelled from the institutions that shaped their self-­ understandings and in fact provided the ideological impetus for their protest activities.35 This book includes other examples of members who have been ejected, either formally or in effect, for threatening Soka Gakkai’s authority or reputation through their actions. Real fear accompanies this threat of ­expulsion—a fear as real as exile from one’s country. Mr. Akabashi, the Young Men’s Division administrator who drove Mr. Iizuka and me through Fukushima in 2013, exemplifies the interpellative power Soka Gakkai exerts on its adherents. Akabashi graduated from Soka Gakuen, the organization’s high school in Tokyo. As we made our way through an abandoned town toward barricades that barred entry to the radioactive zone less than ten kilometers from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants, Akabashi told us that he, like Iizuka, was recruited right after university into the Gakkai administration, in his case to the Systems Bureau, the Shinanomachi headquarters office that operates as the Gakkai’s IT department. In April 2012, a decade into his career, the administration transferred Akabashi to Iwaki City, Fukushima, to assist Gakkai communities blighted by fallout from the March 2011 nuclear disaster. Before he left Tokyo, friends and family held emotional farewell gatherings “as if I was going off to war,” he chuckled quietly. He also received a personalized written message of encouragement

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  25

from Ikeda on the morning of his departure to Fukushima, urging him to take care of his health. I asked Akabashi how he felt about being an unmarried thirty-two-year-old living in an area notorious for its dangerously high radiation levels. “This transfer was my destiny,” he stated immediately, obviously accustomed to answering questions along these lines. “It is my mission during this human lifetime to contribute to the recovery, even in a small way.” Akabashi’s Buddhist sentiment folded into his declaration of self-sacrifice to his vocational mission as a Gakkai administrator, a martyrdom drive that Gakkai institutions cultivate and rely on for their perpetuation. The Costly Allure of Mimesis Social scientists have defined the seemingly inexorable tendency for institutions to look and act like one another as “institutional isomorphism.” The prime model for institutional isomorphism is the nation-state. So endemic is the tendency for emergent polities to mimic national patterns that “it is easy to predict the organization of a newly emerging nation’s administration without knowing anything about the nation itself.”36 Sociologists Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell present the Meiji-era (1868–1912) Japanese state as the leading global example of what they term “mimetic isomorphism,” a type of organizational behavior driven by ambition and characterized by ambiguity.37 Religious groups contribute disproportionately to this isomorphic tendency: in confirming the nation-state as the dominant model for legitimacy, leading political scientists surmise that “nationalist and religious movements intensify isomorphism more than they resist it.”38 It is notable that DiMaggio and Powell choose the modern Japanese state as the paradigmatic model of mimetic isomorphism. I suggest that Soka Gakkai presents a utopian vision of the modern Japanese state, which had distinguished itself on the international stage for its capacity to conform to the rules for international conduct.39 A detailed comparison between Soka Gakkai and similar organizations that are isomorphic of nation-states exceeds the capacity of this book, but it is important that Soka Gakkai is not a unique case but can instead serve as a model for future inquiry. A few examples should suffice to indicate the ubiquity of mimetic isomorphism on the part of religions—and, more broadly, groups that depend on religion for their self-identity. The most widely publicized recent example must be the brutal self-proclaimed caliphate known variously as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or by the Arabic abbreviation Daesh, which seized territory across the Middle East through savage implementation of Salafi-jihadist doctrine. Part of the group’s alarming success can be attributed to its takeover and perpetuation of state infrastructures, including salaried military and civil servants, carefully managed school curricula, aggressive media control, judi-

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26  Chapter 1

cial functions, policing, tax collection, and even garbage disposal. Providing millions of people with government services, even in a rudimentary and violently oppressive fashion, enhanced the ability of a relatively small number of ISIS operatives to retain control of areas where government had otherwise collapsed.40 Meanwhile, in Western Sahara, the less publicized Sahrawi Muslim minority has also taken its cue from the nation-state model, albeit in ways that contrast starkly with ISIS brutality. Sahrawi refugees have formulated their Muslim identities to comport with secular education-focused and woman-empowering ideals and government-like structures that attract aid from Western donors. Humanitarian agencies provide aid the Sahrawi community requires to persist in their decades-long quest for independent state recognition. Visitors must receive visas to enter Sahrawi territory, which maintains the working equivalent of government ministries and a presence at the United Nations.41 Numerous New Religions structure themselves along lines set by nation-state precedent. In the United States, for example, the Church of ­Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormon Church, is led by a president who oversees a complex bureaucracy that divides adherents by age, sex, geographical location (broken into wards, stakes, districts, and other divisions), and other demographic data, and relies to a large extent on nonsalaried administrators. Tithing supports key church endeavors, such as young members’ missionary service, its Church Education System (which includes Brigham Young University), broadcast and print media outlets, and training mechanisms that replicate the emphasis on standardized education that lies at the heart of state operations.42 The Church of Scientology, a controversial group that resisted the religion label early in its tumultuous history, is headed by a president who administers “orgs” and ranked offices whose names derive from military nomenclature, such as Sea Org and Command Base. Scientology relies on a modern course curriculum model for adherent training, and its operations have focused to a notorious extent on intelligence-gathering, following practices imitative of national spy agencies.43 The Nation of Islam, a black nationalist group founded at nearly the same time as Soka Gakkai, expresses a clear appeal to legitimacy through nation status, as does its small spin-off organization the Nation of Gods and Earths.44 Nation of Islam mosques house a school called the University of Islam and the group maintains a male-only uniformed paramilitary division called the Fruit of Islam that guards mosque territories in marked patrol cars—institutions that confirm schooling, military regimentation, and gendered vocations as staple New Religions features. Asia of the twentieth century saw the rise of New Religions that have replicated core nation-state structures. For example, Caodai, established in Vietnam in the mid-1920s, was promoted by its founders as the spiritual

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  27

basis for achieving independent national sovereignty. The religion draws on a dynamic range of influences that include Catholicism, Daoism, Chinese redemptive societies, and the Spiritism of French figures such as Victor Hugo, who is upheld as a Caodai saint. Its leaders have distinguished themselves as charismatic spirit mediums, and one of these, named Phạm Công Tắc (1890– 1959), used modern statecraft to establish Caodai as a state within a state, complete with its own schools, industries, and military. Between 1946 and 1954, the French colonial power granted Caodai authority under Phạm to collect taxes and maintain its own troops within the province of Tây Ninh. In 1954, Phạm, known as the Hộ Pháp—literally “protector of the dharma and justice” and frequently referred to as the Caodai Pope—joined a Vietnamese delegation to the Geneva Conference to appeal against plans for national ­partition.45 Post-1949 Taiwan has seen the rise of new religious movements that have replicated and even come to constitute state services. The most prominent of these are monastic Buddhist orders that center on a type of modern education that channels efforts toward Buddhist salvation into cutting-edge medicine and social welfare. Fo Guang Shan, a monastic order founded in 1967, supports free medical care, environmental conservation, and education through its Fo Guang University (founded 2000) and Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum (opened 2011).46 Tzu Chi (compassionate relief) was founded by the female monastic Master Cheng Yen in 1966. It has distinguished itself most notably as a provider of international disaster relief and of medical services within Taiwan. Tzu Chi hospitals associated with the religion’s university are incorporated into the Taiwanese healthcare system, and Tzu Chi otherwise operates under the auspices of a head, chair, CEO, and vice CEOs who oversee the group’s Buddhist education and scientific enterprises.47 Japanese New Religions other than Soka Gakkai also exhibit nationstate-like dimensions. Soka Gakkai falls into a lineage of Nichiren-type New Religions that have, to greater and lesser degrees, taken shape around a modern bureaucratic core. This lineage begins with Honmon Butsuryūshū (originally Honmon Butsuryūkō), a group founded in 1868 by a clerical reformer named Nagamatsu Nissen, and includes Reiyūkai, Kokuchūkai, Risshō Kōseikai, Soka Gakkai, and the Nichiren Shōshū–derived lay organization Fuji Taisekiji Kenshōkai—all religions that have, in different periods, mobilized adherents through mechanisms modeled on modern civic rather than temple-based administrations. Nichiren-derived New Religions structure themselves along a honbu (headquarters) and shibu (branch) model within a pyramidal hierarchy that oversees complex bureaucracies.48 This type of nation-state modeling is not limited to Buddhism-based Japanese New Religions. In the prewar decades, the Shinto-affiliated Ōmotokyō was among the most successful of these to model itself on the Japanese state. It attracted converts through skillful use of modern media—including its own newspaper and

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28  Chapter 1

film studio, as well as art, music, and other cultural forms—and emulation of wartime Japanese education, bureaucracy, and military training. Ōmotokyō’s iconoclastic leader Deguchi Ōnisaburō sparked outrage when he reviewed his religion’s cadres from atop a white horse, an act regarded as a shocking appropriation of the emperor’s privilege. Though Ōmotokyō under Ōnisaburō consistently urged reverence for the Japanese imperial house, it was regarded as a threat by the Japanese government. Ōmotokyō was first targeted for government suppression in 1921, and in 1935 it was devastated when its headquarters were destroyed by the police after Deguchi was jailed on charges of lèse-majesté. The police were ordered to not let any portion of the headquarters remain unbroken.49 This violent reprisal was incommensurate with any threat Ōmotokyō could have posed. A state tendency to obliterate perceived religious rivals in disproportionately violent ways is, at least, an East Asian constant. Duara describes excessively harsh persecution by Republican-era Chinese and Manchukuo state authorities of redemptive societies, and the ongoing governmental persecution of Falun Gong in the People’s Republic suggests that China, like Japan, is a place where emergent groups that provide transcendent and this-worldly alternatives to state authority persist as a menace to be put down by the harshest possible means.50 Japan witnessed a comparable reaction in the wake of the Aum Shinrikyō sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subways in March 1995. Aum Shinrikyō regarded the attack as a way of ushering in a new world order overseen by a shadow government it had prepared in advance, one complete with ministries and ministers and headed by its guru, Asahara Shōkō. Arrests of Aum members inspired new legislation referred to as the Aum laws that sought to extend government oversight far beyond what was necessary to control the group.51 The anti-Aum legislation was in fact promoted by a wide consortium of Soka Gakkai’s political and religious opponents that used Aum Shinrikyō as a way to unify anti–Soka Gakkai activists in common cause against a phenomenon they regarded as an existential threat.52 René Girard observes that the human tendency toward mimicry leads to rivalry, as we tend to imitate one another’s desires for the same object. Subjects reaching for the same object generate violence, a “process through which two or more partners try to prevent one another from acquiring the desired object through physical or other means.”53 Mimicry extends to the replication of institutions, and mimetic desire can account for why so many of Soka Gakkai’s component institutions resemble modern nation-state entities. The desire to move from the social periphery to the center led Gakkai leaders to model their organization on state enterprises that claim themselves as sole arbiters of legitimacy. Mimesis explains why state authorities would regard Soka Gakkai as a dangerous rival, as a potential alternative to hegemonic state power to be combated with maximum intensity.

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  29

Soka Gakkai has consistently served as a target within what Girard identifies as the “scapegoat mechanism,” in which mimetic rivalry is suspended when a scapegoat is selected for sacrifice to restore social order. Ultimately, to engage in mimesis is to court danger. Mimicry of powerful institutions invites scapegoating, of becoming the object of unified derision for coming perilously close to a sanctified original. Homi Bhabha describes tensions that emerge when aspirants mimic powerholders. In discussions of strategies used by colonial subjects who reshaped themselves following conventions adopted from the colonizer, Bhabha notes that mimetic practices and institutions exist simultaneously as legitimate as they are perceived as illegitimate appropriations of sanctioned forms.54 The mimicker perpetually teeters on the brink of an uncanny valley, risking the peril of appearing “almost the same, but not quite,” and therefore more intimately threatening than an oppositional force that comes across as wholly alien.55 Repelling the similar manifests as a refrain in modern Japanese religious history. In his discussion of how notions of orthodoxy took shape as the category religion coalesced in nineteenth-century Japan, Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm categorizes opposition to phenomena that appear threateningly close to a perceived orthodox original as “exclusive similarity”: the almost-but-not-quite is to be rejected due to its likeness, not its difference. As Josephson-Storm explains, before religion was established as a legal and conceptual category, newly arrived Christianity was labeled a deviant heresy by defensive Japanese nativists who regarded the oddly recognizable yet undeniably foreign faith as a twisted version of Buddhism, one that called for a unified Japanese effort for expulsion.56 A comparable process of exclusive similarity unfolded as Soka Gakkai grew ever more reminiscent of the nation-state during its rapid postwar growth. This negativity is evident in public reactions to Soka Gakkai’s perceived encroachment on state prerogative. The newspaper Asahi shinbun declared that “the unthinkable has come true” (‘masa ka’ ga jitsugen) on the election of a Gakkai candidate to the House of Councilors in 1956.57 A pronounced tendency has persisted in Japanese reportage to describe Soka Gakkai scornfully, but revealingly, as the Ikeda kingdom (Ikeda ōkoku) or Soka kingdom (Sōka ōkoku), terms that dismiss Soka Gakkai as an upstart imitation of state power. Representative examples of Soka Gakkai journalistic characterizations as a Soka kingdom appear most obviously in journalist Mizoguchi Atsushi’s 1983 book Ikeda Daisaku “Sōka ōkoku” no yabō (Ikeda Daisaku’s “Soka Kingdom” Ambition), which posits kōsen rufu as the first stage in a plan for a Gakkai takeover of Japan’s government, economy, and media. Soka kingdom language also dominates in two series’ run by the monthly magazine Shūkan daiyamondō in 2004 and 2016, and Ikeda kingdom appears as an epithet for Soka Gakkai in other popular periodicals.58 Sneering descrip-

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30  Chapter 1

tions of Ikeda as Japan’s would-be monarch also dominate internet commentary, as revealed in a discourse analysis of frequently used terms in discussion of Soka Gakkai on the popular site 2chan (Nichāneru). This survey, taken in the mid-2000s, ranked the term “king” (ōja) in fourth place, behind “Japan,” “cult,” and “Soka Gakkai member” and ahead of “religion” and “believer.”59 The particular language of anti-Gakkai sentiments suggests that the group triggers fears that are specific to its success in building institutions that hew closely to nation-state referents. But Soka Gakkai has also earned bad press through decades of hard-sell proselytizing, its history of castigating rival religions and targeting their adherents for conversion, its controversial electioneering, and members’ singular dedication to Ikeda Daisaku. Through these practices, Soka Gakkai has differentiated itself into a discrete Japanese minority, an identity that invites insights from analysis of minorities in the contemporary world. Negative reactions to Soka Gakkai reveal what Arjun Appadurai describes as “fear of small numbers”—the persistent reminder a minority population presents to a hegemonic national majority that the modern nation-state’s totalizing ambitions remain incomplete. Appadurai invokes Freud’s “narcissism of minor differences” to account for a paradoxical capacity even tiny minorities possess to trigger excessive violence in national majorities. Simply by existing, minorities impede nationalism’s implicit goal of hegemonic purity. Their existence mobilizes existential fears in the majority that they may one day slip into minority status, and that the minority may one day exercise nationalism’s incipient genocidal impetus and wipe out the ­present-day majority. Following Appadurai’s analysis, a convoluted irony is evident in Soka Gakkai’s mimesis of the modern nation-state: this organization, and others like it that take their cue from the modern nation, in fact constitute the fundamental failure of their source of inspiration. They are the reasons why the modern nation-state perpetually fails to realize an unrivaled whole.60 Like the never-complete Japanese state project it emulates, Soka Gakkai continually seeks ubiquity in the lives of its subjects by co-opting their initiatives into its institutional objectives. Because it mimics nationalism’s absorptive function, Soka Gakkai challenges the possibility of a civil society independent of the state: it replicates the state’s administrative omnipresence.61 Overall, Soka Gakkai emulates the “dual civil society” model Robert Pekkanen proposes to explain the Japanese case: a plethora of small, local groups, such as neighborhood associations (chōnaikai), and few large, professionalized independent organizations.62 Pekkanen points to ways the modern Japanese state fostered civic attention to small-scale enterprises and hindered the development of large independent organizations that could sway policymaking. This resulted in many neighborhood associations and other small-scale, nonprofessional voluntary associations and comparatively few large-scale Japanese NGOs. After the immediate postwar era, Japanese civil society experi-

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Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  31

enced what he summarizes as an “ice age,” a retreat from civic engagement from the 1970s as the country as a whole turned toward economic development. It is only from the late 1990s that Japan saw a resurgence through the expansion of NGOs, nonprofit organizations, and other voluntary groups. Soka Gakkai’s development mirrors this civic pattern. The ethnography in this book confirms the primacy of local ties in that the Gakkai’s strength lies at the local level and the majority of the Gakkai’s administration consists of unpaid, nonprofessional volunteers. Gakkai members resemble, to use Robin LeBlanc’s term, “bicycle citizens.” Most members live in a world that is largely invisible to the elite and their social capital and political clout depend on everyday, person-to-person relationships.63 Members map out ways of social belonging, and ways of understanding Soka Gakkai, through their quotidian activities. Just as Japan turned inward from the 1970s, so too did Soka Gakkai turn toward cultivating generations born into the group, only to rouse its members outward toward volunteerism in the wake of the January 1995 earthquake that devastated Kobe and again after the March 2011 disasters in northeast Japan.64 Concern for the local that life within Soka Gakkai generates fosters a complementary propensity for civic engagement. Many of the members who appear in this book devote their limited time outside work and Gakkai activities to neighborhood associations and other forms of volunteerism, and a large number are civil servants. Work for a neighborhood association resembles, to a remarkable degree, official duties within Soka Gakkai. The dispositions members cultivate within Soka Gakkai feed into civic engagement—in part as a means of generating goodwill about the Gakkai, but perhaps also because Gakkai life models Japanese civic life. It is important to note that the civic life and the nation-state that serve as Soka Gakkai’s inspirations for mimesis are not the Japan of today. The group draws inspiration from an idealized past, a selective and optimistic imagining of the early decades of Japan’s emergence as a world power. Remaining loyal to this vision entails the preservation of social obligations promoted during Japan’s rise as a modern nation. Women are relegated to posts in the Young Women’s and Married Women’s Divisions and are celebrated as wives and mothers who protect the home front, the base from which bold men stride forth to fight for the Gakkai. A Gakkai meeting, particularly a large formal gathering, can feel like a time warp back to the mid-twentieth century, where men sit in neat rows in shirtsleeves and dark ties separated from women clothed in pastel-colored skirt suits, their hair perfectly coiffed. Their behavior and appearance speak to an ethos kept alive through loyalty to ideals promoted by the Gakkai’s Three Great Mentors—an inescapable loyalty, as representatives of the Gakkai administration maintain a presence in every Gakkai activity.65 Soka Gakkai’s founders seized the repressive system that martyred

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32  Chapter 1

their mentor Makiguchi Tsunesaburō. They claimed the expansionist Japanese nation-state of the early twentieth century that jailed Toda Jōsei, that robbed Ikeda Daisaku of his formal education, that sent their loved ones to their deaths in war. They eliminated parochial concerns with emperor-­ centered Japanese nationalism as they retained the imperial system’s capacities to acquire and exercise power. Soka Gakkai’s mimetic nation-state is a utopian version of the very entity that victimized them. What This Book Covers To date, research on Soka Gakkai in Japan has been mostly balkanized between harsh critiques by political and religious opponents and hagiographies produced or heavily informed by the Gakkai’s administration. The comparatively small amount of balanced scholarship on the group itemizes Soka Gakkai’s salient features and details changes over time to its doctrine and administrative structures. Throughout this book I rely on the best of this work. I am not alone in observing ways Soka Gakkai exhibits morphological similarities to historically significant social forms. In 2008, Shimada Hiromi released a popular book with the provocative title Minzokuka suru Sōka gakkai: Yudayajin no kita michi o tadoru hitobito (Ethnicizing Soka Gakkai: The People Who Follow the Path of the Jews). Shimada does little to elucidate how Soka Gakkai compares with Judaism, and he himself suggests that “a more appropriate word probably exists” in lieu of minzoku (ethnicity).66 He offers similar provocations in Sōka gakkai: Mō hitotsu no Nippon (Soka Gakkai: Another Japan), which he co-authored with Yano Jun’ya, a disgruntled former Komeito politician and influential Gakkai member.67 Some leading scholars have focused on utopian qualities of New Religions to explain why they arose within the modern nation-state. Nishiyama Shigeru identifies New Religions’ utopian visions of doing away with worldly corruption and ushering in an ideal order—a feature of Soka Gakkai that contributed to its postwar appeal.68 Tsukada Hotaka built on Nishiyama’s research to explore Soka Gakkai’s utopian qualities as part of an extensive inquiry into how religions active in postwar Japan manifest a national consciousness (kokka ishiki) that motivates political activity.69 Tsukada suggests that consciousness of nation, society, and solidarity connects to religious, political, and social mobilization, and that attention to utopianism, a quality that stands out in religious movements, works as an effective index for assessing nationalism, including a national consciousness that drove Soka Gakkai’s early postwar development.70 One of the best recent analyses of Soka Gakkai comes from Asayama Taichi, a Gakkai adherent who puts to work his Soka University training in sociology in a strikingly dispassionate explanation of his religion’s postwar success. Asayama proposes that a key reason why Soka Gakkai attracted enormous numbers of converts between the end of World War II and the beginThis content downloaded from 128.197.229.194 on Fri, 04 Oct 2019 11:04:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  33

ning of the 1970s was its development along the lines of a corporation. He goes so far as to summarize the organization as Japan’s most successful company (kaisha) to take the form of a newly arisen religion (shinkō shūkyō). Soka Gakkai grew from a few thousand adherents in 1950 to millions of followers twenty years later by expanding in the same way as the Japanese corporations that powered the country’s economic miracle: that is, by adopting an expansionist headquarter / branch administration that saw to all of their employees’ needs. Asayama convincingly aligns Soka Gakkai’s rise with Japan’s economic boom and notes that, just as the Japanese economy stagnated after the 1973 oil shock, so did the flow of rural migrants which fed Soka Gakkai’s explosive postwar growth.71 These studies, with some exceptions, rely almost entirely on textual analysis and involve little to no fieldwork. Because of this they leave open questions as to why the organization created the particular institutions that make up Soka Gakkai, why people convert and remain within the group, and what everyday life is like for its members. I suggest that, thanks to its twin Buddhist and modern educational legacies, Soka Gakkai was able to construct religious institutions based in the conventions of modern standardized education that promise social legitimacy to their participants. It grew mimetic of education-focused structures and built upon them to provide its members with an array of educational, political, economic, and religious institutions no other religious organization in postwar Japan managed to rival. The Gakkai’s study association identity combined with the appeal of its uncompromising lay Nichiren Buddhist mission and inspiring charismatic leadership to attract converts who expanded its institutional presence far beyond conventional religion parameters. They did this by modeling their religion on the nationstate itself. Indeed, Soka Gakkai invites us to consider what the label religion may include. I anticipate that this study will serve as a resource for future work on comparable organizations, and that details about Soka Gakkai’s historical development and the lives of its ordinary adherents will shed light on similar institution-building processes at work across the world. However, in advance of comparative work, we require a study of how Soka Gakkai actually operates. I suggest that explanations for how and why Soka Gakkai developed in the ways it did emerge most vividly in the details of members’ everyday lives. Attention to the quotidian interactions of local-level adherents troubles the image of Soka Gakkai as a unitary entity. As Veena Das and Deborah Poole confirm, the contemporary state is best captured at its margins, and we must appreciate that many administrative functions find their most complete realization in small-scale interactions between state functionaries and subjects.72 What Didier Fassin describes as the raison d’état (the reason for the state’s existence) emerges most effectively from observation of micropolitical interactions, by letting accounts of the people who make up an organization tell the This content downloaded from 128.197.229.194 on Fri, 04 Oct 2019 11:04:16 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

34  Chapter 1

story of the organization.73 Following Lauren Berlant’s emphasis on the “intimate public sphere” as a cohesive core “whose survival depends on personal acts and identities performed in the intimate domains of the quotidian,” so too is Soka Gakkai idealized by its participants as a cohesive framework that relies on commitments to its twinned Buddhist and humanist aspirations enacted in everyday life.74 Soka Gakkai confirms the equation of the intimate with the institutional in The Human Revolution, the novel that members are urged to regard as canonical. The introduction of the book contains what might be Soka Gakkai’s most-quoted sentence, a phrase that encapsulates the urgent necessity to study this nation-modeled group from the ground up: “A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation, and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”75 To explore ways the quotidian informs Soka Gakkai’s overall structure, each chapter of this book begins with an ethnographic vignette, and ethnographic episodes throughout direct attention to how affective bonds constitute Gakkai institutions. Chapter 2, “From Intellectual Collective to Religious Mass Movement,” follows the Gakkai’s mimetic development in an overview of its origins as a small educational reform society that burgeoned into a massive religion. Chapter 3, “Soka Gakkai’s Dramatic Narrative,” investigates ways Gakkai media and their attendant practices conflate Nichiren Buddhist martyrdom and modern Romantic heroism in a dramatic narrative that relies on tropes from the Japanese educational curriculum. Chapter 4, “Participating in Canon,” continues discussion of the Gakkai’s dramatic narrative as it suggests one response to a perennial question—what is new about a New Religion?—by describing distinctive features of Soka Gakkai’s equivalent of a new canon. The promise of appearing personally in a still-­developing canon is one reason a New Religion may prove more alluring to converts than an older organization. Chapter 5, “Cultivating Youth,” presents a historical and ethnographic study of the Gakkai’s youth training systems and considers how generational changes in instruction mirror educational shifts within the Japanese modern nation-state. Finally, chapter 6, “Good Wives, Wise Mothers, and Foot Soldiers of Conversion,” investigates ways Soka Gakkai replicates Japanese state support for the sengyō shufu, the professional housewife at the center of the family unit that constructs the modern nation. The chapter emphasizes tensions that emerge between the Soka Gakkai ideal of woman as wife, mother, and cultivator of the home and Gakkai administration’s demands on its Married Women’s Division to be active outside the home, and it explains what happens when a Soka Gakkai household collapses. The brief afterword discusses dilemmas that confront Soka Gakkai as it seeks to appeal to a new generation of members who are driven by aspirations that are not necessarily accommodated by the organization’s now-traditional mass participation focus and suggests ways Soka Gakkai may develop in the future.

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2

From Intellectual Collective to Religion A History of Soka Gakkai

OVER IKEDA DAISAKU’S MANY YEARS OF LEADERSHIP, Soka Gakkai intensified an inexorable tendency to meld attention to its twin Nichiren Buddhist and humanist legacies with the person of Ikeda himself. A visit to the Gakkai’s headquarters reveals this conflation. On November 18, 2013, the anniversary of Soka Gakkai’s founding in 1930, the organization announced the official opening of the Kōsen Rufu Daiseidō (Hall of the Great Vow of Kōsen Rufu). The massive hall towers over more than seventy large and small buildings that make up the Gakkai’s headquarters in Shinanomachi in central Tokyo. It sits across the street from another new facility called the Sōka Bunka Sentā (Value Creation Culture Center). The names for these two principal facilities express the Gakkai’s foundational Buddhist and humanist dimensions. Both buildings are singularly dedicated to Honorary President Ikeda. Visitors begin their journey at the top floor of the Value Creation Culture Center in a group session at which they chant namu-myōhō-rengekyō, and perhaps a full gongyō session, before an enshrined gohonzon. Thus prepared, they ride escalators down into exhibitions that make clear that culture is to be understood as Ikeda Daisaku’s life story. Exhibits with such titles as “The Challenge of Revolution” and “Together with the Mentor” narrate Soka Gakkai’s triumphant rise in terms of Ikeda’s biographical model of loyal self-sacrifice. Attendees revisit the account of Ikeda’s conversion to Soka Gakkai in August 1947 after his fateful meeting with second Gakkai President Toda Jōsei. They gaze on manuscript versions of Ikeda’s key writings, most notably handwritten pages from the serial novel The Human Revolution. A series of poems in Ikeda’s hand demonstrates his care for individual adher35

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ents who wrote him letters: “I am looking over you in place of your deceased father,” Ikeda promises in a waka (Japanese verse) composed for a young girl who wrote to him after the death of her parent. Members can come within touching distance of items Ikeda bore on his person, including a camera that took the first of hundreds of photographs that adorn all Gakkai facilities. They see a record player of a type Ikeda used to listen to Beethoven in his youth. They view photos of a mature Ikeda in dialogue with prominent world leaders. Members proceed from these exhibitions into a four-hundred-­ person movie theater called the Assembly Hall of Justice that screens inspiring documentaries about Ikeda. During my visit in June 2015, a video titled “The Path of Global Propagation: SGI President Ikeda Travels the World” presented footage of Ikeda’s missions outside Japan. The first minutes of the film show footage of Ikeda’s world travels in the early 1960s, shortly after his promotion to third Soka Gakkai president. Ikeda’s maturation as a leader is evident. In 1960 he squints awkwardly at the camera, his hands in his pockets as he slouches before Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. By the 1970s, his demeanor has grown more statesmanlike when he travels to England to visit historian Arnold J. Toynbee and meets Zhou Enlai in Beijing. Footage from the 1980s shows Ikeda settled into his role as an adored international figure. Smiling, he wades into crowds to embrace tearful adherents. In Holland on a 1983 visit he plays the piano before delighted guests; in 1984 he dons a cowboy hat on a stop before a large gathering in Texas; and in 1993 he congratulates a gathering in Chile that celebrates that country’s becoming the fiftieth to join Soka Gakkai International; “all are family,” he stresses. Following the film, visitors can round out their time at the Culture Center at interactive audiovisual displays that bring Ikeda’s life story into the twenty-first century. Booths screen video testimonials from Gakkai members from across the world who speak enthusiastically about their lives as Ikeda disciples. If visitors have tickets to the headquarters’ main attraction—­ ordinarily available to members in Japan only once a year—they proceed across the street to the Hall of the Great Vow. Just as the Soka Culture Center equates culture with Ikeda’s biography, the Hall recodes the Nichiren Buddhist objective kōsen rufu, to “widely declare [the dharma of the Lotus Sutra],” into a vow centered on Ikeda Daisaku. When the Hall’s massive steel doors slide shut, urban Tokyo’s ambient noise disappears. Workers sank its pillars twenty-two meters into Shinanomachi’s bedrock and installed a floating foundation designed to allow the building to endure severe earthquakes; when a massive quake devastates Tokyo, the Hall of the Great Vow shall rise above the rubble. I was told by Mr. Iizuka, who accompanied me on my visit, that the Hall’s basement holds food and water to supply hundreds of refugees in the event of disaster. It stands seven stories high, a number that corresponds to the seven sacred syllabus namu-myōhō-renge-kyō. Its north and

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  37

south sides are flanked by eight square pillars that match the traditional eight scrolls of the Lotus and the eight-character phrase tōkiongō / tōnyokyōbutsu from the sutra’s twenty-eighth chapter, quoted by Nichiren and subsequently by Ikeda to welcome those who embrace the teachings: “you will rise and greet [them] from afar, respecting [them] as you would a buddha.”1 Visitors begin in the Hall’s mostly bare ground floor. A section of empty stone is lined with rows of folding chairs placed before massive stone stelae that bring to mind Chinese Buddhist monuments. One stele is inscribed with a poem by Toda Jōsei on kōsen rufu and another with Ikeda’s “Ningen kakumei no uta” (Song of Human Revolution), which members frequently sing together in Gakkai meetings. A nearby wall displays the characters kōsen rufu rendered in Ikeda Daisaku’s distinctive calligraphy above an inscription that bears the following message, set out in highly formal Japanese. Kōsen Rufu: Vow Stele (chigan no ishibumi) The spread of the dharma (kōsen rufu) across the terrestrial world (Jambudvīpa) was the mission bequeathed to us by the Great Sage Nichiren.2 Soka Gakkai is the single traditional religious organization (dentō taru kyōdan) that will realize kōsen rufu. November 18, 1930: Soka Gakkai was born of a master and disciple bestowed with karmic merit and benevolence. [Our] First Master (senshi), First President Makiguchi Tsunesaburō, during wartime spread the Buddhist dharma that urges sanctity of life. He was imprisoned by the military government and died a martyr. [Our] Revered Master (onshi), Second President Toda Jōsei, who survived and left prison, offered up his life to eliminate the very existence of tragedy and misery on this earth. Perpetuating our masters’ spirit of not begrudging one’s life ( fushaku shinmyō), I took the position of third Gakkai president. Struggling alongside like-minded comrades, planting the seeds of happiness known as the wondrous dharma (myōhō) advancing a history of valorous spirit. In one hundred and ninety-two countries and territories, the flowers of peace, culture, and education are now in glorious, fragrant bloom. November 18, 2013: Retaining the spirit of our First Master, here in Shinanomachi, the original site from which our Honored Master commanded kōsen rufu, as the third generation of the aspiration (hotsugan) to save all sentient beings, the Hall of the Great Vow of Kōsen Rufu is constructed. The dais enshrines Soka Gakkai’s eternally upheld object of worship ( jōjū no gohonzon) that is recognized as the “the compas-

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38  Chapter 2

sionate prayer for the realization of the great vow of kōsen rufu through the propagation of the great dharma” (daihō gutsū jishaku kōsen rufu daigan jōju).3 We ordinary people (minshū) sincerely pray for the establishment [of the true teachings] and the pacification of the realm (risshō ankoku) for the world,4 fearless in spite of the three obstructions and four demons.5 This is a great palace of the vow of master and disciple from which to launch victory in human revolution (ningen kakumei) for ourselves and others. As the “Repaying Debts of Gratitude” (Hōonshō) states, “If Nichiren’s compassion is expansive and great, namu myōhō renge kyō will certainly spread for ten thousand years and for eternity.”6 Kōsen rufu is the great path that proceeds toward world peace and the flourishing of society. The salvation of all peoples is our eternal great vow. Now, the Bodhisattvas of the Earth are rushing forward one after another, and the great light of the Lotus Sutra’s humanism (ningenshugi) illuminates the five great continents.7 In direct karmic connection with the Great Sage Nichiren, as the third Gakkai generation, in solidarity with treasured friends who unite as one mind in many bodies (itai dōshin), an earnest vow for kōsen rufu, which surpasses ten thousand years of the latter days of the Buddha’s dharma (mappō) and is immanently the rising tide of world peace. As a return of obligation (hōon) to the First Master and the Revered Master, Third Soka Gakkai President Ikeda Daisaku.8

An illuminated picture of the Soka Gakkai flag is the only decoration near the elevators that take visitors up to the main prayer hall. Some visitors gather on a floor dedicated to the Three Great Presidents Memorial Meeting Hall, which Iizuka described to me as a workspace modeled on the United Nations. A large table surrounded by booths for simultaneous translation and rows of desks with microphones is flanked on three sides by large portraits of the Gakkai’s three founding presidents. This facility is used for important Soka Gakkai International meetings and is clearly designed to evoke a sense of Soka Gakkai as an arbiter of international relations. One floor above this is the main facility. It is a 1,200-seat prayer hall filled with comfortable theater-style seats skillfully positioned to allow every person to see the massive golden altar at the front of the room. The altar’s base reprises the nation-state as the Gakkai’s guiding measure in that it is made from stones gathered from Japan’s forty-seven prefectures and from the 192 countries and territories within SGI. A special performance of gongyō is held here twice daily. Members report to me that the chanting ses-

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  39

sion is preceded by a video retelling of Ikeda’s conversion under Toda and an announcement that Soka Gakkai properly received and transmits Nichiren’s teachings. A recording of Ikeda Daisaku’s deep and powerful voice leads participants in their gongyō chant, affectively imposing Ikeda’s living presence onto the Buddhist ritual performed at the Gakkai’s center. The altar contains the kōsen rufu no gohonzon, which was ceremonially enshrined here on November 5, 2013. On April 1, 2014, the Soka Gakkai administration revised its official regulations to confirm that this object of worship, and not the daigohonzon maintained at the Nichiren Shōshū head temple Taisekiji, is to be the focus of members’ reverence. As the regulations explain, the newly enshrined object of worship represents the vow of Ikeda’s disciples across the world to propagate the mission of kōsen rufu into the future.9 The preamble to the regulations stipulates that Soka Gakkai’s general world headquarters at Shinanomachi is bestowed on disciples across the world to propagate the Nichiren World Religion Soka Gakkai (Nichiren sekaishū Sōka gakkai) into the twenty-third century.10 At Soka Gakkai’s headquarters, Ikeda is simultaneously eulogized, elevated beyond death, and projected into the future. The Soka Culture Center looks back on his life and the Hall of the Great Vow perpetuates him as a living presence who incurs adherents’ obligations. His 2013 statement as third Soka Gakkai president blurs time, bringing veteran members back to the decades when Ikeda controlled the Gakkai’s daily affairs. The immortalization of Ikeda at these impressive facilities appears all the more striking in comparison with Soka Gakkai’s humble beginnings. The Gakkai’s Pedagogical Origins Soka Gakkai, in effect, had three foundings, one each under its first three presidents: Makiguchi Tsunesaburō (1871–1944), Toda Jōsei (1900–1958), and Ikeda Daisaku (1928–). Each oversaw institutional changes that reflected the zeitgeist of his lifetime. There is danger in reducing Soka Gakkai’s history to a story of the lives of its presidents because the group is too complex to summarize in terms of the life courses of three individuals. Nonetheless, the three biographies serve as ideal types that members have encouraged one another to emulate, and Soka Gakkai’s collective character has tended to take shape along lines indicated by these representations. The biographical image of each founder also reflects the Gakkai’s mimesis of the Japanese nationstate: the Gakkai under Makiguchi centered on education and its relevance to imperial Japan; under Toda, it reproduced wartime Japan’s militarist mobilization and absolute commitment to a transcendent mission; under Ikeda, it personifies Japan’s postwar shift away from aggressive expansion toward peace, culture, and education—upheld now as the Gakkai’s three pillars.

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Had a confluence of events not directed the Gakkai’s progenitor toward lay Buddhism, he might have been remembered as an intriguing yet peripheral Japanese intellectual. Thanks to his uncompromising religious beliefs, Makiguchi instead stands as the unlikely father of Japan’s largest modern religious organization. He was born on the sixth day of the sixth month in 1871 in the fishing village of Arahama in Kashiwazaki Prefecture (now Niigata Prefecture), the eldest son of his father Watanabe Chōmatsu and his mother Ine.11 When he was six years old, he was adopted into the Makiguchi family, relatives on his mother’s side, after his father abandoned the family. In 1889, Makiguchi passed an exam that allowed him to enroll in Hokkaido Normal School (now Hokkaido University of Education) as a third-year student. In January 1893, he changed his original given name Chōshichi to Tsunesaburō, and in March of that year began teaching at the Normal School.12 In April 1901, he resigned from teaching in Hokkaido and moved with his wife Kuma and their children to Tokyo. Like many idealistic young people in Japan around the turn of the twentieth century, Makiguchi was drawn to Tokyo in part by the appeal of intellectual engagements that accompanied Japan’s transformation into a modern imperialist nation-state. In October 1903, he published his first book, Jinsei chirigaku (Human Geography), which sold well and was reprinted eight times before 1911. The book brought Makiguchi attention within Tokyo’s network of scholarly elites. Nitobe Inazō, the Christian intellectual who had recently gained renown for his writings on Bushidō (the way of the samurai) sent Makiguchi a letter of encouragement. By August 1910, Makiguchi’s correspondence with Tokyo’s literati led him to join the Kyōdokai (Home Town Association), a research collective dedicated to the study of regional Japanese culture whose members included Nitobe and the famed Japanese ethnologist Yanagita Kunio. In 1912, Makiguchi published Kyōdoka kenkyū (Research on Folk Culture), which set out broad-based theories about the importance of local culture and the ideal role of the state in the lives of its subjects. This grew out of a multiyear project overseen by Yanagita and commissioned by Japan’s Legislative Bureau.13 Makiguchi asserted in this publication that education should be in the service of the state. He would persist in this ideal in later years, even as he fell victim to state persecution. A yearning to belong to the highest echelons of the nation’s intelligentsia that would motivate postwar Gakkai generations is evident in the aspirations of its prewar founder. Despite working with leading academics, Makiguchi never gained full membership in their select society. He had neither elite university credentials nor a private income, and instead of devoting his days to study he was employed at public schools, some of which were so poor that he felt compelled to share his family’s food with the children in his classes. Makiguchi was unable to shake his identity as a humble school-

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  41

teacher. In the first years of the twentieth century, he attempted to support his family by working as an editor, but remained so seriously in debt that he was forced to return to school teaching. From 1909, he occupied a number of posts in Tokyo elementary schools, first as assistant principal and then as principal. Throughout his teaching career, Makiguchi clashed frequently with fellow teachers and Ministry of Education authorities over his dissatisfaction with Japan’s educational system. He regarded schools as microcosmic examples of the nation’s social problems and sought to ameliorate them through logic and pragmatism.14 As a result, he ran into conflicts and was transferred from school to school in Tokyo, until he was appointed principal of Niibori Elementary School in Azabu (now Minato Ward, Tokyo), which was slated to be closed within a year, a move by the ministry authorities that essentially ended his teaching career. After he retired, Makiguchi published the first volume of a treatise titled Sōka kyōikugaku taikei (System of Value-Creating Educational Study) on November 18, 1930.15 The publisher is listed as Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai (Value Creation Education Study Association). Soka Gakkai regards this earliest appearance of the group’s name as the official start of its prewar incarnation. The religion Soka Gakkai thus celebrates its launching point as the publication of an academic book—one that hardly deals with religion. The second volume, published in 1931, includes a treatise titled Kachiron (Theory of Value), which Soka Gakkai preserves as Makiguchi’s definitive statement on educational philosophy. In Kachiron, Makiguchi proposes a new triad that replaces the Kantian values of truth, goodness, and beauty with bi (beauty), ri, (gain), and zen (goodness). Truth is not absolute, Makiguchi argues; it can be discovered only in the relationship between individuals and their surroundings. One fosters values through experience of the world, specifically sensual pleasure (beauty), the benefit of enhancing one’s life (gain), and personal conduct which contributes intentionally to the development of one’s society (goodness). Makiguchi held that to develop the ability to correctly ascertain qualities of beauty, gain, and goodness, schoolchildren must be taught how to distinguish between two modes of perception—­ cognition and evaluation—which should be the primary focus of education. Following Makiguchi’s formulation, religion should not be a dogmatic pursuit of absolute truth but something to be practiced after evaluating its capacity to contribute to beauty, goodness, and gain. It appears that when Makiguchi compiled his essays in 1930 on educational reform, he was concerned primarily with philosophical inquiry, not with religion. However, in 1928, while he was principal at Kenshin Gakuen Elementary School, he converted to Nichiren Buddhist adherence after he was introduced to Mitani Sōkei, a fellow school principal and intellectual who served as chief administrator of the temple confraternity Taisekikō, which was affiliated with the

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Nichiren Shōshū temple Jōzaiji in the Ikebukuro area of Tokyo.16 Shimada Hiromi notes that, unlike writings left by most other religious founders, Makiguchi Tsunesaburō’s include no clear conversion narrative. In a 1958 interview in the newspaper Kōbe shinbun, Yanagita Kunio recalled Makiguchi’s circumstances around the time of his Nichiren Shōshū conversion, when Makiguchi had lost several children to illness and life at home with his wife was rife with discord. “I think he converted because of the two causes of poverty and illness,” Yanagita recalled. “Before that, he was certainly not a religious person.”17 However, Nichiren Shōshū appears to have been the last stop on a journey Makiguchi took through a variety of faith traditions. His birth family in Arahama was affiliated with Zen, and the Makiguchi family that adopted him was associated with Nichirenshū, the largest sect in the Nichiren Buddhist tradition. When he was a student in Hokkaido, several of Makiguchi’s closest friends and teachers were Protestants, and as a young student in Sapporo he became familiar with the writings of fellow resident Uchimura Kanzō (1861–1930), one of Japan’s most important Christian thinkers; it was reportedly Uchimura’s book Chijinron (On Earth and Man) that inspired Makiguchi to write Jinsei chirigaku.18 After he moved to Tokyo, he continued his close connections with Christians, including Nitobe Inazō, but never converted.19 A possible key religious influence on Makiguchi occurred in 1916, when he attended lectures in Tokyo by Tanaka Chigaku (1861–1939), founder of the ultranationalist Nichirenist organization Kokuchūkai. Makiguchi never became a Kokuchūkai member, and neither his philosophies nor his religious beliefs express Kokuchūkai influence. His writings lack Tanaka’s obsession with transforming Nichiren Buddhist doctrine to equate the dharma with the kokutai, a concept that conflates the Japanese nation with the person of the emperor.20 It is nonetheless tempting to believe that Makiguchi’s experience with Kokuchūkai catalyzed his interest in Nichiren Buddhism, and that his exposure to Kokuchūkai may have informed ways he mobilized his study association as a Nichiren Buddhist lay association. Soka Gakkai of the postwar era employed many of the same practices that Kokuchūkai refined. These included public lectures that featured the latest technology (Tanaka was fond of magic lanterns, music, and slide projectors); extensive production of vernacular print publications; political activism; campaigns to unify the object of worship (the gohonzon); an institutional structure based on young men’s, young women’s, and other gender- and age-specific divisions; and a corporate hierarchy that divided the organization into a national headquarters that oversees regional subdivisions.21 Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai under Makiguchi instituted some of these organizational features, and it grew as Japan mobilized for total war. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and thereafter devastated China and brought war

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  43

with the United States ever nearer; domestically all citizens were tasked as resources for the expansion of the Japanese empire. In the same period, Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai turned from educational reform toward a mobilization of its own. Its members engaged increasingly in uncompromising Nichiren Buddhist practices, including the hard-sell conversion tactic of shakubuku. Before the Gakkai engaged in shakubuku, the group had fewer than five hundred members; after members began to proselytize in 1941, the group expanded to five thousand registered adherents within two years. Beginning in 1936, Makiguchi began to hold annual summer seminars at the Nichiren Shōshū head temple Taisekiji. The first year only had nine attendees, but by the summer of 1941 the seminar lasted a week and included more than one hundred and eighty members. The Value Creation Education Study Association first met officially on January 27, 1937, when just over sixty people gathered at Kikusuitei, a restaurant in the Azabu neighborhood of Tokyo, to celebrate the beginning of the group. The second general meeting was held in 1940 at Soldier’s Hall in Kudanshita, central Tokyo, by which time Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai claimed between three and four hundred members. On July 20, 1941, the group began to publish the magazine Kachi sōzō, which attracted new subscribers as well as scrutiny from Japan’s increasingly oppressive political regime. By this time, Japan’s Special Higher Police were clamping down on religious organizations. They invoked the 1925 Peace Preservation Law, legislation that gave governmental authorities sanction to interfere in the daily operations of all organizations. Religious groups, no matter their affiliation, were required to enshrine kamifuda (deity tablets), talismans issued by the Grand Shrine at Ise, which is dedicated to Amaterasu, the deity revered as the sun goddess and imperial ancestor. Ritual veneration of Amaterasu was installed as a civic duty for all imperial subjects, and refusal to comply was treated as a disturbance of public order. Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai’s leaders steadfastly refused to comply. From January 1943, officers from the Special Higher Police investigated the group’s study meetings, and Japanese government censors frequently shut the meetings down. Nichiren Shōshū was also under threat. In response to government pressures, in April 1943 clerical and lay Shōshū members met at Taisekiji to discuss a proposed merger with the majority sect Nichirenshū; the Japanese government had already called for the nation’s Buddhist denominations to merge voluntarily by March 31, 1941.22 In response to suggestions that Nichiren Shōshū press ahead with the merger, on May 2, 1943, a ­seventy-two-year-old Makiguchi addressed approximately seven hundred members of Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai in Tokyo. He urged them to reject the merger and admonish the state (kokka kangyō) for embracing false teachings. Kokka kangyō recapitulates Nichiren’s submission of his treatise Risshō ankokuron to the Kamakura shogunal regent Hōjō Tokiyori in 1260. Since the thirteenth

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century, Nichiren Buddhists have emulated this practice, which generally took the form of submitting a letter of admonition to the emperor or a regional authority. Makiguchi demanded that Gakkai members call on the government to ban false sects ( jashū) and spread the correct teachings.23 Following the kokka kangyō pattern set by Nichiren, Makiguchi framed his admonitions as uncompromising defense in the interest of saving the country. In June 1943, the Shōshū priesthood called Makiguchi to Taisekiji in an attempt to convince him to moderate his kokka kangyō activities and to consider advising Gakkai members to enshrine Ise talismans. Makiguchi rebuked the Nichiren Shōshū priests, saying that what was at stake was national salvation. On June 5, 1943, two Gakkai administrators were arrested for violating the Peace Preservation Law. Police arrested Makiguchi on July 6, 1943, in the town of Shimoda, south of Tokyo, where he was engaged in converting the father of a Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai member. Early in the morning on that same day, police across Japan arrested all twenty-one top Gakkai leaders at their homes. The group, which then claimed approximately five thousand members, was dismantled. Makiguchi was moved in August to Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, where he was crammed into a filthy, lice-infested cell with many other prisoners when he was not being interrogated by the Tokyo Higher Police.24 News that his third son Yōzō had been killed in China on August 31 appears to have completely demoralized the ailing Makiguchi. After he learned of his son’s death, Makiguchi refused food and medical attention. He finally agreed to move to the prison infirmary on November 17, 1944, but refused treatment. The next day, fourteen years to the day after the publication of his Sōka kyōikugaku taikei, Makiguchi Tsunesaburō died of malnutrition. Over the course of his life, Makiguchi committed himself to two ideological traditions—modern humanism and Nichiren Buddhism—that would ultimately intertwine in Soka Gakkai. In both his educational and lay Buddhist undertakings, Makiguchi conceived of his mission as the elevation of Japan in the world, and even as he resisted Japan’s wartime rule his concern remained the proper cultivation of the Japanese populace. The conflated principles of commitment to Nichiren Buddhism’s absolutist ideals taught via proper schooling set the course for how the postwar Gakkai took shape. The Path of the Disciple: Toda Jōsei Toda Jōsei was the architect of the postwar Gakkai.25 He was born on February 11, 1900, the eleventh child of a poor fisherman in the village of Shioya in Ishikawa Prefecture (present-day Kaga City). When he was four years old, his family relocated to Atsuta on the northern island of Hokkaido, and when

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  45

he was fourteen he went to work for a wholesaler in Sapporo. Like Makiguchi, Toda saw the potential for advancement through academic endeavor. He prepared for Normal School examinations while he worked, and in 1917 qualified as an elementary school teacher. In early March of 1920, Toda arrived in Tokyo. By the Taishō era (1912–1926), Tokyo was Asia’s undisputed center of political power, economic opportunity, and intellectual pursuit. Toda’s writings from this time demonstrate that he expressed the aspiration to rise in the world (risshin shusse), an ideal first established in Meiji Japan and maintained by many Taishō-era aspirants like him who made their way to the capital.26 In a journal entry from April 1, 1920, Toda sets out for himself a list of objectives he was to achieve through cultivation (shūyō): Cultivation: I can only study. I must only pray for the happiness of my parents. I must think of the people of the world and the people of Japan as if they were myself, and I can only deny the desires of my own small existence. I must only be broad-minded. I must not waste time. I must be sincere.27

Around this time, Toda changed his given name from Jin’ichi to Jōgai (outside the fortress), testifying to his lofty sentiments. He befriended working students who also hailed from Hokkaido, and in mid-August 1920 Toda visited the home of Makiguchi Tsunesaburō with a letter of introduction from a Hokkaido colleague. Makiguchi was impressed by the enterprising young man, and he hired Toda to teach at his elementary school. While he taught, Toda set out to pass entrance examinations for Higher Normal School. He attended evening classes at Kaisei Middle School, where one of his classmates was Hosoi Sei’ichi, later Hosoi Nittatsu, Nichiren Shōshū’s sixty-sixth chief abbot. The close prewar relationship between Toda and Hosoi contributed to cooperation between Soka Gakkai as a lay movement under Nichiren Shōshū in the postwar era; it also explains the strong loyalty Toda’s disciples showed to Nittatsu, even after Toda’s death. From early in his life, Toda displayed an entrepreneurial spirit. In December 1922, he quit school teaching, and a year later he opened his own academy called Jishū Gakkan, which sought to put Makiguchi’s theories of value creation education into practice. As he launched this academy, Toda matriculated in Chūō University’s economics department, and he graduated with an economics degree in 1931 from the university’s evening class division. Toda also found success around this time producing textbooks designed to aid middle school applicants. One of these, a primer on arithmetic called Shidō sanjutsu (Arithmetic Guidance) published in June 1930, sold over one million copies. Toda’s publishing success resulted in wealth, which he funneled into

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46  Chapter 2

new ventures. By the late 1930s, Toda’s businesses included a moneylending practice, a soy sauce factory, and a stock trading firm. By 1943, Toda controlled seventeen companies. Toda remained devoted to Makiguchi as his fortunes advanced. When Makiguchi was converted by Mitani Sōkei to Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism, Mitani also converted Toda. Toda financed the publication of Sōka kyōikugaku taikei, his companies funded Kachi sōzō and other Gakkai journals, and he served below Makiguchi at the head of Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai when the organization convened in August 1937. Toda demonstrated his loyalty by joining Makiguchi in refusing to bow to the Japanese state’s pressure to recant commitment to Nichiren Shōshū orthodoxy. He was arrested in 1943 and held at Sugamo Prison, where he was mostly relegated to solitary confinement. In prison, Toda had access to a few books, including an edition of the Lotus Sutra published by Nichirenshū. He began reading the text in the final days of 1943, and on January 1, 1944, he began chanting namu-myōhō-renge-kyō in great earnest. He challenged himself to chant ten thousand daimoku per day and to consume a set amount of the Lotus and a portion of Nichiren’s writings daily. By early March 1944, Toda had completed more than two million daimoku repetitions and was reading the Lotus for the fourth time. Suddenly, while he was reading the Muryō gikyō (Sutra of Innumerable Meanings), Toda was struck by a realization that everything is connected by a universal life force (seimeiryoku), a common thread of engi (dependent origination). This life force resides unchanged within the network of causes and effects and provides an inexhaustible source of liberation identifiable as the eternal Buddha himself. After his release, Toda expounded on life force philosophy (seimeiron), and his interpretation of the Buddha as an eternal life force remains a component of the Gakkai’s doctrinal training today.28 In November 1944, Toda received another vision: he saw himself taking part in the “ceremony in the air” in which he joined with the innumerable Bodhisattvas of the Earth ( jiyu no bosatsu) at Vulture Peak, where Śākyamuni preached the Lotus Sutra. For Toda, this vision confirmed his revelation of the Buddha as an eternal life force. He would not learn that his mystical experience had unfolded just as Makiguchi Tsunesaburō died until January 8, 1945. Toda’s autobiographical novel Ningen kakumei (The Human Revolution) ends with his revelation of appearing among the masses at Vulture Peak. Here, Toda saw—not as a dream, but with his own eyes—that Nichiren, incarnated as the Bodhisattva Jōgyō, leader of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, received direct transmission of the dharma from Śākyamuni, the world-­ honored one of great enlightenment. When Toda emerged from prison half a year later, he was driven by obligation to the memory of Makiguchi and by a sense of mission confirmed by his vision as a direct connection to Nichiren, to the primordial Buddha Śākyamuni, and to the eternal dharma.

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  47

The Tools of Mobilization: Doctrinal Training, Mustered Cadres, and Electoral Politics Soka Gakkai’s mimesis of the Japanese nation-state began in earnest under Toda’s leadership. He formulated the postwar Gakkai as a wide-ranging network of institutions that took their cue from the very governmental structures that imprisoned him and martyred his mentor. Toda’s construction of Soka Gakkai can be seen as a curious victory—a repudiation of Japan’s wartime state by claiming its functions and rerouting them toward eschatological Nichiren Buddhist aims. Toda was released on parole on July 3, 1945, only a few weeks before Japan surrendered to Allied forces on August 15. Malnourished and physically weak, Toda nonetheless devoted himself to his religious mission. His first priority, however, was to create a material base for the spread of Nichiren Buddhism. To begin, Toda placed the only advertisement that appeared on the front page of the August 23 Asahi shinbun, the first issue of the newspaper after the end of the war. His ad announced his new company Nihon Shōgakkan, a school-by-mail that allowed subscribers to complete three years of middle school through correspondence courses.29 Within a few days, Toda’s new company was bringing in ¥10,000 per day in new subscriptions. In his biography of Toda Jōsei, Higuma Takenori notes that for many ordinary Japanese, defeat in the Pacific War effected a return to the nurturing bosom of the school. Having been forced out of the classroom onto the battlefield or into factories, Japanese men and women returned to civilian life eager to claim opportunities for self-cultivation through standardized education which had been stolen from them by war.30 Toda’s new company certainly appealed to this need. The study association he reassembled appealed to it as well. Former members of Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai began to hear about Toda’s release, and some came to visit him at his new business office. Inspired by his prison revelations, Toda reorganized the Gakkai. On January 1, 1946, Toda gave the first of a regular series of lectures on the Lotus Sutra at Taisekiji. Around this time, Toda once again changed his given name, first to Jōsei 城正 (righteousness that is a fortress), then in April 1951 to 城聖, which is also read Jōsei but which can be translated as “sage who is a fortress.” Toda also changed the name of the Gakkai. In March 1946, the organization switched from Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai to Sōka Gakkai, the Value Creation Study Association. On May 1, Toda was appointed by the assembled members as rijichō (chief of the board of directors) for the new organization. Toda dropped the word “education” from the title of the group, but it remained a gakkai: school-type pedagogy persisted at the group’s core. By the autumn of 1945, Toda’s business ventures were rocked by the economic upheaval of the immediate postwar years. Rapid inflation raised

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material costs and Toda’s debts soon reached millions of yen, outweighing his profits. As business faltered, Toda focused increasingly on his Gakkai responsibilities. From May 1946, Soka Gakkai began to hold zadankai (study meetings) at member homes in newly designated shibu (regions). By October 1949, Toda was forced to close Nihon Shōgakkan; his other businesses folded shortly thereafter. On November 12, 1949, at a Soka Gakkai general meeting convened to observe the anniversary of Makiguchi Tsunesaburō’s death, Toda resigned as the Gakkai’s chief officer, citing his failure as a businessman. He took his business troubles as retribution incurred by his failure to commit fully to his prison vow to spread Nichiren’s teachings. The end of Toda’s businesses saw the real launch of Soka Gakkai. On May 3, 1951, Toda stood before approximately 1,500 members at the Nichiren Shōshū temple Jōsenji in Tokyo to accept the title of second Gakkai president. In his acceptance speech, Toda challenged the members to convert 750,000 families to Soka Gakkai before his death. Otherwise, “If this goal is not realized while I am still alive, do not hold a funeral for me. Simply dump my remains in the bay at Shinagawa.”31 This objective marked the start of the shakubuku daikōshin (Great March of Shakubuku). In May 1951, Soka Gakkai claimed approximately three thousand members. To enable its ambitious conversion campaign, Soka Gakkai under Toda carried out several key initiatives. Among these were quickly publishing doctrinal training materials, attracting and mobilizing a powerful youth base, and emphasizing to prospective converts the appeal of Soka Gakkai membership as a pragmatic way of realizing this-worldly objectives, primarily in the realm of electoral politics. These mobilization tools correspond with state structures in place during Toda’s formative years: a standardized educational curriculum, disciplined youth cadres, and the conflation of personal goals with collective aims that bore relevance to government. Toda’s sharp rhetoric and willingness to martyr himself may appear extreme by contemporary standards, but his language and the Gakkai’s militaristic methods under his leadership would have been familiar signs of legitimate authority to converts who came of age within the wartime Japanese state. In May 1951, Toda called on Soka Gakkai’s doctrine instructors to compile an easy-to-read manual for members. The result was a hastily produced book called Shakubuku kyōten (Shakubuku Doctrine Manual), first published on November 18, 1951. Shakubuku kyōten served for nineteen years as the Gakkai’s most accessible tool for explaining Nichiren Buddhist concepts and Toda’s and Makiguchi’s philosophies in clear, vernacular Japanese. The book became notorious for its sections that laid out arguments for members to employ against “false sects” and its exhortations to do away with other religions in order to rescue the Japanese nation from the evils of the latter days of the Buddhist dharma.

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  49

Another important Gakkai manual published at the outset of the Great March of Shakubuku was the single-volume edition of Nichiren’s complete works. Shinpen Nichiren Daishōnin gosho zenshū (New Edition of the Complete Works of the Great Sage Nichiren) was first released on April 28, 1952, a date chosen to commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of Nichiren’s “declaration of the establishment of the sect” on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month of the year Kenchō 5, or 1253.32 Prior to the Gosho, Gakkai members were forced to make use of editions of Nichiren’s writings published by rival sects. To compile this massive amount of difficult material, Toda appealed to the fifty-ninth chief abbot of Nichiren Shōshū, Hori Nichikō, who was a renowned Nichiren Buddhism scholar. Toda convinced the eighty-five-year-old Hori to come out of retirement and lead twenty young Gakkai members from the group’s Lecture Bureau (Kōgakubu) to produce a collection of Nichiren’s writings suited to the Shōshū lineage. The 1952 Gosho remains the Gakkai’s most important Buddhist doctrinal text. The new Gakkai publications were tools in the hands of members who fanned out to convert their families, friends, neighbors, and even perfect strangers they encountered on the street. A principal vanguard of Soka Gakkai’s growth in the years of the Great March of Shakubuku was its youth divisions. The Gakkai’s Young Men’s and Young Women’s Divisions were charged with primary responsibility to achieve kōsen rufu, understood at this point simply as the mission to convert all people to Soka Gakkai. To inspire maximal commitment to this goal, Toda organized the divisions as if they were military cadres. On July 11, 1951, he divided youth members into four butai (corps). After that, young members across Japan were mustered into butai led by butaichō (corps leaders), who each received a specific butaiki, a corps flag on an iron staff, in solemn ceremonies held at the Gakkai’s Tokyo headquarters and at Taisekiji. Aggressive proselytizing resulted in startling growth. By 1952, its membership had more than quadrupled to 22,324 households. By 1955, the group claimed more than three hundred thousand families, and Soka Gakkai surpassed Toda’s goal of 750,000 households before the end of 1957. The majority of the people who joined in these years were from the urban poor, some of the millions who were flooding into Japan’s rapidly growing cities.33 But even as Soka Gakkai gained converts, it alienated others. Members campaigned from door to door, and veteran adherents speak of being driven away from houses by residents who doused them with water and pelted them with stones. The Gakkai had few facilities in these years, so most meetings were held in members’ homes; local leaders would hang red paper lanterns emblazoned with Sōka gakkai zadankai (Soka Gakkai study meeting) in black ink calligraphy outside their doors to advertise member gatherings. Today, study meetings are relatively tame, but during the Great March of Shakubuku they

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were high-pitched sessions that went on long into the night, at which members would anger their neighbors with loud chanting and visitors were pressured to convert on the spot. A growing membership inspired Soka Gakkai to sponsor the construction of new Nichiren Shōshū temples, where priests stayed busy performing the gojukai ritual of conferring gohonzon on new adherents. Members also incited conflict through their practice of hōbōbarai (cleaning out slander of the dharma), a measure that compelled converts to eliminate items related to faiths other than Soka Gakkai from their homes. In the Toda era, new converts were required to burn Shinto talismans, Buddhist altars, Christian Bibles, and mandala issued by rival Nichiren sects.34 Aggressive campaigning by Gakkai members, especially the Young Men’s Division, inspired stories in the Japanese media about Soka Gakkai’s gangster tactics. Criticism in the press increased after 1952 following an event labeled the Ogasawara incident and the tanuki festival incident (tanuki matsuri jiken). On April 27, 1952, the night before a major ceremony held at Taisekiji to commemorate the seven hundredth anniversary of Nichiren’s declaration of the sect (risshū sengen), Toda descended on the temple along with a band of four thousand Young Men’s Division members to confront the Taisekiji priest Ogasawara Jimon about his role in Makiguchi’s wartime incarceration. Ogasawara had been one of the Shōshū priests who favored a merger with Nichirenshū, and Toda felt that Ogasawara and others at Taisekiji were to blame for his incarceration and Makiguchi’s death. He demanded that Ogasawara, who was more than eighty years old, apologize for his actions during the war. Ogasawara refused, and the Young Men’s Division members seized him and hung a placard around his neck with the words tanukibōzu (tanuki monk); the tanuki, an animal sometimes called the raccoon dog in English, is characterized in Japanese folk tradition as a deceitful, shape-shifting creature. The Gakkai men carried Ogasawara to Makiguchi’s grave in the Taisekiji cemetery, where they forced him to sign a written apology. Toda later issued a formal apology for his actions in the Seikyō shinbun and Ogasawara repented a few years later. The mob that attacked Ogasawara was headed by Ikeda Daisaku, who was then a Young Men’s Division leader. Ikeda later stated that the incident was an act of kindness toward Ogasawara because it inspired him to repent, which allowed him to die happy.35 In less than three years after the start of the Great March of Shakubuku, the Gakkai’s Youth Division had grown to the extent that more than ten thousand young members could muster at Taisekiji for an October 1954 ceremony. Toda reviewed his assembled cadres from atop a white horse while the Young Men’s Division sang a new anthem called “Dōshi no uta” (Song of the Disciples) and the Young Women’s Divison sang “Yūkoku no hana” (Flower of Patriotism). As he emulated the pageantry of the wartime Japanese emperor, Toda exhorted the Youth Division to regard rival religions as enemies and

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  51

to seek their destruction.36 Here, Soka Gakkai most obviously exhibited the fusion of nation-state model with religious mission. Success in the Great March of Shakubuku led the Gakkai to regard itself as capable of realizing a goal that had been set out by Nichiren seven hundred years earlier. This was the establishment of a kaidan, an ordination platform (specially designated temple facility), the last of the sandai hihō— Three Great Secret Dharmas—at the heart of Nichiren’s teaching: the honmon no daimoku, the title of the Lotus Sutra, namu-myōhō-renge-kyō; the honmon no honzon (true object of worship), the calligraphic mandala with the daimoku inscribed at its center that Nichiren devised for his followers; and the honmon no kaidan (true ordination platform), to be constructed at “the most superlative site, resembling the Pure Land of Sacred Vulture Peak.”37 For Nichiren, the honmon no kaidan was to surpass the state-sponsored ordination facilities of his day and become the spiritual center for all people of the “three countries”—India, China, and Japan—and indeed the world, marking the achievement of kōsen rufu.38 The first two of the Three Great Secret Dharmas had been realized by Nichiren himself, but the establishment of the kaidan was to occur in a future when the entire country had embraced the Lotus. According to Nichiren Shōshū interpretation, the true object of worship is the daigohonzon housed at Taisekiji; there the kaidan would one day be established and the daigohonzon enshrined. Toda described the honmon no kaidan in terms of a kokuritsu kaidan (national ordination platform), an idea adopted from the teachings of Tanaka Chigaku.39 Construction of the national ordination platform required governmental support, and acquiring this support led Soka Gakkai into politics. From the start, Gakkai political activity was in the interest of realizing doctrinal objectives. Ikeda Daisaku wrote that, by early 1949, Toda postulated that kōsen rufu would not be possible without political engagement by Soka Gakkai.40 The following year saw Toda publish on electoral politics for the first time, when he briefly discussed the idea of ōbutsu myōgō (the harmonious unity of government and Buddhism) in an editorial for the Gakkai study magazine Daibyaku renge (Great White Lotus) of March 1950.41 By January 1952, Toda was reportedly telling members that Soka Gakkai would have to take part in elections. On New Year’s Day 1954, the Seikyō shinbun featured an editorial by Toda Jōsei titled “Until the Day of Constructing the National Ordination Platform” in which he urged all members to regard the coming year as preparation for the complete conversion of all people in Japan, an achievement that would be marked a quarter century hence by the construction of an ordination platform decreed by a majority within the House of Representatives.42 From August 1, 1956, Toda issued an essay titled “Ōbutsu myōgō ron” (On the Harmonious Union of Government and Buddhism) as a Daibyaku renge serial. In this essay, Toda wrote that Soka Gakkai was “inter-

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ested in politics because of the need to achieve kōsen rufu, the spreading of the sacred phrase namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, one of the Three Great Sacred Dharmas. In other words, the only purpose of our going into politics is the erection of the honmon no kaidan.”43 In April 1955, Soka Gakkai ran a total of fifty-one members in Tokyo Ward and local city council elections; all of them were elected. In July 1956, Soka Gakkai mobilized in support of six Gakkai administrators running as independent candidates for the Tokyo and Osaka House of Councilors and for the Lower House of the National Diet, three of whom were successfully elected.44 The Gakkai’s move into politics occasioned an overhaul of its bureaucratic system. Up to 1955, the Gakkai maintained a vertical line (tate-sen) administrative hierarchy. This meant that when a member converted someone to Soka Gakkai, she or he remained in a supervisory role, attending meetings and overseeing the shakubuku activities of new adherents. This worked well when the Gakkai expanded beyond its initial urban bases because it encouraged members to forge and retain networks across geographical divides. Once Soka Gakkai began to attract significant numbers, the vertical line structure began to strain, and members in local areas began to complain that they knew more about converts in distant regions than they did about adherents in their own neighborhoods. This, along with the requirement to mobilize adherents by electoral district, shifted the administration from a vertical to a horizontal line ( yoko-sen) system. Electoral success combined with Toda’s statements about ōbutsu myōgō fed into a growing popular perception that Soka Gakkai transgressed against a strict division of religion and government called for in the 1947 Constitution. Article 20 of the 1947 Constitution states that “No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority” and that “The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.” Article 89 stipulates that “No public money or other property shall be expended or appropriated for the use, benefit or maintenance of any religious institution or association, or for any charitable, educational or benevolent enterprises not under the control of public authority.” These constitutional issues became problematic for Soka Gakkai: Gakkai-sponsored politicians were perceived as threatening the religion-state divide guaranteed by Article 20, and the organization’s ambition to construct a state-sponsored ordination platform appeared to violate Article 89.45 The first few years of Soka Gakkai’s political career were further complicated as members engaged in electioneering using techniques they otherwise deployed in proselytizing, propelled as they were by the conviction that electioneering contributed directly to the realization of kōsen rufu. Members faced indictment in June 1956, when several were charged with soliciting support for Gakkai candidates through houseto-house campaigning, an activity forbidden by Japanese elections law. And, in

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  53

June and July 1957, forty-five Soka Gakkai members were indicted by the Osaka Public Prosecutor’s Office for violating the public elections law in the campaign for Nakao Tatsuyoshi, who was running in an Osaka by-election for a seat in the Lower House. The Osaka Public Prosecutors used confessions from those indicted as grounds to arrest Koizumi Takashi, Soka Gakkai’s rijichō, and Ikeda Daisaku, then Youth Division chief of staff. Soka Gakkai transformed Ikeda’s legal tribulations, now known within the organization as the Osaka incident, into a way to justify Ikeda Daisaku as rightful heir to Toda Jōsei, and ultimately as a direct heir of Nichiren’s dharma (see chapter 3). Benefits yielded by Soka Gakkai’s combination of shakubuku and electoral campaigns are clear: the group claimed 1,050,000 households at the end of 1958, the year Toda died, and had established itself as a potent political force. Toda Jōsei battled serious illness from January 1957 onward and died at age fifty-eight at Nihon University hospital of liver disease on April 2, 1958. His funeral was held on April 20 in Aoyama, Tokyo. More than 250,000 Gakkai members lined the streets to mourn their leader as his hearse passed. The nation’s leaders felt compelled to pay their respects to Toda: Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke and Minister of Education Matsunaga Tō visited the Aoyama Funeral Hall to offer incense at the altar. An Expanding Mandate: Soka Gakkai under Third President Ikeda Toda did not leave clear instructions on how Soka Gakkai was to select his successor. “The third [Soka Gakkai] president will emerge from the Youth Division. He will not come from among Makiguchi’s disciples,” Toda announced to a Youth Division meeting on February 17, 1951.46 To groom successor candidates, Toda appointed some of his Young Men’s Division disciples as sanbōshitsuchō (chief officers). Of these, Ishida Tsuguo was given responsibility for education (kyōiku) and Ikeda Daisaku for information ( jōhō). In January 1953, Ikeda ascended to the education post in the Officers’ Division. The Gakkai’s history has been thoroughly revised during the Ikeda era to create a narrative of Ikeda’s manifest destiny as Toda’s only rightful heir. Accounts for why two years elapsed before Ikeda became third Gakkai president and why Toda did not issue a statement that Ikeda was to be his successor do not appear in Gakkai sources. After Toda became ill, four Young Men’s Division leaders and several members of the Gakkai board of directors visited him to ask about the matter of succession to the presidency; “You must decide this yourselves” (sore wa omaetachi de kimeyo), Toda responded.47 Higuma Takenori indicates that something of a power struggle between Ikeda and Ishida played out immediately following Toda’s death in 1958. Ikeda consolidated his administrative authority from this point and was declared third president of Soka Gakkai on May 3, 1960.48

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Ikeda Daisaku exemplifies the generation of members who propelled Soka Gakkai’s expansion in the immediate postwar decades. Intelligent and motivated, he was hampered by poverty and illness, and though he was keen to study, his educational opportunities, along with their accompanying chances for social and economic advancement, were sabotaged by war and class difference. Ikeda was born on January 2, 1928, in Ebara, now the Ōmori neighborhood of Ōta Ward in southern Tokyo, the fifth son of a family that harvested seaweed.49 In April 1942, he entered Tōyō Shōgyō, a private commercial high school, but his studies were cut short when he and his schoolmates were sent to Niigata Prefecture in northern Japan to work at a steel factory as part of Japan’s war mobilization. While in Niigata he contracted tuberculosis and was sent back to his family to recuperate. Ikeda continued to suffer from the disease throughout his youth, and physicians told him that he should not expect to live past the age of thirty. Ikeda was seventeen when war ended in August 1945. He made ends meet for a couple of years after the war working in manufacturing near his family home in Ōmori. During this time, he organized a private reading group of fellow workers interested in literature and philosophy. On August 14, 1947, a female friend from his neighborhood took him to the meeting of a new Buddhist association called Soka Gakkai that she and some others from their neighborhood had joined. There, Ikeda met Toda Jōsei for the first time. Ikeda listened with interest to the forty-seven-year-old Toda, who spoke of Buddhism and of life-and-death matters that reminded him of Henri Bergson and other European philosophers he enjoyed reading with his friends. Gakkai youth at the meeting eventually succeeded in performing shakubuku on Ikeda, and he received a gohonzon on August 24, 1947. Thereafter, Ikeda embarked on a period that he characterized as a ten-year education in “Toda University.”50 He worked as an employee in Toda’s companies, and as Toda turned to full-time involvement in Soka Gakkai, Ikeda advanced through the ranks of the Gakkai Young Men’s Division and quickly demonstrated an ability to bring in new converts. At the beginning of 1952, Toda put Ikeda in charge of the Kamata shibu (region) in his own Tokyo neighborhood. Ikeda succeeded in meeting a target of two hundred new Gakkai families in Kamata by the end of February of that year; for this reason, Soka Gakkai now declares each February to be shakubuku month. After this, Toda placed Ikeda in charge of leading conversion efforts in the Kansai region of western Japan. Members in Osaka and other Kansai cities remain loyal to Ikeda even more than in many other places because of the personal bonds he forged in the region as a young leader. Ikeda was appointed Young Men’s Division head in January 1953 and its chief officer in 1954, and he rose to prominence when he was arrested in 1957 on suspicion of violating elections law during the Osaka incident. Under Toda, Ikeda and other

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  55

young charges who formed a select inner circle of Gakkai youth leaders were instructed in a wide variety of subjects. They read Nichiren and sections of the Lotus Sutra, and they gathered in night meetings at the Gakkai headquarters to discuss novels and listen to Toda lecture on Buddhism and modern philosophy. Ikeda was only thirty years old when Toda Jōsei died in April 1958. On June 30, 1958, Ikeda was appointed head of Soka Gakkai’s bureaucracy in the post of sōmushitsuchō (general manager) and head of the board of directors on June 30, 1959. When Ikeda was declared third president on May 3, 1960, his control of Soka Gakkai was secure. As the Gakkai’s new president, Ikeda built on Toda’s initiatives in response to the priorities of the postwar generation. In 1960, many in the country were eager to embrace a new rhetoric of internationalism and Japan’s return to the company of powerful nations, this time as a harbinger of peace. By the time of Ikeda’s rise to the Gakkai presidency, Japan had embarked on a path toward rehabilitation as a major player in the postwar international order, and Ikeda wasted no time in capitalizing on the mood of these times. On October 2, 1960, Ikeda and several top Gakkai leaders departed on a mission to the United States, Canada, and Brazil to establish Soka Gakkai overseas. In January 1961, Ikeda followed this tour with goodwill visits to six Asian countries, and to nine European countries in October of the same year. These visits laid the groundwork for what would become Soka Gakkai International. The Campaign for the Shōhondō: Politics and Public Backlash On May 3, 1961, the first anniversary of his presidency, Ikeda announced the transformation of Soka Gakkai’s Culture Division (Bunkabu) into a Culture Bureau (Bunkakyoku) that included offices for politics, economics, education, and rhetoric; an art department was added in December 1961. This heightened focus on culture prepared the Gakkai’s expansion into all aspects of social life—an institutional expansion that demanded resources. The early years of Ikeda’s presidency saw the start of massive fundraising campaigns that the group’s administration would transform into a staple of Gakkai life. Between July 21 and July 24, 1961, members contributed more than ¥3 billion to the construction of the Daikyakuden (Grand Reception Hall) at Taisekiji; in four days, roughly 1.4 million member families came up with three times the amount required to build this facility. The ¥1.2 billion modernist building was dedicated on April 2, 1964, the seventh anniversary of Toda’s death. It was constructed with materials Ikeda had commissioned during his overseas missions, including Canadian cedar, Taiwanese cypress, Swedish granite, Czechoslovakian chandeliers, and a fountain from Rome—grandiose architectural accents that developed into a standard Gakkai aesthetic for its flagship construction projects. As soon as the Daikyakuden was completed, the fund-

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raising campaign for a facility called the Shōhondō (True Main Hall) began. Soka Gakkai’s fundraising for the Shōhondō exceeded any other fundraising operation the group had ever undertaken. Between October 9 and 12, 1965, eight million Japanese members contributed more than ¥35.5 billion, depositing at sixteen thousand branches of the Bank of Mitsubishi in this four-day period. Their contributions equaled just under $100 million in 1965 (close to $760 million in 2018 dollars). Veteran members I spoke with about this fundraising campaign remembered their personal sacrifices. Elderly women sold kimonos and other treasured possessions to raise money, and younger members donated their savings from part-time jobs, a practice that some young members continue today to support Gakkai construction projects. This campaign demonstrated Soka Gakkai’s capacity to rapidly mobilize millions of adherents and billions of yen and it reinforced the group’s aspiration to pursue even the loftiest institutional objectives. The Shōhondō was to house the daigohonzon and would serve as the destination of millions of Gakkai pilgrims. The new hall was identified by the Gakkai leadership with the honmon no kaidan, the ordination platform to be constructed when all people embrace Nichiren’s teachings. In the planning stages, the Shōhondō received support from the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood as a building that represented an aim to realize kōsen rufu. On September 12, 1965, Chief Shōshū Abbot Hosoi Nittatsu sent a missive endorsing Ikeda as head of all the sect’s lay associations and stating that he “hoped that the Shōhondō will be the honmon no kaidan.”51 Around this time, Ikeda also began to speak of the Shōhondō as the realization of the third of Nichiren’s Three Great Secret Dharmas. “The Shōhondō will be the virtual [ jijitsujō] honmon no kaidan,” Ikeda declared on May 3, 1967, at a Gakkai general meeting.52 Soka Gakkai’s interpretation of the Shōhondō as the culmination of Nichiren’s seven-hundred-year-old aspiration was a problem for some Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism followers, who clung to an orthodox understanding that the ordination platform was only to be constructed after the population embraced the Lotus. It also troubled the Gakkai’s political opponents, who saw the Shōhondō as a transgression against constitutional divisions of religion and state. Pursuit of the kaidan galvanized Soka Gakkai’s religious and political campaigns. On May 3, 1964, Ikeda Daisaku abolished the Politics Department of the Culture Bureau and announced the founding of the new political party Komeito (Clean Government Party), which prepared to run candidates in both the House of Councilors (Upper House) and the House of Representatives (Lower House). In the January 1967 general election, Komeito ran one candidate in each of thirty-two multiple-member constituencies. Twenty-five were elected, making Komeito the third largest opposition party in the Diet. By June 1969, Komeito had 2,088 members elected to local governments.

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  57

After Komeito’s founding, Ikeda reinterpreted ōbutsu myōgō in a manner consistent with postwar internationalist priorities. In 1965 Ikeda published a book, later reissued in extended form in 1969, called Seiji to shūkyō (Politics and Religion) in which he declared that ōbutsu myōgō would not be an act of Soka Gakkai imposing its will on the Japanese state to install Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism as the national creed. Soka Gakkai, through Komeito, would institute a Buddhist democracy (buppō minshūshugi) combining the dharma with the best of the Euro American philosophical tradition to prioritize humanistic social welfare. In an age of nuclear proliferation, we must not focus on nation versus nation, Ikeda cautioned: we must instead foster all of humanity within a unified world nationalism (wārudo nashonarizumu). Thus, even as he called for unity within one global entity, Ikeda retained the nation as a guiding standard. By this point, the Gakkai’s institutional presence was remarkably complete. Even as Soka Gakkai was busy constructing institutions mimetic of the government it also created groups that were mimetic of nonstate organizations opposed to government. In 1969, the year Seiji to shūkyō was republished, Japan was rocked by the rapid social change that was sweeping through other parts of the world at that time. Demonstrators closed down university campuses to protest the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty (renewed in 1970) and the Japanese government’s complicity with the American invasion of Vietnam. Soka Gakkai capitalized on this groundswell social trend as Ikeda Daisaku appeared at the head of a rally for the Gakkai’s New Student Movement (Shin Gakusei Undō) wearing the combat helmet and neck towel that served as the student protestors’ uniform. By the end of the 1960s, the Gakkai was large enough to claim a presence in every corner of Japanese life. In 1961, one year after Ikeda became third president, Soka Gakkai had reached two million households, and only a year later it reached three million, the target he had set for 1964. In January 1970, Soka Gakkai announced that its worldwide membership stood at 7.55 million. The growth in total membership appeared to be tapering off at this point, but Soka Gakkai nonetheless exerted itself as a prominent force in religion, government, education, and social change. However, the end of the 1960s marked an end to the Gakkai’s rapid expansion in Japan. Matters came to a head in 1969 with events surrounding the publication of a book called Sōka gakkai o kiru, which came out one year later in English as I Denouce Soka Gakkai. The fiasco has since been labeled the genron shuppan bōgai mondai (problem over obstructing freedom of expression and the press).53 As its title promises, I Denounce Soka Gakkai condemns the group in harsh terms. The author, Fujiwara Hirotatsu, was a Meiji University professor and popular left-leaning political commentator. He compared Soka Gakkai to the Nazis and the Italian Fascists and otherwise warned of the Gakkai as a

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menace to Japanese democracy. Before the book went on sale in November 1969, Fujiwara released a statement to the press in October claiming that he had received an early morning telephone call from “a famous politician” who passed on a strong request from Takeiri Yoshikatsu, then leader of Komeito, that he, Fujiwara, pull Sōka gakkai o kiru from publication. Though this politician never gave his name, Fujiwara claimed that he recognized his voice as that of Tanaka Kakuei, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party who later became one of Japan’s most influential prime ministers. Soka Gakkai reeled from the scandal surrounding I Denounce Soka Gakkai. On May 3, 1970, Ikeda Daisaku issued a formal apology to the people of Japan for trouble caused by the incident. He used the occasion to announce a new policy of seikyō bunri (separation of politics and religion). Soka Gakkai and Komeito were declared to be henceforth separate organizations. The Gakkai renounced its plans to construct a national ordination platform and eliminated use of kokuritsu kaidan and ōbutsu myōgō from its lexicon. A new set of internal regulations for Komeito was also drawn up in which Buddhist doctrinal terminology was eliminated and replaced with a pledge to uphold the 1947 Constitution. Thereafter, Soka Gakkai in Japan lost its momentum. The group claimed more than 7.5 million households in 1970, a tenfold jump from thirteen years earlier. After 1970, its Japanese membership only made modest gains, reaching 7.62 million households in 1974 and in the early 1980s some 8.2 million households before leveling out just above that figure. The watershed was 1970, when the Gakkai began to shift from aggressive expansion to the cultivation of children born into the movement. The Culture Movement and the Ascendance of Ikeda Daisaku Over several days in mid-October 1972, Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shōshū celebrated the official enshrining of the daigohonzon in the magnificent new Shōhondō at Taisekiji. The Shōhondō was celebrated as a modern architectural masterpiece, a soaring structure designed by the famed architect Yokoyama Kimio that could accommodate more than six thousand worshippers in its main hall. The building opened with an extensive series of ceremonies that involved thousands of members from across the world. Three thousand members of Nichiren Shōshū of America alone arrived on chartered jets, reportedly the largest number of Americans to arrive in Japan at one time since the start of the Allied Occupation in 1945.54 Hosoi Nittatsu, Nichiren Shōshū’s chief abbot, described the Shōhondō as “a great hall that will certainly become the ordination platform of our head temple at the dawn of kōsen rufu” and “the virtual ( jijitsujō) ordination platform of this era.”55 However, in a speech during the ceremonies on October 12, 1972,

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  59

the anniversary of Nichiren’s inscribing of the daigohonzon in 1279, Ikeda distanced the new facility from the kaidan objective. He instead announced the beginning of what he termed Soka Gakkai’s Phase Two (dainishō). The Shōhondō was not meant to be seen as a symbol of religious power, he stressed, but as a facility for all people. Henceforth, he told the members, Soka Gakkai was to be an organization dedicated to advancing world peace and culture. The Gakkai took advantage of another bureaucratic overhaul to suit these new priorities. Beginning in April 1970, Soka Gakkai changed its administrative structure to a block system (burokku soshiki). Local-level administration that had previously organized local members into groups (kumi) and teams (han) changed to focus on activities at the level of the block, a subunit of approximately ten to fifteen households. This change reflected the new priority to foster neighborly relations among members and with nonmembers in local areas. At a general meeting on May 3, 1973, Ikeda instructed that instead of striking out far and wide to gain new converts, members were to foster human resources in their local areas through friendship activities ( yūkō katsudō) with nonmembers and through Nichiren Buddhist doctrine study sessions. As Soka Gakkai sought to leave behind the negative image it had created during its high-growth phase, the organization began to expand its culture mandate. Culture now took the form of a comprehensive engagement with post-Enlightenment Euro American art, international affairs, and the cultivation of Ikeda Daisaku’s public persona as an internationally celebrated statesman and intellectual. In 1972 and 1973, Ikeda held meetings in London with the renowned British historian Arnold J. Toynbee. These exchanges were published in Japanese in 1975 and in English in 1976 as The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue: Man Himself Must Choose and Choose Life: A Dialogue. These dialogues were celebrated by the Gakkai as a congenial meeting of two great minds, Toynbee representing the Judeo-Christian West and Ikeda the Buddhist and Confucian East.56 The dialogue format proved to be a persuasive way of presenting Ikeda Daisaku in horizontal juxtaposition with respected international political and intellectual luminaries. After the Toynbee meetings, Soka Gakkai organized more discussions between their leader and other famous dialogue partners. Ikeda met with Henry Kissinger in 1975, French author and statesman André Malraux in 1976, and many others thereafter, including Linus Pauling, Mikhail Gorbachev, and John Kenneth Galbraith. Among members, shakubuku practice began to converge with dialogue, and Ikeda’s published exchanges began to function as models for members to emulate in their interactions with potential converts. Published dialogues also proved useful as gifts from Gakkai members to nonmembers to inspire dialogue in local communities. One result of the Gakkai’s shift toward culture was the elevation of Ikeda Daisaku as a vision of the perfect postwar leader, an enlightened

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60  Chapter 2

figure at the apex of cultural refinement who represented Japan in peaceful relations with the great minds of the globe. A palpable hunger for academic recognition undergirded the construction of this public persona. Ikeda received his first honorary doctorate from Moscow State University in May 1975, and after that set a world record for the most honorary PhDs awarded to any ­individual—around 380 at the time of this publication. He also received more than six hundred honorary citizenships from cities and towns across the globe, along with numerous other laurels. Celebrating Ikeda’s academic and civic accolades developed into a central feature of Gakkai media. For decades, the monthly magazine Gurafu SGI and many other Gakkai publications rarely went without photos of Ikeda decked out in graduation robes, and those who corresponded in English with Ikeda Daisaku and Kaneko were instructed to address letters to Dr. and Mrs. Ikeda. Members had consistently celebrated Ikeda before 1970, but once the organization shifted out of high-growth mode, reverence for Ikeda Daisaku framed within cultural endeavors developed into Soka Gakkai’s primary raison d’être. Events like bunkasai (culture festivals), once conceived as part of a larger campaign, became campaigns in and of themselves. As part of the festivities surrounding the opening of the Shōhondō in 1972, Soka Gakkai put on a massive world peace culture festival (sekai heiwa bunkasai). A performance by visiting American members consisted of sections of the musical Man of La Mancha and ended with a solo performance by a male member in the character of Don Quixote singing “Dream the Impossible Dream.” After this finale, Ikeda took the stage to cries of “Senseeeeeei!” from the Japanese and foreign members. He congratulated the members and announced that their performance was the real launch of the Gakkai’s Phase Two. The members responded by singing a new song titled “Forever Sensei” and releasing ten thousand balloons, each emblazoned with a picture of Ikeda’s face and the words “world peace.” A steady equation of culture with Ikeda Daisaku himself began to coalesce early in his tenure as third Gakkai president, and this equation came more clearly into focus after his elevation to honorary president. Leadership Changes and Schism By the end of the 1970s, the Gakkai claimed just under eight million households, and Nichiren Shōshū fewer than one thousand priests and a lay following outside Soka Gakkai in the tens of thousands.57 On January 26, 1975, Ikeda was appointed president of Soka Gakkai International. He was leading an increasingly international movement that was moving away from Nichiren Shōshū, a conservative denomination with little interest in political or cultural affairs. Open institutional conflict between Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shōshū erupted in the late 1970s. On January 17, 1977, Seikyō shinbun carried

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  61

a speech by Ikeda titled “Speaking on Views of Buddhist History” (Bukkyōshikan o kataru) in which he declared that the Gakkai’s administrative headquarters, culture centers, and study facilities were essentially the temples of the present era. Simply shaving one’s head and wearing monks’ robes does not constitute taking the tonsure, Ikeda warned. He referred to the Three Great Treasures of Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism—the True Buddha (Nichiren), the dharma (the daigohonzon), and the sangha (specifically the chief abbot of Nichiren Shōshū)—in a discussion of the Ongi kuden (Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings).58 Ikeda quoted the Ongi kuden to state that “Nichiren and those who chant namu-myōhō-renge-kyō are the true servants [of the Thus-Come One (the Buddha)].”59 Following this, Soka Gakkai was included among the sangha and was the true “high priest” of this age.60 Ikeda continued to challenge Shōshū supremacy: from April 18, he published a serialized essay in Daibyaku renge titled “Shōji ichidaiji ketsumyakushō kōgi,” a document since translated as “Lecture on the Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life.”61 Ikeda contended in these lectures that Nichiren Shōshū priestly claims to a lineage (ketsumyaku) going back to Nichiren are not superior to the links Gakkai members forge to the dharma by chanting namu-myōhō-renge-kyō to the daigohonzon.62 Soka Gakkai issued millions of copies of a pamphlet version of Shōji ichidaiji ketsumyakushō kōgi in the middle of 1977. Around the same time, Soka Gakkai made changes to its liturgy without permission from the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood by adding two silent prayers to the kyōbon (chanting handbook) used twice daily by members. The new prayers called for the spread of Soka Gakkai and gratitude to Makiguchi Tsunesaburō and Toda Jōsei for their dedication to kōsen rufu. Nichiren Shōshū was further provoked in 1978 when reports emerged that Soka Gakkai had made eight replicas of the daigohonzon, without the priesthood’s permission, in order to enshrine them in Gakkai facilities. Seven of these were returned. Shōshū Chief Abbot Hosoi Nittatsu ultimately granted the Gakkai permission to keep one at its Shinanomachi headquarters. These actions sent a message to the Shōshū priests that Soka Gakkai did not need them to access soteriological promises inherent in Nichiren’s teachings. A movement arose within the priesthood to cut ties with the Gakkai.63 Nittatsu and Ikeda were able to negotiate a détente, and, on November 7, 1978, Ikeda led two thousand Gakkai administrators to the Nichiren Shōshū head temple Taisekiji on an apology pilgrimage (owabi tōzan). However, Ikeda’s apology did not end the matter. Characterizations of the Shōhondō as the equivalent of the honmon no kaidan had already inspired some to break with the sect—most notably the lay association Myōshinkō, later the New Religion Nichiren Shōshū Taisekiji Kenshōkai, which is now one of Soka Gakkai’s chief rivals.64 Soka Gakkai was also beginning to worry about ex-members who were feeding a growing number of negative media reports

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62  Chapter 2

about Soka Gakkai’s religious and political activities.65 Some organized the All-Japan Parishioner Association (Zenkoku Dantōkai), a Shōshū-supported group opposed to Soka Gakkai, and former Gakkai members began to affiliate in increasing numbers with Hokkekō Rengōkai, an umbrella organization of Nichiren Shōshū lay organizations that incorporated in 1962. In part to assuage anger from these Shōshū affiliates, Ikeda apologized again in February 1979, and on April 24 he resigned his positions as third president of Soka Gakkai and as chief lay representative (hokkekō sōkōtō). He took the position of Soka Gakkai’s honorary president and remained president of Soka Gakkai International. Ikeda was replaced as administrative leader of Soka Gakkai by its fourth president, Hōjō Hiroshi, who remained in the position until he died in July 1981. Akiya Einosuke became fifth Gakkai president after this, a post he held until November 2006, when Harada Minoru became the sixth. On May 3, 1979, Nittatsu announced that Nichiren Shōshū accepted Soka Gakkai’s apologies for its doctrinal intransigence. Not every Nichiren Shōshū priest agreed with Nittatsu’s decision. On July 4, 1980, a group of 201 Shōshū temple priests formed a breakaway organization called Shōshinkai that opposed what it perceived as Soka Gakkai’s slander of the dharma under Ikeda Daisaku. Shōshinkai priests challenged Chief Abbot Abe Nikken’s claim to the post of sect leader, charging that he never answered clearly in the affirmative as to whether Hosoi Nittatsu had bestowed the Nichiren Shōshū lineage on him before he died in July 1979—an accusation that Soka Gakkai later adopted. When Shōshinkai formed, it attracted the alliance of some former highly ranked Gakkai members, including Ishida Tsuguo, Yamazaki Masatomo, and Harashima Takashi, former head of Soka Gakkai’s Doctrine Division.66 Sixty-sixth Chief Abbot Hosoi Nittatsu died on July 22, 1979, and was replaced in August by Abe Nikken. Making Ikeda honorary president released him from day-to-day administration. He devoted himself to furthering his image as an international statesman and culture devotee, and the Gakkai followed suit by casting itself as a movement for culture and world peace. The Youth Division organized the Gakkai’s first Peace Conference in 1979, and in December 1980 the Married Women’s Division established the Soka Gakkai Women’s Peace Committee, which developed into a driving force behind Gakkai peace activities. The 1980s and 1990s saw the Gakkai stage numerous world peace culture festivals. Though Chief Abbot Abe Nikken was given a seat of honor at these festivities, relations between him and Ikeda grew increasingly tense. By the 1980s, the Shōshū priesthood found itself the uncomfortable elderly companion of an international organization led by a globally engaged public intellectual increasingly apt to speak as much of the European Enlightenment as he was of Buddhist enlightenment.

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  63

A decade after Ikeda took the mantle of honorary president, tensions between him and the priesthood exploded into a second open conflict. On December 13, 1990, Nichiren Shōshū’s general administrator, Fujimoto Nichijun, sent a letter of complaint to Gakkai president Akiya Einosuke about aspersions cast by Ikeda in a speech he made at a general headquarters’ meeting on November 16 of that year. A series of missives passed between the Gakkai and the sect in the days that followed listed each side’s accusations of violating orthodoxy and abusing positions of power. On December 27, the Shōshū head priests met to draw up new sect regulations that resulted in Ikeda Daisaku and other Gakkai leaders losing their positions in the Shōshū lay association. Beginning on January 4, 1991, the Seikyō shinbun began to publish articles openly critical of Chief Abbott Abe Nikken and the priesthood.67 On July 1, the sect changed its pilgrimage system to require that all adherents arriving at Taisekiji to worship the daigohonzon secure documentation from their local Shōshū temples, thereby undermining Soka Gakkai’s oversight of the pilgrimage practice. On November 7, 1991, the priesthood sent a final ultimatum to Soka Gakkai advising that it disband. Soka Gakkai rejected the request and criticized Abe Nikken and the Shōshū priesthood for their lack of concern for their own parishioners. Finally, on November 28, 1991, Nichiren Shōshū issued the “Notice of Excommunication of Soka Gakkai from Nichiren Shōshū.” Henceforth, Nichiren Shōshū parishioners who wished to enter sect temples, including the head temple Taisekiji, were required to pledge that they were not affiliated with Soka Gakkai. In one stroke, Nichiren Shōshū effectively excommunicated all but a small percentage of its millions of adherents. Soka Gakkai now refers to Nichiren Shōshū as Nikken-shū (the Nikken sect), and Nichiren Shōshū calls the Gakkai Ikeda-kyō (the religion of Ikeda). Both groups deny the religious legitimacy of their opponent by demoting the other to a cult of personality.68 Doctrinal Strategies since the Schism On November 28, 1991, Soka Gakkai abruptly lost access to its principal object of worship. Two days later, the Shōshū priesthood announced that it would no longer confer gohonzon replicas on converts to Soka Gakkai. Left with responsibility for important liturgical duties that had traditionally been performed by priests, Soka Gakkai was forced to create compensatory measures. The Gakkai was aided in part by fallout that transpired within the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood. After Abe Nikken excommunicated the vast majority of Shōshū parishioners, several groups of Shōshū priests contested his authority and broke away to form their own organizations. One of these was the Seinen Sōryo Kaikaku Dōmei (Association of Youthful Priests Ded-

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icated to the Reformation of Nichiren Shōshū), formed on March 30, 1992. Association priests now operate approximately thirty temples patronized by Gakkai members and even oversee a few culture center temples (kaikan jiin), where members can receive funerals, memorials, and other services. Thus, when Soka Gakkai split from its temple Buddhist parent, roles inverted, and now Soka Gakkai is a lay association that oversees temples and tonsured priests. Soka Gakkai faced a future without new objects of worship. In response, on October 2, 1993, the group began to confer gohonzon replicas made from a transcription of the daigohonzon mandala inscribed by the twenty-sixth Chief Abbot Nichikan in 1720 the Gakkai had received from priests at the Tokyo temple Jōenji on September 7, 1993. Gakkai members were instructed to turn in their old gohonzon and receive replicas of the Nichikan transcription to enshrine in their homes. The Nichikan gohonzon grew into a major object of doctrinal contention. Nichiren Shōshū accused Gakkai members of worshipping a heterodox mandala, and Kenshōkai, Hokkekō, and other rival Shōshū-based lay organizations used the gohonzon issue to appeal to Gakkai members to renounce Soka Gakkai. Some members who left Soka Gakkai after the schism continue their Shōshū practice as parishioners affiliated with Hokkekō. In response, Soka Gakkai launched dakkō undō (the movement for leaving the confraternity), a campaign to draw former members back into the Gakkai fold. Members are encouraged to chant for Nikken bokumetsu (Nikken’s self-annihilation) to pray for Abe Nikken and Nikken-shū to self-destruct by their own degradation. Entreaties for Nikken bokumetsu are commonly seen on home altars and on placards in front of altars at culture centers, and block-level leaders routinely pass out lists of Nichiren Shōshū temples in their areas for members to beseech the object of worship for aid in datō (wiping out). Separation from Shōshū temples demanded that Soka Gakkai find alternative ways to handle funerals and memorial services. The Gakkai began to build its own grave facilities around 1977—this was, in fact, a source of conflict between Soka Gakkai and the priesthood at that time—and focused on creating a total of thirteen massive memorial parks after 1991.69 Gakkai funerals are called yūjinsō (friend funerals). They are conducted by Gakkai administrators from the Gitenbu (Liturgy Division) who perform gongyō for the deceased and carry out the other funerary duties formerly performed by priests. Deceased members do not receive individual kaimyō (posthumous death ordination names); emphasis is placed on all members being equal before the wondrous law of the dharma (myōhō). Every deceased person interred in a Gakkai memorial park receives the posthumous title zokunin (layperson), reaffirming the division of Gakkai members from the priesthood in death as in life.70

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  65

Ikeda Daisaku’s Abiding Presence In 2002, Soka Gakkai revised its institutional regulations. Henceforth, Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda were to be known as the sandai kaichō, the three generations of presidents who founded the movement, and as its kōsen rufu no eien no shishō (eternal mentors of kōsen rufu). A preamble to the new regulations described the contributions of each of the three founders. Makiguchi, in the spirit of shishin guhō (sacrificing his body to spread the dharma), martyred himself through his death during wartime incarceration in order to pass on the mission of kōsen rufu.71 Toda, awakened in prison to the realization of Buddhism as life force, held aloft the ideal of human revolution (ningen kakumei) and established the foundation of kōsen rufu in Japan. Finally, Ikeda spread Nichiren’s Buddhism not only in Japan but worldwide, marking a historical precedent by opening the mission of Buddhism as peace, culture, and education to the entire world. The preamble concluded that the standard for the Soka Gakkai spirit will eternally be the shitei funi (indivisible bond of master and disciple) expressed by the Gakkai’s first three presidents. Section 2 of the 2002 regulations stipulated that the post of Gakkai president after Ikeda is to be purely administrative.72 These regulations made clear that charismatic leadership of the organization ends with Ikeda Daisaku. The 2002 Gakkai regulations offered one possible loophole for appointing another leader for life. Chapter 2, Article 7 stated that Soka Gakkai reserves the right to appoint an honorary president “based on a decision made at a general leaders’ meeting.”73 Ikeda Daisaku last appeared in public during a satellite broadcast of a general headquarters’ meeting on May 13, 2010. However, the Gakkai administration remained eager to perpetuate an image of Ikeda as alive and well long after this. For example, in the newspaper Asahi shinbun on June 22, 2016, an interview with Gakkai President Harada Minoru begins with a question about Ikeda Daisaku’s health. Harada reassures the reporter that Ikeda had passed on administrative duties years ago and that the honorary president was in good health and devoting himself to writing.74 On the heels of this query, the Seikyō shinbun reported on a June 25 visit by Ikeda Daisaku and Kaneko to the Soka International Women’s Center at Shinanomachi, where they commemorated the sixty-fifth anniversary of the Women’s Division and were photographed meeting with the division leader.75 As it has strategized in advance of the inevitable end of Ikeda Daisaku’s life and the organization’s transition away from his charismatic authority, Soka Gakkai’s administration has been faced with two incommensurate mandates. On one hand is the imperative to focus on the concept of shitei funi by perpetuating Ikeda as an active presence in members’ lives. On the other hand, Gakkai institutions have apparently sought to ease the shock of Ikeda’s

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death by habituating members to Ikeda eulogies years before he left the public eye. This combination of treating Ikeda as immanent and as an object of fond remembrance has apotheosized him in the eyes of his devotees. I witnessed this transcendent blurring numerous times during my fieldwork. In October 2002, I traveled with Men’s Division member friends to Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, to a kenshū dōjō, one of several training halls the Gakkai maintains for member instruction. This kenshū dōjō featured an exhibition room that displayed replicas of revered items from the Gakkai’s past, including prayer beads Toda made for himself in prison out of milk bottle tops and copies of books by Makiguchi. Framed black and white portraits of the three founding presidents lined the wall next to a Buddhist altar, solemn photos of a sort ordinarily displayed at memorials. All of the visitors knelt in front of the altar to chant for the Gakkai founders—including for Ikeda, who was certainly alive at this point. In 2004, I made a visit to Soka University in Hachiōji, western Tokyo, where I spent time at the university’s central administrative building, which attracts numerous Gakkai member pilgrims. On the building’s ground floor, a towering statue of Leonardo da Vinci looks over a large array of awards and honors bestowed upon Ikeda; this statue provides the backdrop for commemorative photographs taken by campus visitors. During my visit, Da Vinci was flanked on the rear wall by two large oil paintings. Each featured Ikeda at the center, seated at a round table surrounded by his dialogue partners, living and dead; Arnold Toynbee, Zhou Enlai, Mikhail Gorbachev, and many others were pictured smiling with approbation at Ikeda. Lines between living and deceased were erased, as were those between the object of worship and Ikeda’s presence when I was cautioned by a security guard not to take photos of the paintings of Ikeda or objects that had adorned his person; ordinarily, only the gohonzon is not to be photographed. At the Shinanomachi headquarters, the Soka Culture Center’s triumphal presentation of Ikeda’s biography was undercut by a mournful undertone. During my June 2015 visit, I could not help noticing that all of the exhibitions, including treatments of Ikeda in the present day, were phrased in the past tense, in spite of insistence on the part of the Gakkai administrators who accompanied me that the honorary president was alive. Unresolved tensions underlie the Gakkai’s presentation of Ikeda as attempts to immortalize his presence are complicated by sadness about the end of his life and anxiety about what the future holds. Some members have grown remarkably reflexive about attempts by the Gakkai administration to smooth the way to a post-Ikeda world. “The Gakkai is facing a truly important time. Charismatic authority is waning, and centrifugal power (tōshinryoku) has really strengthened,” mused Andō, a second-generation Men’s Division member, during conversations with me in September 2015. Others are more blunt: “We can’t know if he is alive or dead,” Gotō, a former Married Women’s Division mem-

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From Intellectual Collective to Religion: A History of Soka Gakkai  67

ber, said to me in July 2016 during a flat summation of her impatience with the Gakkai’s Ikeda centrism. As an example of the spinning away of authority Andō observed, Gotō had stopped attending Gakkai meetings and had convened a secret group of like-minded ex-members who chanted before a gohonzon received from Nichiren Shōshū. Most members I know appear to have internalized Ikeda as an abiding presence, one whose greatness must be expressed in terms that are comprehensible to the next generation. Yoshihara, a Men’s Division member I have known since the start of my fieldwork, in December 2016 posted on Facebook a shot of a book titled (in English) A Blaze of Messages: Photographs and Poems by Daisaku Ikeda along with a message he characterized as an attempt to get across to young people how he was invigorated on reading his mentor’s words of encouragement. He described feeling like someone who fell into depression after reading a love letter, only to be renewed by Ikeda’s words: “But shishō is truly great, after all!” Yoshihara’s Facebook feed is otherwise a constant stream of articles on UN refugee programs and other heartening international efforts to promote understanding, all efforts that follow in the pattern established by Ikeda Daisaku. The grand narrative Ikeda set forth for Soka Gakkai continues to direct the life courses of its members, and his presence abides in the practices that shape their lives, in the texts they consume, and in the institutions they build.

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3

Soka Gakkai’s Dramatic Narrative

OF ALL THE POSSIBLE MOMENTS SOKA GAKKAI’S leaders could have chosen to commemorate the beginning of their movement, they selected the publication of a book. Celebration of the group’s inaugural book forms the visual backdrop for Makiguchi Memorial Hall in Hachiōji, western Tokyo, one of Soka Gakkai’s most magnificent edifices. The Hall serves as a definitive statement on Soka Gakkai immediately after its split from Nichiren Shōshū, an imposing display of art and accolades that broadcasts the Gakkai’s glory to the world. The building opened on May 3, 1993—Soka Gakkai’s President’s Day—a year after the Gakkai’s exclusion from the Shōhondō and other facilities the group had constructed at the Shōshū head temple Taisekiji. It is an eight-story fortress of marble and other valuable stone quarried in Japan, Korea, and Europe, designed to stand for centuries. On my first visit on November 15, 2007, the Soka Gakkai vice president who was then appointed head of the Hall told me that no other Gakkai building, indeed no other building in Japan, compared in terms of the cost of materials and construction, because no company would ever dedicate the resources Soka Gakkai had invested in building it. The Hall is designed to take on the patina of Renaissance-era European castles as its marble façade ages over the coming centuries. “Castles like this can only be built by virtue of kenryoku (power),” the vice president declared, before quickly catching himself and stating that the building was constructed thanks to the sacrifices of the minshū (common people). As I discuss in this chapter, kenryoku is a key term in Gakkai parlance associated with the power of oppressive governmental authority; minshū denotes the collective will of the populace. 68

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Soka Gakkai’s Dramatic Narrative  69

Outside, the Makiguchi Memorial Hall is fronted with massive columns that evoke the Parthenon and buildings in Washington, DC. This monument to the Gakkai’s first president is certainly presidential in its impressive scale and architectural referents. It is draped in balconies, surrounded with wide gardens filled with flowering trees, and decorated with stone urns and spear-wielding guardian statues decked in togas and helmets. It is fronted by a flight of steps that rises from the Renaissance Plaza (Runesansu Hiroba), which is guarded by a huge stone lion, from the lion’s roar metaphor of the Buddha’s teachings (shishiku, Sanskrit siṃha-nāda). This symbol derives from Nichiren, who wrote in 1279 that his chanting namu-myōhō-renge-kyō overpowers countless Pure Land Buddhist foes, as “when the lion roars all beasts are silenced.”1 At the top of this grand set of stairs rests a larger-thanlife bronze statue of Makiguchi Tsunesaburō. Behind the statue hangs a large painting that depicts Makiguchi seated at his desk with his disciple Toda Jōsei standing beside him on November 18, 1930. Both smile as they tear paper wrapping off a stack of Makiguchi’s newly published Sōka kyōikugaku taikei (System of Value-Creating Educational Study). The painting is by Uchida Ken’ichirō, the artist whose distinctive drawings for years accompanied episodes of the serialized novel The Human Revolution (Ningen kakumei) and its sequel The New Human Revolution (Shin ningen kakumei) in the Seikyō shinbun. Soka Gakkai does not celebrate its start with the conversion of Makiguchi to Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism, or with the shift within the prewar Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai from educational reform to defense of Nichiren’s singular embrace of the Lotus Sutra. Nor does it begin with another obvious religious launching point, that of Toda’s prison revelation of the Lotus on November 18, 1944, the same day Makiguchi died. Instead, the group celebrates its founding with the printing of a treatise on education. Soka Gakkai, one of Japan’s ­largest-ever collectives of active religious adherents, commemorates its origins with the publication of an academic text that barely deals with religion. In this chapter, I consider implications of Soka Gakkai’s choice of publication over revelation as its founding moment as I investigate dimensions of the dramatic narrative relayed by Gakkai texts. Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai (Value Creation Education Study Association) transformed from a collective of educational reform-minded intellectuals into a lay association dedicated to Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism. After Toda Jōsei revived his mentor’s association in the immediate postwar era as Soka Gakkai, the organization began to conflate study of Nichiren’s writings with immersion in a broad-based and expanding body of publications. Beginning in the 1960s, Ikeda Daisaku oversaw a radical expansion of what became a publication empire that produced the Gakkai’s mimetic equivalent of a national literature—the organization’s historical record and source for ethical instruction. Under Ikeda’s

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leadership, Soka Gakkai moved beyond Buddhism to vastly expand the numbers and genres of its texts. Although many of these fall well outside common definitions of Buddhism, members routinely treat the organization’s new texts as doctrinal and even liturgical resources that are contiguous with the Nichiren Buddhist scriptures that give Soka Gakkai its identity as a lay Buddhist group. Today, members inhabit an environment in which Nichiren Buddhism persists as one component of a vast sea of printed and broadcast texts, many of which express the heroic Romanticism evident at Makiguchi Memorial Hall. I open this chapter with this description of the Memorial Hall because the building exemplifies the glorious imagery that constitutes what may be termed Soka Gakkai’s dramatic narrative. The heroic presentation of Makiguchi Tsunesaburō as a magisterial prelude to Ikeda Daisaku is typical of the overall timbre of Soka Gakkai today: a triumphant ode in European idiom to the victorious expansion of the institution, to be accomplished through adherents’ indivisible bond with their teacher (shitei funi) that cultivates a fusion of lay Buddhist and modern Euro American ideals. Constant immersion in Gakkai social contexts and constant consumption of Gakkai media produces an ethos that links members—in their occupational capacities as housewives, company employees, students, and more powerfully as people living with financial worries, illness, and social conflict—with heroic life courses enshrined at facilities like the Makiguchi Memorial Hall and preserved in its de facto textual canon. Nichiren Buddhism and Romanticism, two traditions redolent with defenders of truth who persevere against oppression to realize genius, combine to craft a continuing Soka Gakkai drama. This drama plays out in the Gakkai’s texts, which provide a blueprint for members to interpret their life experiences in a way that suffuses their quotidian existence with profound meaning that can only be apprehended by identifying individual goals with those of the organization. Centered on the daily newspaper Seikyō shinbun and the serial novels The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution, the Gakkai corpus has attained a working equivalent of scriptural authority among the group’s adherents. And, because the corpus is still growing, members have the opportunity to see themselves, their family members, and their acquaintances preserved within a history that they perceive as having sacred value. The group’s most widely read and best-selling publication, Ningen kakumei (The Human Revolution), best exemplifies the cardinal elements of the organization’s dramatic narrative. Here, I provide a close reading of a key chapter in Ningen kakumei to examine how Soka Gakkai’s twin Nichiren Buddhist and modern humanist legacies conflate in its written record, and how the group grew mimetic of the nation-state from which it emerged. By analyzing how the Gakkai’s most salient structural and aesthetic

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features coalesce in its literature, we come to understand why the Value Creation Study Association continues to regard the publication of an academic book as a moment of religious import. Why the Novel? Soka Gakkai’s Mimetic Equivalent of a National Literature The format at the center of Soka Gakkai’s published record is the serial novel, a genre that peaked in popularity in nineteenth-century Europe, the era of heroic Romanticism the Gakkai preserves within its aesthetic expressions. The Human Revolution and its sequel are romantic, semi-fictionalized treatments of its own history that center on the triumphant rise of Ikeda Daisaku as Toda’s loyal disciple and rightful heir. As with numerous postwar Gakkai institutions, Toda Jōsei created the template that Ikeda Daisaku later elaborated. Toda began publishing his life story as Ningen kakumei in serial form on April 20, 1951, in the Seikyō shinbun under the pen name Myō Gokū.2 These installments were published as a book on July 3, 1957. The novel features Toda as a protagonist called Mr. Gan, a name chosen from the Meiji-era translation by Kuroiwa Ruikō of Alexandre Dumas’ Le comte de Monte-Cristo (Gankutsuō, literally “king of the rock cave”) and links Toda’s wartime imprisonment to the unjust confinement of the count in Château d’If. Gan is the loyal disciple of the only factually represented character in the original Ningen kakumei, Makiguchi Tsunesaburō. The novel centers on Gan’s (Toda’s) revelation while imprisoned by wartime authorities and closes with Gan declaring his resultant devotion to spreading exclusive faith in the Lotus Sutra. In an introductory note composed in October 1965 to preface volume 1 of his version of The Human Revolution, Ikeda turns to Goethe’s autobiography Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (From My Life: Poetry and Truth) as his touchstone in asserting that it is impossible to relay everything in an account of the past and that partial perceptions of reality are inevitable. Truth reflected in the eyes of human beings is never entirely relayed in words; one warps the truth and at times even renders the truth a lie. Ikeda states that, as with Goethe, great authors have fretted over this dilemma and endeavored to project the truth behind a fictional construct. In his version of The Human Revolution, Ikeda has wracked his brains in an attempt to eternally transmit the true face of his teacher. In Ikeda’s novel, only Makiguchi and Toda appear as nonfictional characters. Several hundred other characters in the novel (including himself) appear under pseudonyms. Some are composites made of several real people, some people appear under more than one name, and some people are split into several characters. Yet no matter the ambiguity in representation, “In any case, a great revolution of character in just a single man will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and fur-

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ther, will enable a change in the destiny of all Mankind.” This, Ikeda states, is the point of The Human Revolution.3 But why a novel at all? Soka Gakkai has produced publications of all sorts, yet beyond the Gakkai leaders’ diaries and even their essays and speeches, members are cultivated to regard The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution as definitive.4 We must turn once again to our guiding metaphor of Soka Gakkai as mimetic of the modern nation, as a religion that recreates national appurtenances within its institutions and practices. Just as working equivalents of many nation- and nation-state-like apparatuses, including sovereign territory, a rationalized administration, economy, broadcast media, and a standardized education system have emerged within Soka Gakkai, so too has it produced its version of a national literature that tells the story of its origin, its triumphant rise in the face of tyranny, and justifications for promoting its leaders and subjects as inheritors of an exclusive mission. The novel has unifying properties that are simultaneously artifacts of and productive of the modern nation. As Timothy Brennan points out, the novel accompanied the rise of nations “by mimicking the structure of the nation, a clearly bordered jumble of languages and styles.”5 The novel joined the newspaper as the major vehicle of what Benedict Anderson calls “print-capitalism,” as a powerful way of forging an “imagined community” by standardizing language, encouraging literacy, and removing mutual incomprehensibility. Soka Gakkai’s novelized story about itself realizes these nation-building capacities. Because they are published in newspaper serial and bound volumes with furigana (hiragana syllabics next to Chinese characters to allow readers of all literacy levels to understand the words), and in easy-to-understand manga (comic book) formats and in films (animated and live action), The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution encourage Gakkai adherents to take part in what Ernest Renan defines as the nation: a “rich legacy of memories,” and a selective forgetting of past traumas, perpetuated within a large-scale solidarity constituted by participants’ sacrifices made in the past and ones they are prepared to make in the future.6 The dramatic narrative in Soka Gakkai’s novels exemplifies Renan’s observation of the modern nation’s need to selectively forget its past in order to cultivate solidarity in the present. The Human Revolution silences troublesome internal conflicts, such as Ikeda’s contestation for the Gakkai leadership after Toda’s death, as it elevates other conflicts, such as legal and political wrangling surrounding Ikeda’s arrest in 1957, into Soka Gakkai’s triumph over worldly oppression. Because The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution appear in serial installments in the Seikyō shinbun, devoted readers fuse “news” from these unfolding epics with the newspaper’s daily account of Ikeda’s glories, past and present. The serial novel form leads

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us to Anderson’s likening of the newspaper to a novel without a coherent plot, and to his observation that both the newspaper and the novel seep “quietly and continuously into reality, creating that remarkable confidence of community in anonymity which is the hallmark of modern nations.”7 As it enjoins its readers to participate in collective unity, the novel lionizes the individual against the oppressive mass. The modern novel depicts, as Anderson puts it, “the movement of a solitary hero through a sociological landscape of a fixity that fuses the world inside the novel with the world outside.”8 The origin of the hero, the reasons for his struggle, and the mythic birth of the civilization that produces the hero are fixed in the modern multivolume epic—a genre that, since the nineteenth century, has symbolized textual finality.9 The novel rose to prominence and became the template for modern national literatures. Brennan notes that the novel “largely extended and modernized (although did not replace) ‘religious imaginings,’ taking on religion’s concern with death, continuity, and the desire for origins.”10 Soka Gakkai’s novels represent potent combinations of modern and medieval religious concerns. They convey a dramatic narrative that celebrates a hero’s triumph against corrupt worldly authority in keeping with the pattern set by Nichiren, formulated in the legitimacy-granting genre of a modern novel. The Gakkai’s novels recount the story of their leader and the rise of his righteous people. Most importantly, Soka Gakkai’s serial novel is still being written, and therefore allows living adherents to be preserved within an epic story they treat as scripture. Affective Belief in Ikeda as Author The Human Revolution remains the single most widely read work in the Gakkai’s corpus. It was published in Japanese first as ten books and eventually expanded into a series of twelve books, first published in 1965. The New Human Revolution is written in the same style as its predecessor. It lays out the continuing chronicle of the protagonist Yamamoto Shin’ichi, Ikeda Daisaku’s alter ego, as he begins the spread of Soka Gakkai International after his appointment as third Gakkai president in May 1960. Soka Gakkai’s publishing company Ushio Bunko issued the first volume of Ningen kakumei in October 1965, quickly selling out the initial run of 1.5 million copies, and subsequent volumes met with comparable commercial success.11 The Ningen kakumei series has become an enduring best seller.12 In a broadcast in November 2007, Ikeda announced that 46.5 million copies of both Ningen kakumei and book versions of Shin ningen kakumei had been sold worldwide.13 In January 2013, the Seikyō Press began reissuing Ningen kakumei in a new edition for the generation of adherents who came of age after the schism between Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shōshū. Ningen kakumei has appeared in many formats,

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including two feature films, animated films, a young reader’s edition, a manga version in book form and serialized in weekend editions of the Seikyō shinbun, and in translations from Japanese into nine other languages. Bookshelves in members’ homes rarely lack at least one of its volumes, and members purchase binders from the Seikyō Press designed to collate clippings of the Shin ningen kakumei column from the Seikyō shinbun. Ikeda’s Ningen kakumei and its sequel can be characterized as a long lesson in discipleship. Ningen kakumei begins with Toda’s release from prison on July 3, 1945, and covers events until his death in April 1958. Action in Ikeda’s novel revolves primarily around himself, represented as a protagonist named Yamamoto Shin’ichi. In 1947, when he is nineteen years old, Yamamoto encounters Toda and subsequently flowers into Toda’s disciple and unquestioned heir.14 Serial installments in the Seikyō shinbun appear under Ikeda’s pen name Hō Gokū, following Toda’s pen name Myō Gokū. Ikeda thus twins Toda and himself as Myō and Hō, the myōhō (wondrous dharma) of namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, thereby identifying the two of them with the title of the Lotus.15 Because authorship of the novel shifts between Ikeda, his author persona Hō Gokū—which can be translated as “dharma enlightened to the extinction of existence and nonexistence”—and his fictional avatar Yamamoto, readers contend with the ambiguities outlined in Ningen kakumei’s Goethe-inspired preface. These ambiguities are rendered even more complex by revelations regarding Ningen kakumei’s authorship. Hundreds of books, essay collections, poems, songs, dialogues, and other writings bear the name of Ikeda Daisaku or one of his pseudonyms. They make up a volume and variety of texts that could not have been produced by a single person, particularly one who spent decades publicly engaged in nonwriting activities. Nonetheless, Soka Gakkai’s administration devotes considerable energy to creating a portrait of Ikeda Daisaku as the novel’s sole author. Ikeda claims in his own writings to be the author of Ningen kakumei. The novel published in book form bears his name, not that of Hō Gokū. A traveling exhibition on Ningen kakumei that circulated among Gakkai culture centers from 1993 in conjunction with the novel’s 1992 reissue displayed “original” manuscript pages in Ikeda’s distinctive handwriting.16 And, since November 2012, pilgrims to the new culture center at Shinanomachi have taken in an exhibition on Ikeda’s life that includes a section on his authorship of The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution. Text superimposed over a blown-up photograph of Ikeda Daisaku informs visitors that he penned installments of the two novels in the course of traveling to provide encouragement to members, and that when he was too exhausted to write his wife Kaneko would take up the pen and transcribe what he said.17 Ikeda remains an active, living presence in members’ lives as the

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author of book after book that lines their shelves.18 Predictably, some observers express skepticism about Soka Gakkai’s claims that Ikeda wrote the books attributed to him.19 Yamazaki Masatomo, famed ex-member and Gakkai detractor, reported that Ningen kakumei was written primarily by Shinohara Zentarō, a graduate of Tokyo Imperial University who spent the wartime years publishing popular novels under the pen name Kawada Jun. Shinohara converted to Soka Gakkai in 1952, after which he spent the majority of his career at the Gakkai headquarters and as a writer for Seikyō shinbun. From 1965 until his death in the late 1970s, he lived in a villa in the hot spring resort town of Minamikaruizawa, where he wrote Ningen kakumei with editorial assistance from a number of young men in Soka Gakkai’s inner circle, including Harada Minoru, who became the sixth Gakkai president in 2006.20 Shichiri Wajō observes that, shortly after the novel first appeared in book form, Ikeda wrote a multipart column that appeared in the Seikyō shinbun between January and April 1971 in which he acknowledged the cooperation of many people in writing the book, particularly an “S-san” for whom Ikeda stressed that no words were sufficient to thank for gathering material, guiding how the work should progress, and how to set the tone of its chapters.21 It appears that, in contrast to Toda’s comparatively modest version, the Ikeda-focused rendition of Ningen kakumei was, from the beginning, an ambitious group effort that relied on a careful curation of Ikeda’s public image, one that required the willingness of millions of ordinary Gakkai adherents to set aside evidence-based understandings in favor of cultivating an affective one-to-one relationship with their mentor. Here, I rely on Ian Reader and George Tanabe’s analyses of paradoxes that persist between cognitive and affective beliefs to understand members’ affective belief in Ikeda as author.22 As Reader and Tanabe explain, an individual may understand a phenomenon empirically while maintaining, for a host of relevant reasons, affective beliefs about the phenomenon that contradict empirical observations. I refer to Ningen kakumei’s author as Ikeda, in part as a heuristic way of referring to controversy over the novel’s authorship but mostly because the vast majority of its readers affectively believe the book to be an exemplary story by Ikeda. One could treat a study of The Human Revolution and its sequel as an opportunity to unearth revelations about their “real” authorship. However, inquiry along these lines detracts from a more relevant concern: understanding how and why millions of readers have come to treat Soka Gakkai’s novels as sacred texts. Serial as Strategy It is important that the periods in which Ningen kakumei was serialized aligned with heightened tensions between Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shōshū.

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The novel was serialized twice between 1965 and 1992. It first appeared as short columns in the Seikyō shinbun from January 1, 1965, until August 3, 1978, over a total of thirteen years and seven months.23 This period saw relatively cordial relations between Ikeda Daisaku and the Nichiren Shōshū Chief Abbott Nittatsu transform into acrimony between Ikeda and Nittatsu’s successor Abe Nikken. The volume that contains the Osaka incident episode appeared at the height of the first open Gakkai-Shōshū conflict: the story of Ikeda’s righteous struggle against corrupt authority in 1950s Osaka resonated with Gakkai members in the late 1970s, when Soka Gakkai’s third president clashed with the Shōshū priesthood. Overall, Ningen kakumei promotes Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda as Nichiren’s rightful dharma heirs as a tactic to justify the Gakkai’s leadership as both morally and doctrinally superior to Nichiren Shōshū. The serial reran in the Seikyō shinbun from 1979; it was restarted after Ikeda stepped down from the third presidency to take the position of honorary president, and the second serialization ended just after Soka Gakkai’s split from Nichiren Shōshū in late 1991. The New Human Revolution sequel first appeared in the Seikyō shinbun beginning in 1993, just as Soka Gakkai was formulating ways to present itself as a viable independent religious authority. Some adherents left the Gakkai after 1991 because they were concerned about access to temples with priests who perform funerals and memorials, and they sought to avoid being barred from pilgrimage to the daigohonzon at Taisekiji. The New Human Revolution renews Soka Gakkai’s strategy to demonstrate its superiority over its rivals by creating a new doctrinal text, once again formulated as a novel. This anti-Shōshū strategy has been reprised in the 2013 reissue of Ningen kakumei. In a foreword to the new edition, the series editors state that Ningen kakumei is the “correct history” of Soka Gakkai’s “spirit” and warn that, over the last twenty years, the “deceitful, corrupt, and debased” Nichiren Shōshū priesthood has plotted to erode butsui bucchoku no Sōka gakkai (Soka Gakkai, [keeper of] the Buddha’s mind and the Buddha’s teachings).24 Now, given the threat of corruption posed by this nefarious culprit, the editors urge readers to return to Ningen kakumei to reflect on the dangers of the Shōshū priesthood.25 The Osaka Incident: Portrait of a Model Disciple In terms of content, Ningen kakumei essentially alternates between melodramatic encounters involving Toda and other characters, mostly viewed through Yamamoto’s eyes, and lengthy disquisitions on virtuous conduct, often framed using Nichiren Buddhist idioms. Historical events large and small function as opportunities to foretell Ikeda taking his rightful place as Toda’s most beloved disciple (manadeshi) and present him as a righteous dharma heir.

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The volume 11 chapter titled “Osaka” addresses a watershed moment in Soka Gakkai’s history: the Ōsaka jiken (Osaka incident) when Ikeda was arrested on charges related to Japanese elections law.26 The Osaka incident was occasioned by actions taken by Soka Gakkai’s Young Men’s Division members during a campaign for an April 23 Osaka by-election for the House of Representatives in 1957. Young Men’s Division members were arrested after they visited several hundred voters’ homes to distribute cigarettes, caramels, and money on the night before the election. They were charged with kobetsu hōmon (house-to-house campaigning), an activity in violation of Japanese elections law, and for attempting to buy votes for the Gakkai candidate Nakao Tatsuyoshi. The Osaka public prosecutors secured confessions from Young Men’s Division members who claimed that they were acting on orders from Gakkai leaders in Tokyo. The prosecutors used these confessions to arrest Koizumi Takashi, then head of Soka Gakkai’s board of directors, and Ikeda Daisaku, who was then the Youth Division’s chief of staff (sanbōshi­ tsu­chō). The arrests of Koizumi and Ikeda inspired Soka Gakkai to hold massive support rallies, first in Tokyo and then in Osaka. The two young Gakkai leaders were ultimately cleared of all charges, and the arrests, rather than stifling Soka Gakkai’s political ambitions, galvanized the organization to greater efforts in electoral campaigning and proselytizing. Since Ikeda’s ascendance to the Gakkai leadership, the group has portrayed the Osaka incident not as a litany of legal difficulties but as a shining example of righteous perseverance in the face of oppressive worldly authority, the martyrdom of Ikeda in the name of the Gakkai’s mission, and confirmation thereby of Ikeda Daisaku as the only rightful heir to Toda Jōsei and, as such, the worthy direct successor to Nichiren. The Osaka chapter begins with Ikeda as protagonist Yamamoto Shin’ichi leaving the northern island Hokkaido on July 3, 1957. He is fresh from dealing with Soka Gakkai’s battles with a coal miner’s union in the town of Yūbari that protested the inclusion of Gakkai members in its ranks. Landing at Tokyo’s Haneda airport to change planes for Osaka, Yamamoto rushes past a crowd of Gakkai administrators and his wife Mineko (the novel’s pseudonym for Ikeda’s wife Kaneko) to once again be close to his master Toda. The novel’s pseudonyms for Ikeda Kaneko and Daisaku reveal how the Gakkai blurred literary tropes with living people even before The Human Revolution became the group’s primary text. They also reveal an effort to realize literary greatness in all dimensions of life evident in Toda’s control of his disciples’ names. Ikeda Kaneko’s Ningen kakumei pseudonym uses a Chinese character from the author Yamanaka Minetarō 山中峯太郎, the novelist whom Ikeda Daisaku favored in his youth. Mineko 峯子, an almost silent character in Ningen kakumei, is thus deprived even further of distinguishing features through her identification with one of Ikeda Daisaku’s literary favorites. Ikeda Kaneko

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was born in February 1932 as Shiraki Kane 白木かね. When her first son was born in April 1953, Toda Jōsei named him Hiromasa 博正 and gave her the new name Kaneko 香峯子, this time written out in kanji rather than simple hiragana syllabics, using a Chinese character from Yamanaka’s given name. The new name was intended to “make her into a good mother,” according to Toda.27 From December 1953, Ikeda Kaneko appeared in the family registry with her name written slightly differently as 香峰子 at the same time as Ikeda Daisaku’s name was changed (also following a suggestion by Toda) from 太作 to 大作, both pronounceable as either Taisaku or Daisaku; Ikeda reportedly agreed to change his name to Daisaku to provide his son with a father who bore a less unusual name.28 Kaneko (Child of the Fragrant Peak), along with Hiromasa (Sage Truth) and Daisaku (Great [Written] Composition), are all names strongly coded with literary meaning. Ningen kakumei readers blur the novel’s characters with the literature-inspired names of the Gakkai leadership, thereby strengthening cognitive links between the Gakkai’s novelized history and its living leaders. The members assembled at the airport brief Yamamoto on reasons for his trip to Osaka. He is to appear at the Public Prosecutor’s Office to answer questions regarding the arrest of Tokyo-based Gakkai members who broke the law in Osaka during the April by-election. The Human Revolution relays Toda’s concern for his disciple as he goes to face indictment by governmental authorities. Although ten years have passed since the promulgation of Japan’s postwar constitution, Toda in The Human Revolution appears to view the 1957 government as the same authority that imprisoned him during the war. “Shin’ichi, if, if it seems that you are going to die, I will rush to you and throw myself over you so that we will die together.”29 This is the first of several moments in the narrative in which Toda expresses a zeal for martyrdom in the cause of protecting his disciple. Yamamoto Shin’ichi is struck dumb as his entire body reverberates with shock at this pledge from his sensei, and tears of emotion spring to his eyes. Other than a few such stock reactions to Toda’s passions, the Yamamoto Shin’ichi character is a strangely wooden entity throughout the novel. The protagonist Yamamoto is recognizable as Ikeda yet exhibits none of the personal charisma and impromptu humor the honorary president expressed in speeches and broadcasts later in his life. Throughout the story, it seems that Yamamoto is too busy being a paragon of loyalty to exude Ikeda’s personal magnetism, perhaps for fear of too obviously upstaging Toda Jōsei as the central character in the plot. His stalwart focus on devotion to his mentor to the exclusion of all other interests certainly exemplifies the key value of shitei funi (indivisibility of teacher and disciple). Through this, Yamamoto provides an unnuanced ideal for members to emulate. Just before Yamamoto boards the plane for Osaka, Toda hands

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him a gift: the first edition of Toda’s Ningen kakumei, released for publication that day to commemorate his release from wartime incarceration twelve years earlier. Yamamoto reads the book on the airplane, immersed in its story and breathing in the scent of its freshly printed pages. When he arrives, he stops briefly at the Gakkai’s Osaka headquarters before heading to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. A Married Women’s Division member there pleads with him in her charming Osaka dialect not to go to the police for fear that he will not return ( fukei nanka ikahende kudasai).30 Sure enough, when Yamamoto arrives at the police station, he is arrested. The time is 7:00 p.m., almost the exact time on the exact day that Toda emerged from prison in 1945. This confluence of fates is cited as the reason why Soka Gakkai declares July 3 the Day of Mentor and Disciple (shitei no hi).31 This section of the chapter also includes a long episode wherein Yamamoto recalls Toda’s guidance in a conversation from April 30, 1957, that links Makiguchi and Toda’s sufferings for the dharma, or hōnan, to those endured by Nichiren, justifying them as the true heirs to Nichiren’s legacy. This sets the stage for Ikeda to justify his place as leader through the hōnan he experiences in Osaka. Toda describes pledging to his teacher Makiguchi his willingness to sacrifice his life in the interest of repudiating the nation’s slander of the true dharma (hōbō) and raises the point that Nichiren Shōshū suggested that the Gakkai acquiesce to government pressure to enshrine Shinto amulets (kamifuda) from the Grand Shrine at Ise in obedience to wartime decree. In boldly refusing to receive these slanderous objects, Toda asserts, the Gakkai embarked on the dharma martyr’s path ( junnan no michi e), proud to tread this righteous path as Nichiren disciples willing to give their lives to spread the dharma (shishin guhō). Makiguchi and Toda were arrested and the Gakkai members were prevented from visiting the sect headquarters at Taisekiji. Were it not for my mentor Makiguchi, were it not for the Gakkai, Toda declares, the true spirit of Nichiren’s Buddhism would have come to an end.32 In light of tensions between Ikeda and the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood that were coming to a boil around the time this chapter was first serialized, Toda’s reminder that only he and Makiguchi were willing to resist government demands to compromise absolute reverence for the Lotus can be interpreted as a bold message to the sect asserting the superiority of Gakkai lay leadership over Nichiren Shōshū. As the Ogasawara incident at Taisekiji indicates (see chapter 2), Gakkai adherents regarded the Shōshū’s priesthood’s unwillingness to support Makiguchi Tsunesaburō’s refusal to capitulate as justification for attacking priests. Ningen kakumei can be read as another reminder to the priesthood by Soka Gakkai as to who best emulated Nichiren’s steadfastness under state pressure. Toda then expounds on the enemies of true Buddhism by using the concept yuta onshitsu—now [in the Latter Day of the Buddha’s Law] there

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are many who are jealous and despise you in your mission to spread the dharma. Among these, Toda asserts, there is no greater enemy than the state as ­power-holder (kenryokusha).33 Ikeda, through the fictionalized persona of Yamamoto, binds himself to this lineage of self-sacrifice in the face of menacing state authorities through numinous connections in time and date and the repeated declarations by Toda of his willingness to die alongside his disciple. Statements from Toda about his bonds with Ikeda emerge with greater intensity from this point. If Shin’ichi suffers, I suffer, Toda declares. Toda is unable to sleep peacefully and sees Yamamoto in his fitful dreams. Yamamoto is Toda’s vitality, literally his life (inochi or myō),34 the emanation of his person (bunshin) completely entrusted with the mission of kōsen rufu. Bunshin (split body) is a Buddhist term linked to the concept of transformational bodies (keshin, Sanskrit nirmāṇakāya), the provisional form of the Buddha as a physical being created to guide living beings toward awakening. Ikeda is thus equated with the Buddha’s physical manifestation. For the sake of his disciple, a person whom he equates with the presence of the Buddha, Toda is prepared to sacrifice himself.35 Yamamoto is interrogated at length in the jail by the chief prosecutor, a sly character compared in the novel to the strongest of the sanrui no gōteki (Three Powerful Enemies [of the Lotus]), a figure called the senshō zōjōman. This is a doctrinal category used in Nichiren Buddhism for an enemy who acts outwardly as a holy man and is revered by the world at large but who inwardly cherishes false views and instigates worldly authorities to act against followers of the true dharma. Greedy for worldly renown and promoting slanderous views, these teachers attract powerful lay supporters.36 Yamamoto’s interrogators say that the election activities in Osaka were ordered by Toda. That night, unable to sleep, Yamamoto is tortured by the possibility of his ailing mentor once again having to face incarceration. Yamamoto believes that Toda, already weakened by age and his time in prison during the war, would certainly die if jailed again. Yamamoto beats his head on the stone walls and cries out one word in anguish: “Sensei!” He then pledges to sacrifice himself (become a giseisha, or sacrificer) to protect Toda and Soka Gakkai.37 In November 2007, I toured Soka Gakkai’s central Japan headquarters in Nagoya, opposite the landmark Nagoya Castle in the center of the city. In the main hall, where nine hundred members can line up on tatami mats in front of a large altar housing the gohonzon, a painting commemorates this scene in Ningen kakumei. The painting hung on the right-hand wall under a banner proclaiming the 2008 slogan jinzai / kakudai (expansion of human resources). It shows a youthful Ikeda standing in his jail cell at night, wearing shirtsleeves. He is looking off to the side with a fiery gleam in his eye, his brow furrowed, his right fist clenched. A single ray of light pierces the bars on the windows. That this picture was on display in a large Gakkai facility in the

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main hall within sight of the gohonzon testifies to the importance accorded to this moment in Soka Gakkai history and the ethic it promotes. Tensions in the Osaka chapter heighten with descriptions of the members rallying to the defense of their jailed leaders. On July 12, 1957, forty thousand Gakkai members gather within and outside the Kuramae Kokugikan arena in Ryōgoku, Tokyo in a rally to demand the release of Yamamoto and Konishi, the other Young Mens’ Division leader who was arrested on the same charges. Dubbed the Tokyo rally (Tōkyō taikai), the event leads off with the head of the Guidance Division (Shidōbu) reading out the names of the forty-one members deemed guilty of violating the elections law and calling for them to be expelled from Soka Gakkai. The meeting concludes with a question and answer session during which members seek guidance from Toda Jōsei.38 One young man asks whether there is an alternative to expulsion for the censured members. Toda responds by saying that Soka Gakkai is not a corporation or any sort of ordinary association; it is the organization singularly committed to transmitting the true teachings of the Buddha and the true spirit of Nichiren Daishōnin’s kōsen rufu. He asks them to consider once again Makiguchi’s death in prison during the war as proof of the hardships that must be endured to protect this mission, guided by the bodhisattva virtue of fushaku shinmyō (not begrudging one’s life).39 Toda chides the members gathered at the rally, saying that they are good-hearted but unprepared to martyr themselves in the service of spreading the dharma because they themselves have not suffered hardship. Toda states that his decision was heartbreaking, as there is no greater misfortune than to be cast out of Soka Gakkai, the only true path. In the novel, Ikeda is careful to note that some of those who were expelled from Soka Gakkai were allowed to return after they repented of their actions, and that those who returned went on to become exemplary local leaders. This account raises an important dilemma: if Soka Gakkai is dedicated to the conversion of all people to the true path, why does the organization eject members who violate secular law? Soka Gakkai seems to have established a paradoxical standard by condemning oppressive secular government powers and casting out its own members for breaking the same secular government’s laws. The overriding priority, it seems, is protecting the Gakkai leadership. Any member who brings bad publicity to Soka Gakkai through legal scandal risks losing member status, and the closer a scandal comes to the group’s top leaders the faster the organization moves to expunge offenders from its ranks. Ningen kakumei’s emphasis on Toda’s concern for Ikeda (as Yamamoto) makes it clear that Soka Gakkai’s future rests in protecting its future leader. Following the mimetic nation metaphor, legal transgressions that threaten the Gakkai’s young leader-to-be resemble the existential threat posed by treason. Treason justifies maximal penalties, no matter the consequences to the

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individual. Since the Osaka incident, high-profile members who were caught up in scandals have been summarily dismissed from their positions in the organization or from Soka Gakkai altogether.40 When it casts members out, Soka Gakkai reveals its parameters for actions that qualify as taboo.41 In Soka Gakkai’s case, orthodoxy is defined by excluding those who transgress against Ikeda, and The Human Revolution reminds devotees of Soka Gakkai’s capacity to exercise coercive power to punish those who transgress in this way. The scene switches back to the interrogation of Yamamoto by the sly chief investigator, who lies to Yamamoto about his lawyer no longer being in Osaka to advise him during police questioning. After his vow to Toda in his cell, Yamamoto no longer uses polite Japanese (keigo) to speak to the authorities, a sign of his conviction and another implicit fusion of Ikeda with Nichiren as it evokes Nichiren’s famous practice of kokka kangyō (admonishing the state).42 Ultimately, the Osaka officials are unable to produce evidence to hold Yamamoto and Konishi in jail, and they seek to end this stage of the affair amicably by releasing them by July 17. They have also heard, it seems, about Soka Gakkai’s plans for a huge support rally on that day. The final section of the chapter details the Osaka rally of July 17, 1957. Court appearances in Osaka continued for four and a half years before Ikeda was acquitted of all charges in January 1962. Over this period, Ikeda solidified his bonds with the rapidly expanding Kansai membership, and today the Osaka region remains famous as the area most singularly devoted to Ikeda Daisaku. Members refer to the Kansai region as jōshō kansai (ever-­ victorious Kansai), and members with whom I interacted in other areas would often denigrate their own activities, no matter how sincere or intense, saying that they could never compare to the devotion of the Kansai membership. Soka Gakkai celebrates the Kansai members and publishes histories and collections of member testimonials that speak to the collective memory of the region’s membership.43 The organization also maintains a small yet highly prized exhibition called the Onshi Kinenshitsu (Revered Teacher’s Commemoration Room) in its Osaka headquarters. After a series of negotiations between administrators in Shinanomachi and in Osaka, I was taken on a tour of the facility on June 18, 2008, by a friendly and well-informed vice president who had lived through many of the events described in the exhibition.44 The exhibition is housed on one floor of a small culture center in a large complex of Gakkai facilities in the Uehonmachi district of central Osaka. Visitors enter through a small elevator secreted behind screens on the ground floor. No signs indicate the presence of the exhibit, visitors are accompanied by Gakkai staff at all times, and no photography is permitted. The displays consist primarily of photographs, copies of letters from pioneering members, Seikyō shinbun articles that deal with Osaka-related Gakkai events, and other documents. A detailed timeline provides a useful chronology of Soka Gakkai’s

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development in the Kansai region, beginning with documentation of Ikeda’s first visit to a study meeting (zadankai) in Sakai, a city in southern Osaka Prefecture, on August 14, 1952, through the tumultuous events of the ensuing decades, up to honors bestowed on him by the United Nations and other international bodies in the 1980s and 1990s. A chronology of Japanese history runs underneath the Gakkai milestones, superimposing the growth of Soka Gakkai over the history of Japan’s national development. The centerpiece of the room, and the reason the facility is treated with such reverence, is a collection of items from the courthouse where Ikeda appeared on July 3, 1957. Part of the iron door to the cell where Ikeda was held, the chair where he sat facing the judge, the witness stand where he declared his innocence, the microphone into which he spoke, the leather shoes he wore, and even light fixtures from the courthouse and the marble sign that was affixed to the front of the building (the Ōsaka Kōchisho, or Osaka Detention Center)—in other words, all salvageable items that connected with Ikeda Daisaku’s person—appear alongside a dramatic account of the Osaka rally. The exhibition’s text includes reproductions of Seikyō shinbun articles and a letter from Yaoi-san (mother of Kansai).45 These items are ordinarily hidden from view and are not to be photographed—forms of protection Soka Gakkai otherwise places around the gohonzon. Reverence afforded them by the Gakkai administration brings to mind the ritual treatment of relics in the Buddhist tradition. One of the more striking aspects of the “Osaka Rally” section in Ningen kakumei is the resonance of the elements—weather and the cosmos—with the passions of Yamamoto and his supporters. The day starts hot, humid, and cloudy. From early morning, young men in open-necked shirts gather outside the walls of the jail. By noon, several hundred people, including Yamamoto’s meek wife Mineko, wait for him to appear. Across the river, at a hall called the Nakanoshima Kōkaidō, thousands more members gather for the rally set to begin at six that evening. On the river banks near the hall, members of the Young Men’s Division Music Corps, fresh off an overnight bus from Tokyo, direct their performance of Gakkai songs toward the jail, blasting from their trumpets and drums with all of their strength, sweat streaming down their young faces. In the newer editions of Ningen kakumei, the Music Corps is called the Ongakutai, yet in 1957 they were still known as the Gungakutai (Military Band Corps). There is a subtle attempt noticeable here to conform to the titles familiar to the contemporary membership and to play down some of the Gakkai’s more militaristic aspects from this era in their history.46 When Yamamoto emerges from the jail onto the street, bright sun breaks through the clouds. He immediately rushes to Osaka’s Itami airport to greet Toda as he arrives from Tokyo. The narrative foreshadows Toda’s death as Yamamoto notes his mentor’s uncertain steps. They talk at the airport; the

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gohonzon knows that the real fight begins now, Toda counsels. Victory must be secured in the courts. In consultation with lawyers present at this airport meeting, the two confirm that, if found guilty, Yamamoto faces at least six months in prison. Toda turns his attention to the gathering that evening at the Nakanoshima Kōkaidō. He states that it is possible that the police will fire on the crowd of Gakkai believers. Toda concludes that, if the police are armed, it is best if he goes to the head of the crowd, as he is unafraid of dying at the hands of the authorities.47 Yamamoto is once again overwhelmed by his mentor’s jiai (compassionate love).48 By this point there is a palpable sense that Toda is not merely willing but eager to martyr himself. In Ikeda’s rendition of Toda’s statements, he enhances the image of his mentor as a model inheritor of Nichiren’s martyrdom drive. At 6:00 p.m., the leaders announce the beginning of the Osaka rally. Heavy rain suddenly begins to fall and the sky is filled with thunder and flashes of lightning. Not one of the members, Ikeda writes, thinks to leave. Speakers set up outside to broadcast those speaking inside the hall are drowned out by the noise of the storm, and only loud voices and applause are audible. When Yamamoto takes the stage, the rain doubles in strength. At the sound of Yamamoto’s voice, the members standing outside forget the weather for their relief and joy and applaud enthusiastically, though they are unable to understand his words.49 Inside the hall, Yamamoto declares that he was delivered from injustice through the gohonzon’s protection. Toda, Yamamoto explains, speaks of the Three Great Enemies of the Lotus, the greatest being the senshō zōjōman, the arrogant enemy who appears outwardly pious but who inwardly cherishes false views and seeks to persecute people who follow the true teachings. Yamamoto declares that Toda thereby confirms Nichiren’s gokingen (golden words), stating, “daiaku okoreba daizen kitaru” (when great evil appears, great good follows).50 “As the disciples of Toda and heirs to Nichiren’s mission foretelling the rise of kōsen rufu, we, the members of Soka Gakkai, will polish our faith and fight to achieve this goal to realize great happiness.”51 The assembled members sob as they are inspired by Yamamoto’s bravery. As soon as Yamamoto finishes his address, the heavy rain slows to a light sprinkle in time for the less impassioned (and less important) Konishi to take the stage to thank members for their support. After Konishi’s speech, the clouds part and a rainbow appears in the early evening sky. In case any readers missed it, Ningen kakumei hammers the metaphor home by explaining that the clearing skies symbolize the members’ joy at the release of their leaders.52 Toda then takes the stage and stalls the sweeping majesty with some frank talk. “Yamamoto’s two weeks in prison,” he barks, “are like a mosquito bite compared to the two years I spent jailed during World War II” (ka ni sasareta yō na mon desu).53 Toda asserts that he would happily return to

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Soka Gakkai’s Dramatic Narrative  85

prison for the defense of the true dharma (the shōhō), as he is more worried about the consequences of not fighting for kōsen rufu than he is about his worldly fate. Even harsh critics of Ikeda note that The Human Revolution presents a lifelike portrayal of Toda’s unvarnished personality.54 Although it may appear initially paradoxical for Ikeda to denigrate his own trials by reproducing his mentor’s dismissive appraisal, this representation sets an important precedent. Ikeda’s self-denigration to Toda is a pattern that his disciples are expected to repeat in deference to him. The portrait also preempts, and thus defuses, potential criticisms that Ikeda’s experience indeed does not compare to what Toda, Makiguchi, and Nichiren underwent in defense of their convictions. Toda ends the meeting shortly after this and all the members start singing Gakkai songs in chorus. By this point, thousands are gathered outside the Kōkaidō. They wait anxiously for Yamamoto to appear at the hall’s second-floor window. Yamamoto strides to a microphone set up at the second-floor entrance. He is holding a sensu, a stiff fan used in Japanese dance and by military commanders in premodern Japan to direct troops. The Music Corps band comes to the entrance of the building and blasts out Gakkai songs for the assembled believers. Ikeda conducts the members who have persevered with him through anger and anguish. Men and women alike raise their voices in a grand chorus, the evening sky their stage, beginning with the song “Nihon danshi no uta” (Song of Japanese Manhood). The singers project their voices in the direction of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which sits across the grounds opposite the Kōkaidō, their anger turned to triumph. The evening sky’s clouds part and stars appear, as if to bless Shin’ichi.55 In the final lines of the Osaka chapter, the novel likens Yamamoto Shin’ichi to the count of Monte Cristo imprisoned in the Château d’If. As the rally winds down, Shin’ichi remembers the count’s final message: “wait and hope.” Thus, in his parting phrase, Ikeda links himself through Nichiren Buddhism and world literature to Toda and the character Gan in the original Ningen kakumei. Like Toda, Ikeda has proven himself willing to sacrifice freedom and to face powerful worldly enemies in defense of Nichiren’s teachings. Ikeda’s mentor, the multitudes of Gakkai members, and even the cosmos rally to his defense. They confirm his victory over this-worldly difficulties and his rightful place as Soka Gakkai’s unquestioned leader. Canonizing Soka Gakkai’s Dramatic Narrative The Human Revolution can be seen as a way of positioning the Gakkai leadership, culminating in Ikeda, as a viable alternative to its Nichiren Shōshū roots. In this way, Soka Gakkai joins a long-standing practice of collating authoritative texts during times of sectarian conflict to cast rivals as illegit-

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imate. The novel emerged as part of a bid by Soka Gakkai to draw the lines of orthodoxy when Ikeda’s leadership came under attack. The authors of The Human Revolution relied on potent resources from Buddhism and modern literature to elevate Soka Gakkai’s unquestioned leader simultaneously as the rightful preserver of Buddhist lineage and exemplar of humanism, superior in every respect to all who would challenge him. The novel foreclosed the possibility of any rival to Ikeda’s authority, particularly the Buddhist priesthood that still operated as the holders of Nichiren Shōshū orthodoxy when it was first published. But The Human Revolution is more than just a Soka Gakkai strategy to buttress leadership claims by refuting its temple Buddhist parent. It also serves as the kernel for a mimetic equivalent to a national literature. It is a body of texts Gakkai adherents rely on for guidance in their ethical formation, an inspiring narration of their collective origins, and a justification for their personal sacrifices through discipleship. And, despite its Goethe-inspired introductory reflection on the vagaries of representing historical events, Soka Gakkai has embraced The Human Revolution as an irrefutable record of the organization’s history and as a text that stands beside the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren’s collected writings as de facto canon. For example, the Gakkai monthly study magazine Daibyaku renge published transcripts of roundtable discussions from August 1965 to March 1966 that include statements from top Gakkai and Kōmeitō administrators describing the novel as “the document for the living spirit of Gakkai guidance” and state that “in regard to faith, one can only receive [it] from Ikeda-sensei directly.” The discussions also confirm The Human Revolution as proof that Ikeda is Toda’s sole legitimate heir and state that “President Ikeda correctly transmits the thought of Toda-­sensei to later generations, and he appears in this lifetime for the sake of kōsen rufu.”56 From 1970, the Gakkai’s Doctrine Division (Kyōgakubu), which was then led by Ikeda disciple Harashima Takashi, began including The Human Revolution as material in the Buddhist doctrinal examination (now the nin’yō shiken, or appointment examination, discussed in chapter 5) alongside Nichiren’s Gosho and the Lotus.57 Soka Gakkai began using Ningen kakumei in the same year as a textbook for intensive summer lecture meetings at Taisekiji and other locations.58 Between 1977 and 1979, grassroots members led by the Women’s Division engaged in a read-to-completion movement (dokuryō undō) in response to criticism by the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood of Ikeda’s attempt to usurp authority from the clergy and Nichiren’s writings. The dokuryō undō consisted of sequential local study sessions across Japan at which members would read Ningen kakumei from start to finish and share personal experiences in the context of immersing themselves in Ikeda’s, and the Gakkai’s, history.59 After Ningen kakumei’s 2013 reissue, Gakkai members launched a new read-to-completion campaign. Gakkai websites, including the

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institution’s Facebook platform and main site SOKAnet.jp, provided downloadable charts that enabled members to track the dates they completed each chapter of the novel and its sequel. Gakkai adherents routinely post charts of this sort next to their home altars to serve as objectives for daily gongyō. The novels thus make their way from the realm of fiction and “correct history” into ritual practice facilitated by social media. In the following chapter, I introduce ethnographic accounts of members who treat The Human Revolution as scripture, as a guide for narrating their own lives, and a sacred material object that possesses the power to bestow merit when it is shared, transcribed, and otherwise revered. It is through the lens of canon that we can best understand how Gakkai members translate Soka Gakkai’s dramatic narrative into ways in which they understand the organization and their place within it.

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4

Participating in Canon The Formation of Sacred Texts in a New Religion

“IN THAT CASE, YOU MUST READ THE Human Revolution. All of it is the truth—it’s not a lie!” It is September 14, 2007, and I am on an early morning call from Tokyo to Osaka with Mrs. Yoshiura, a veteran Married Women’s Division adherent several members have urged me to contact regarding my interest in the Gakkai’s Kansai-area development. The Kansai region, in western Japan, had no members immediately after the war, she tells me: all of the Gakkai’s strength in the area comes from the 1950s, when Toda sent Ikeda Daisaku—to whom she refers consistently as Sensei, as all members do—to convert the region. Mrs. Yoshiura agrees, after some prevarication, to meet with me when I travel to Osaka in November. She seems assuaged by my explanation that I wish to learn directly from people who experienced episodes in The Human Revolution. Mrs. Yoshiura is neither the first nor the last Gakkai adherent to deflect an interview request by urging me to instead consult The Human Revolution. Members do not tend to conceive of their organization’s novelized history as a fictionalized retelling of their collective past. For them, it is an account that bears scriptural authority. Members today are far more likely to read Ikeda’s works, including The Human Revolution, than they are to read Nichiren or the Lotus Sutra, and when they do read these Buddhist texts they tend to encounter them as they are interpreted within Ikeda’s writings. Gakkai publications under Ikeda’s name in effect extend canon from Buddhist scriptures into new texts that members treat as contiguous with the transmissions from the historical Buddha, through Nichiren, to Soka Gakkai’s founding presidents. As a character in The Human Revolution’s sweeping drama, 88

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Ikeda is celebrated as Japan’s count of Monte Cristo and a modern-day Nichiren, a potent combination of modern heroic ideal and the transmitter of the dharma for our age. The Human Revolution uses blunt juxtapositions and melodramatic language that place it in the same genre as epic novels, including Ikeda favorites such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms (in Chinese Sanguozhi, in Japanese Sangokushi) and the works of late nineteenth-century Romantics Victor Hugo, Romain Rolland, and others cited frequently in Ikeda’s speeches and writings. At the same time, The Human Revolution and other Ikeda texts recast the giants of world literature within a Soka Gakkai constellation. Ikeda’s practice of conflating Buddhism and modern literature began early in his own practice under Toda Jōsei. Young male leaders in the Gakkai’s first stages of rapid growth were trained directly by Toda as members of a select group called the Suikokai (Suiko Association), named for the epic Chinese novel Tale of the Water Margin (in Chinese Shuihu zhuan, in Japanese Suikoden), which Toda established in 1953.1 Early Gakkai histories celebrate the Suikokai as Toda’s inner circle of disciples who were cultivated as the human resources of the next generation’s religious revolution—an initiative that, like many of the Gakkai’s institution-building ventures, began with women members. The Young Women’s Division convened the Kayōkai from October 1952; like the Suikokai, the Kayōkai evokes a Chinese epic.2 Twenty Young Women’s Division members met with Toda on the first and third Tuesday of the month to read novels, including Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, to cultivate them in modes of leadership deemed appropriate for young women. The Gakkai’s institutional norms led into a priority placed on cultivating male leadership. The forty-three young men who formed the Suikokai circle—a group that included Ikeda—also met twice monthly and read a curriculum of novels. They began with Hall Caine’s The Eternal City, a 1901 imagined history of modern Rome recast with Anglo American characters wherein a political reformer is wrongfully arrested by papal authorities in his quest to deliver common people from hunger and deprivation.3 Suikokai training then proceeded through classics such as Suikoden, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Alexandre Dumas’s Le compte de Monte-Cristo, and Nikolai Gogol’s Taras Bulba.4 Almost without exception, the novels imbibed by the young men of the Suikokai were melodramatic historical sagas wherein scapegoat underdogs, unjustly accused of sedition, persevere against oppressive forces to realize a revolutionary vision. Toda’s students not only read a selection of translated novels with a similar theme: they read the same story, that of an oppressed individual or minority overcoming tyranny, over and over again. By steeping his young charges in repeated doses of righteous, revolutionary greatness, Toda created a specific aesthetic vision of Soka Gakkai’s mission

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and imbued the group’s emerging leadership with a self-perception that glorified their activities as a struggle against sinister domination best immortalized in conventions drawn from the canon of world literature. Most of the Gakkai’s top administrators in the decades following Toda’s death began in the Suikokai, where they learned to mimic the rhetoric of this literature in their speeches and writings. The conventions they internalized created expectations for the ways Soka Gakkai should build its own collection of literary texts. I propose that to observe Soka Gakkai texts take shape is to witness the formation of a new canon. Gakkai texts such as The Human Revolution, ones that such members as Mrs. Yoshiura regard as literal truth, conflate religious and literary writings as they perpetuate Soka Gakkai’s twin Nichiren Buddhist and modern humanist legacies. In the same way that Soka Gakkai reprises the educational system, bureaucracy, media, and other salient functions of the modern nation-state within its own institutions, it has constructed a mimetic version of a national literature, a vast published collection adherents turn to for paradigmatic examples of ethical behavior, and one they treat as a curriculum for training programs that cultivate the Gakkai’s human resources. Why Join a New Religion? The Allure of a Participatory Canon Chapter 3 discusses ways Soka Gakkai uses the modern novel to unify commitment to discipleship through dramatic narrative. Here, I look beyond The Human Revolution to take into account the full range of Soka Gakkai’s texts, a collection that deserves to be labeled a Soka Gakkai canon. Canon is a much-contested category that eludes satisfactory definition, either within religion or literature. Canon is not equal to scripture, but both terms refer to “sacredness and authority within a believing community,” as McDonald and Sanders point in their overview of debates over canon and canonicity. The Greek kanōn derives from kanē, a loanword from the Semitic kaneh (measuring rod), a standard by which all things are judged—a term that leads into kritērion, the perfect frame to be copied in architecture or sculpture.5 Even in a context as far removed from this etymology as modern Japan, the word “canon” serves as a useful rubric that encapsulates ways text producers arbitrate ethical and aesthetic standards—a canonical form, following John Guillory’s analysis, rather than a clear boundary between what does or does not count as canonical.6 To best comprehend the Gakkai’s twin Buddhist and humanist legacies, I draw on canon-related scholarship from both religious studies and literary studies in the same way that Gakkai producers draw liberally from religion and literature to build their textual base. At times, I conflate canon with scripture to reflect the reverence adherents accord their texts and

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to mirror the ambiguity of documents such as The Human Revolution, which they treat as literature, history, and revealed truth. A religion’s early text-production stages include exciting potential not available within older traditions. Most notable among the possibilities available in New Religions—and even in new nonreligious organizations whose authority relies on a literary base—is seeing one’s life story preserved in the very texts one treats as scriptural. This process is visible in Soka Gakkai. The Human Revolution is complete, but chapters in The New Human Revolution are still being written, and members regard Ikeda’s speeches and some other Ikeda-related texts, such as member testimonials published daily in the Seikyō shinbun, as authoritative. Should members be deemed sufficiently virtuous, they may see an episode from their lives appear in a record revered as an unassailable authority within the Gakkai community. Because of this interactive possibility, I suggest that Soka Gakkai’s collection of texts may be conceived as what I term a participatory canon: a corpus that functions as scripture within which living adherents appear as characters. A canon, traditionally understood, presents readers with exemplary models of behavior. One may think of oneself in metaphorical terms as equivalent to a character in an older religious or literary work: as put-upon as Job, for example, or as loyal and attentive as the Buddha’s attendant Ānanda, or as brilliant and principled as Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. But it would be considered delusional to claim that one actually is Job, or Ānanda, or Lizzy Bennet.7 By contrast, a “participatory canon” provides opportunities to actually be a canonical model for others to follow. Regular Gakkai participants are thus offered an exciting, and daunting, opportunity: the record of their personal conduct may serve as a scriptural standard against which future generations assess themselves. Buddhist scriptures contain many episodes in which the historical Buddha Śākyamuni encounters humble people who are preserved as performers of meritorious acts, or as cautionary tales. Nichiren’s writings consist to a large extent of correspondence with women and men of Kamakura-era Japan who risked persecution to support him; his loyal supporters live on as exemplars of lay Buddhist excellence. Characters who populate the Gakkai’s stories come not from legend or the distant past but as familiar fellow members. Members can point themselves out within what Benedict Anderson called the “community in anonymity,” as anonymized characters in The Human Revolution or The New Human Revolution, or by name in speeches by the honorary president and in newspaper testimonials.8 Devotees may do the rounds of local Gakkai meetings to reflect on experiences that were chronicled in the Seikyō shinbun, or they may see themselves memorialized more permanently in books like The New Human Revolution as representatives of favored Gakkai themes, such as discipleship or persevering in the face of adversity. Mem-

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bers are constantly exposed to stories of friends and neighbors who, by dint of their self-sacrificing perseverance, are rewarded with the promise of immortality in the group’s collective memory. Members often compare each other’s experience testimonials (taikendan) to idealized forms they encounter in Gakkai publications. A testimonial with particular impact will be praised by leaders who say they “want it to appear in the Seikyō shinbun.”9 When I met with senior members, some would bring copies of The Human Revolution or The New Human Revolution to point out where they appeared (under pseudonyms) in the group’s official chronicle.10 Attention to Soka Gakkai’s text formation process provides a novel answer to a perennial question: why would someone join a controversial New Religion? Why would adherents dedicate their lives to an organization like Soka Gakkai that requires them to reject all other practices, that depends on time-consuming and otherwise demanding participation in group activities, that focuses with increasingly singular intensity on discipleship under one leader, and essentially guarantees that its devotees will be regarded with suspicion by those outside the organization? Much New Religions scholarship has focused on reasons why people join New Religions and what motivates them to remain within these groups.11 Eileen Barker, in her now-classic study of the Unification Church, emphasizes how the church offered converts a chance to participate in a personally validating, mutually supportive community of likeminded believers that promised a potent combination of this-worldly and transcendent certainties. Her more recent work posits that New Religions appeal to converts by virtue of their newness itself.12 Recent research on New Religions in the West makes sense of groups that are regarded as socially marginal by contextualizing marginality within the religious and cultural settings from which they emerged; Benjamin Zeller’s work on the suicidal group Heaven’s Gate exemplifies this angle of inquiry.13 Leading scholars of New Religions in Japan have stressed how the promise of genze riyaku (this-worldly benefits) have made New Religions compelling; Shimazono Susumu and Ian Reader’s publications has been particularly influential in this regard.14 Others who work on Japan have cited New Religions’ life-­affirming vitalism and approachable spiritualism as selling points for participants; these studies were pioneered in the 1970s by Japanese sociologists of religion and have recently seen revision in work on the nebulous category of spirituality.15 Helen Hardacre includes vitalism in her suggestion of a unified New Religious world­view, a disposition cultivated within these organizations that places the onus on practitioners to realize personal agency through self-cultivation in expressions of gratitude and an empowering radial relationship that links internal and cosmic forces.16 Most recently, Tsukada Hotaka has centered on the appeal of Japanese New Religions as a way to channel religious nationalism into political activities that promise power in society.17

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It should be pointed out that Soka Gakkai has historically rejected the label New Religion. This is evident in Ikeda’s November 2013 dedication at the Hall of the Great Vow of Kōsen Rufu cited in chapter 2 in which he describes Soka Gakkai as a traditional religious organization (dentō taru kyōdan). Shakubuku kyōten and other early postwar publications contend that Soka Gakkai is not a new religion (shinshūkyō) or a newly arisen sect (shinkō shūkyō, a pejorative term that came into vogue in the early twentieth century) and claim instead that, as the most faithful representative of Nichiren Shōshū Buddhism, Soka Gakkai received the eternal Buddha Nichiren’s dharma and is therefore direct heir to the oldest teaching.18 Soka Gakkai is nonetheless chronologically new, comparatively speaking, and its text creation process suggests a new response to “what’s new about a New Religion?” For decades, Gakkai adherents have enjoyed a chance to participate in a published record they and their fellow believers regard as a canon. In this regard I disagree with Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein, who contend that canons created by New Religions should be analyzed in the same ways as those produced within older religious traditions.19 Soka Gakkai members have been offered the possibility of being personally enshrined within a collection of new writings conceived in canonical terms, something which is by definition not available outside a New Religion that is in the process of being created.20 A necessary clarification: Soka Gakkai has not and does not claim to have penned canonical literature of its own, in the sense of creating a new religious liturgy. The central Buddhist doctrines of the group remain the Lotus Sutra, specifically chapters 2 (the hōbenpon) and 16 (nyorai juryōhon), and the collected writings of Nichiren. Soka Gakkai in Japan and Soka Gakkai International maintain orthodox preservation of these texts. However, Soka Gakkai refers to its own writings as the sole trustworthy way of preserving the Buddha’s dharma. As noted in chapter 3, the editors of the 2013 reissue of The Human Revolution characterize Soka Gakkai as butsui bucchoku no Sōka gakkai (Soka Gakkai, [keeper of] the Buddha’s mind and the Buddha’s teachings). But it is not only Buddhism that is preserved within the Gakkai canon. Under Ikeda, Gakkai literature has expanded from a small number of texts focused on Buddhist doctrinal study, essays on academic subjects edited or written by Makiguchi and Toda, and a few novels to thousands of Gakkai— principally Ikeda-authored—titles. Members in the Toda years and the first decades of Ikeda’s leadership were encouraged to refer to Gakkai publications such as the Shakubuku kyōten as helpful supplements to regular study of Nichiren’s Gosho. Now, Gakkai members tend to read short Gosho sections presented within Ikeda-centered texts, a practice that pushes Ikeda’s writings into the realm of scripture. My experience with members confirms that they venerate Ikeda’s

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works as canon. I watched a fall 2007 training video as I joined members preparing to take the appointment examination, a test based primarily on Nichiren Buddhism, in which senior Gakkai administrators described The Human Revolution as the organization’s tadashii rekishi (correct history).21 The abiding importance of The Human Revolution is perhaps best confirmed by the fact that the novel—and not Nichiren’s Gosho—is required reading by recruits to the Sōkahan, the Young Men’s Division elite training subgroup. Although their training includes monthly meetings at which they read and memorize sections of the Gosho, initiates must read Ningen kakumei in its entirety and produce evidence of results (seiseki), either by converting one household to Soka Gakkai or securing one new subscription to Seikyō shinbun, before they are allowed to graduate into full Sōkahan membership. The Gakkai thus regards mastery of the organization’s history, represented as Ikeda’s literary biography, as the true test of faithful adherence. Reverence for The Human Revolution coheres with a general tendency for members to transform Gakkai leaders’ words into liturgy and fuse them with Nichiren’s writings. In mid-November 2007, I spent an afternoon as the guest of a group of elderly Married Women’s Division members in Kasugai, a northern suburb of Nagoya, who were meeting as they did each month to carefully read Gosho sections in tandem with Ikeda’s essays. A few days later, Mrs. Inomoto, a seventy-three-year-old veteran member who had attended the study session, presented me with three beautifully rendered shikishi (calligraphy boards) of her own inscription. The first bore the phrase “[You must] employ the tactics of the Lotus Sutra before any other,” a quotation from a 1279 missive from Nichiren to his stalwart lay follower Shijō Kingo; the second was a dense section of text by Toda Jōsei on the importance of shōdai (chanting) to forge a relationship with the gohonzon; and the third was a poem titled “Taki no uta” (Like the Waterfall), a verse first penned by Ikeda Daisaku in 1971, later rendered into a sung version popular with members, and subsequently adopted as the SGI-USA Men’s Division’s official song. Members frequently place shikishi of this nature near the gohonzon to serve as inspiration during chanting sessions. Mrs. Inomoto, a skilled calligrapher with decades of high-level training, explained that she chose to inscribe three phrases that were appropriate for who she urged me to be: a young American man beginning regular Gakkai practice. She expressed the hope that I would display her calligraphy appropriately once I received my own gohonzon. Mrs. Inomoto’s calligraphic reproduction of Nichiren, Toda, and Ikeda represents what is now a common Gakkai practice of employing Buddhist conventions to venerate Gakkai leaders’ texts through painstaking replication. After the compound earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters that devastated northeast Japan on March 11, 2011, stories circulated within the organization about how Gakkai members in the disaster region worked to

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transform despair into determination as they received messages of encouragement from Ikeda Daisaku. In my interviews with adherents in Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate Prefectures, members wept as they recounted the transformative experience of receiving copies of the March 16 edition of the Seikyō shinbun at Gakkai culture centers where they sought shelter after the tsunami swept away their homes.22 In November 2012, administrators told me of a Married Women’s Division member who had lost her husband and son to the tsunami and recovered from the brink of suicide by writing out, character for character, serialized episodes of The New Human Revolution as they appeared in the Seikyō shinbun. This is an intriguing update to shakyō (sutra copying), which is widely practiced in the Buddhist world as a merit-­ generating activity for clergy and lay adherents alike.23 Reverently reproducing and ritually venerating texts is certainly not a distinctive practice of New Religions. What is distinct about Soka Gakkai’s canon—and, by extension, distinct to organizations like Soka Gakkai that produce new sacred texts—is the opportunity for living members to memorialize their life stories in the texts they reverently reinscribe. To understand the impact of members participating in canon production, let us take up one case study of a Gakkai text reproduced in oral, written, and broadcast forms to consider what we might learn from watching canon take shape in real time. Canonizing Children: Projecting Discipleship onto the Next Generation A group of sixth-year elementary school students from Soka Gakkai’s Kansai Sōka Gakuen went on a graduation field trip to Tokyo from September 13 to 15, 2007. On the first day of their busy schedule, they renewed an exchange with their sister school Tokyo Sōka Gakuen, where the visitors from Kansai were greeted at the Tokyo school’s Hope Hall (Kibō Hōru) and engaged in choir performances, gift exchanges, and other gestures of east-west Japan friendship. A report posted online by Kansai Sōka Gakuen administrators remarked briefly that, on the same day, the students met school founder Ikeda Daisaku, received a message of encouragement from him, and that “each student on the graduation excursion renewed his or her vow to [succeed] in the future.” The rest of the brief synopsis described the students’ trip to Tokyo Disneyland and a visit to Soka University, followed by photos of the choir, students from the two Gakkai schools exchanging greetings, and a shot of girls posing with Mickey Mouse.24 This little report reads like a typical announcement for students, parents, or alumni. However, the Kansai students’ meeting with Ikeda, initially mentioned in passing, would grow in its dramatic presentation. In the days that followed, the Gakkai administration mobilized networks of local leaders across Japan to make a great deal more out of this encounter at local meetings of all sizes. At the same time, Gakkai print and audiovisual media

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outlets transformed the event from one item on a school excursion agenda into a life-changing moment designed to inspire millions of devotees. Ikeda’s meeting with the visiting elementary schoolchildren appears to have been prepared by Gakkai administrators as an opportunity to build on such themes as filial piety, fusing one’s life story with that of the honorary president, and commitment to Soka Gakkai’s future greatness by seeking internationally respected awards. The meeting was covered by a team of Seikyō Press reporters and was featured in articles and photo spreads published in the September 15 Seikyō shinbun and in the November issue of the photographic magazine Gurafu SGI. A video crew captured the scene, and a dramatic vignette was released on November 28 as part of a monthly DVD series designed to be screened at thousands of local meetings across Japan. Importantly, local leaders also spread news about this encounter at member gatherings across Japan in the weeks following the school excursion, relying on age-old traditions of oral transmission to narrate the experience of the Gakkai children to enthralled audiences. From late September into October 2007, I was present at meetings in Tokyo and Osaka where the story was repeatedly delivered in nearly identical dramatic narrations that thrilled members with the glories of this “surprise” meeting of Gakkai children with their leader. It is worth replaying the presentations of this event as I encountered them, first while living with a Gakkai family in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, then while traveling to interview members in Osaka. This on-the-ground chronicle mirrors the way news of the event seeped into the consciousness of non-elite members and grew from a vignette indistinguishable from countless other testimonials in Soka Gakkai’s daily chronicle into an episode that was given a special place in the organization’s official narrative. For several weeks in September 2007, I stayed with Keitarō, a twenty-four-year-old, second-generation Gakkai member and his first-­ ­ generation, eighty-four-year-old grandmother in a tiny apartment in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward. On the morning of September 15, sitting together over a breakfast of last night’s leftovers, we briefly noted the news in the Seikyō shinbun of the children from Osaka meeting with Ikeda. Page five of the Saturday edition announced that Honorary President Ikeda encouraged the visiting students and displayed photos of him greeting uniformed children. Minna kōfuku ni! (Happiness to all!) Shōrisha ni! (Become victors!) and other largeprint quotations introduced the episode, which extolled the dedicated students. Having persevered in their studies, club activities, and long daily train commutes to school, the students were ultimately rewarded by meeting their mentor: “Now, the Sensei we saw in dreams is before our eyes!”25 Given the typical Seikyō shinbun presentation of members meeting the honorary president, this particular episode did not stand out, and neither Keitarō nor his grandmother lingered on it.

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On September 23, Keitarō took me to a large Gakkai facility in Setagaya to attend a series of meetings for the Youth Division. Proceedings began with the final in a year-long series of large monthly gatherings called the Renaissance Great School (Runesansu Daigakkō), a youth training initiative intended to generate enthusiasm for greater efforts in proselytizing and participation in Gakkai group activities. Attending eight Renaissance Great School meetings (one year’s worth) allowed young Gakkai adherents to seek full membership in higher-level subgroups. For young men, receiving a graduation certificate from the Renaissance Great School, complete with a stamp card emblazoned with a gold seal, was an important part of joining the Sōkahan, the Young Men’s Division’s elite front line; Young Women’s Division members could apply their Great School experience to membership in the Byakuren Gurūpu (White Lotus Group).26 As with all official Gakkai activities, the Renaissance Great Schools reinforced the organization’s particular investment in fostering its next generation of male leaders. Takashi Fujitani, in his analysis of the Meiji-era state’s use of pageantry to cement its power over Japanese subjects, describes ways fabricated ceremonies that evoked timeless continuity with a glorious past linked ordinary people to the sovereign. Beginning in the late 1870s, the Meiji state established a practice of affixing the term kinen (memorial) to ceremonials and objects that anchored narratives about Japan’s place in the world. By the twentieth century, Japanese civic life was regulated by a newly created litany of memorial holidays and other political rituals that affirmed national unity through what Fujitani calls “rites of power,” citing Clifford Geertz on theatrical ways in which royalty fuses political authority with transcendence.27 It is striking to note the extent to which life in Soka Gakkai appears to recapitulate a particularly optimistic version of the imperial Japanese pomp and circumstance that the organization’s founders would have imbibed in their youth. Today, Gakkai life consists of a regular stream of events such as the Renaissance Great School, occasions infused with relentless heroism that links the efforts of individual members with the founders’ aspirations. Gakkai events, like the modern Japanese political rituals they resemble, are influenced by Western models of public pageantry that dominated the international order during Japan’s rise as a modern nation-state. They perpetuate a victorious aesthetic the Gakkai preserves in all of its institutions. Fujitani draws on Michel Foucault to emphasize the function of imperial Japanese rituals as methods by which the state signified the spatial coherence of the national territory around a panoptic “imperial gaze.”28 Similarly, Gakkai ceremonies like the Renaissance Great School bind their participants ever more closely with Ikeda Daisaku and project his presence into the organization’s every pedagogical effort. The Renaissance Great School I attended concluded with a speech by a head Gakkai leader in Setagaya Ward,

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a dapper man by the name of Fujino. After speaking about shitei funi (the indivisible master-disciple bond), Fujino moved on to a description of the honorary president’s encouragement of members through a dramatic retelling of Ikeda greeting the students from Osaka’s Sōka Gakuen. The audience of several hundred young members listened raptly as Fujino described the Osaka children’s excitement at visiting Gakkai headquarters for the first time. The audience laughed when he described the surprised reaction of the nonmember bus guide who asked the children where they wanted to go in Tokyo only to hear them all shout enthusiastically that they wished to visit Soka Gakkai’s headquarters at Shinanomachi. Fujino set the stage dramatically for the fateful encounter with Ikeda. He described the arrival of Ikeda’s long, black limousine at the Seikyō shinbun offices, which the students were touring, and how the students simply expected him to drive past and wave. Suddenly, Fujino said, the administrators on the scene lined the children up in two rows, girls on one side and boys on another. Ikeda emerged from the car and all of the children began screaming when they saw him in person. Ikeda shook hands with each of the boys and hugged all of the girls, urging them to persevere in achieving greatness and to respect their parents. Fujino referred to testimonials from the students who said that they will never forget this encounter for as long as they live. He focused in particular on the story of one third-grade student who had brought a letter to give to Ikeda, and how she pressed it upon him when he hugged her. In the letter, she wrote that she had been taught by her parents that she was fated by karmic causality to meet Ikeda in person. This story marked the end of the meeting and, for the attendees who attended eight Renaissance Great Schools, their graduation up the ranks within the Youth Division. As we listened to Fujino tell the story, Yūji, who was sitting crosslegged on the floor beside me, began weeping. Yūji was twenty, tall with a shock of bleached blond hair. He was fond of flashy studded t-shirts and multiple silver rings on every finger in the latest style then on display in Shibuya, Tokyo’s youth mecca. His wild appearance and rough demeanor set him apart from the mostly clean-cut Young Men’s Division members he spent time with when he was not working at his restaurant job or out drinking with his non-Gakkai friends. He had taken part in Gakkai events on and off as he grew up as a second-generation member in a working-class Setagaya Ward household. I first met Yūji when he joined a local study session for the nin’yō shiken, the appointment examination that serves as the Gakkai’s introductory doctrinal test; he studied with us once and never came back. A few days after the Renaissance Great School meeting, I met with Yūji again, this time at an inexpensive family restaurant. As the waiter came to take our order, Yūji stuck his arm out toward me and laughed, pointing out a row of cigarette burns he had earned goofing around with his friend Masato several nights

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before. I was surprised to learn that, after he and Masato had stayed up all night drinking in a convenience store parking lot, they went to a culture center, where Masato received a gohonzon and officially became a new Gakkai convert. Masato was the third friend Yūji has converted, and, thanks in large part to his skill at proselytizing, Yūji was a fully fledged member of the elite Sōkahan. He remained alienated from the tie-and-shirtsleeves Young Men’s Division ideal, yet he had bested most of his more conventional fellow members by securing multiple conversions. The one area where he struggled mightily was study. Yūji dropped out of high school several times, and when I met him he already seemed destined to spend life as a furītā, one of Japan’s “freeters” who scrounge a precarious living through casual employment. The Sōkahan demand that all of its recruits read The Human Revolution in its entirety was a task beyond Yūji’s capacity, and the constant focus in meetings on reading Nichiren’s Gosho through Ikeda’s writings also frustrated him. He did not study for the 2005 nin’yō shiken but showed up to take the examination anyway. Sitting in the exam hall with hundreds of other members, he told me, he felt inspired to study for the test in 2007. However, he did not join the 2007 study sessions after the first one, as he found explanations of Buddhism generally challenging. “How do you explain what Buddhism is to people who don’t know anything about it?” he asked me. He gave his friends copies of Ikeda’s speeches that are transcribed, often in simplified forms, in Soka Gakkai’s Kōkō shinbun, its newspaper aimed at high school students. “I’m not a high school student, but I like these speeches because they’re easy to read. Sensei’s explanations [of Buddhism]? They’re the best. Sensei—he’s awesome (Sensei tte sugoi).” Sitting in the Renaissance Great School, Yūji was overcome by the narrative about the schoolchildren meeting Ikeda. Like the majority of Gakkai members his age, Yūji is what adherents call a fukushi, a child of fortune born as a second-generation member to Gakkai parents. His tough childhood appeared to be worlds away from that of the Sōka Gakuen students who were selected to meet their mentor, yet he, like them, thought of his life in terms of discipleship under Ikeda. Yūji’s tears expressed emotions he would not elaborate on, ones I could only guess at: the dramatic impact on innocent young adherents who met his mentor; sadness at lost opportunities to live up to the educational ideal that Ikeda celebrates; frustration with himself, perhaps frustration with the Gakkai institutions that demand conformity to scholastic norms he could not achieve. The Renaissance Great School segued into a satellite broadcast in the same Setagaya hall for the Youth Division General Meeting. Approximately one thousand young members watched division leaders in the broadcast urge young members to continue their battle against the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood and to support growth of the division’s membership. This set the

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stage for Ikeda’s appearance onscreen, where he received honors, this time from representatives of the government of Uzbekistan, and he gave a speech reminiscing on how he overcame his own cowardice and arrogance in youth. At the conclusion of the broadcast, Fujino once again stepped up to the microphone and quickly moved into another dramatic telling of the fateful encounter of Ikeda with the children on the school excursion. Almost word for word, Fujino repeated his tale of the arrival of Ikeda’s limousine and the crying children. He once again related the story of the third-grader pressing her letter on Ikeda and declaring that karma (shukumei) had determined their meeting. Fujino signaled the end to the proceedings with this tale, stating that the children would preserve every memory of this brief encounter for the future, a matter that was all the more pressing as Ikeda faced his eightieth birthday on January 2, 2008. Approximately a month later, I attended a district meeting in a culture center hundreds of kilometers away in the Miyakojima neighborhood in Osaka. Miyakojima boasts a passionate Gakkai membership in a city already famous as the organization’s most intensely devoted center. Soka Gakkai celebrates the drive of its Kansai members through songs and heraldry, such as the slogan jōshō kansai (ever-victorious Kansai) that appears in the middle of western Japan’s version of the Gakkai flag. Toward the end of the meeting, a guest speaker sat at the table in front of the altar to give a lecture. This was the assistant principal of Kansai Sōka Gakuen, a Mr. Kondō, who had come to speak at the request of one of the district’s leaders. Kondō seemed to be on something of a lecture circuit, appearing at local meetings to tell the story of his students’ encounter with Ikeda on their graduation field trip. Beginning with an exposition on his school’s activities and a broad discussion of members persevering in what he termed the drama of human revolution (ningen kakumei no dorama), Kondō referred to a Seikyō shinbun article from October 27 that described a recent visit by Ikeda to his school. Launching from Ikeda’s declarations to the Kansai high school students that “the Kansai school is a sturdy rock” (kansaikō wa banjaku da) and that he placed their future in their hands ( jibun no shōrai o takusu), Kondō told the story of his students’ fateful encounter with Ikeda in Tokyo.29 Once again, in rhetoric almost identical to that of Fujino a month earlier, the Osaka assistant principal engaged in a slow, dramatic delivery of the encounter—the approach of the black limousine, Ikeda suddenly emerging, the children screaming. He explained the encounter in minute detail. As the students gathered on the ground floor of the Seikyō Press building, all 111 of them quickly lined up in two rows. Ikeda stepped out of the car and went down the lines, shaking hands with each boy and hugging each girl. Ikeda offered them encouragements and asked them to pass his regards to their parents. Kondō’s report was enhanced by stories relayed to him by the children themselves after

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they returned to Osaka. One boy shouted out to Ikeda, “I will become a doctor!” and Ikeda responded by declaring “distinguish yourself!” (eraku nare). Another shouted, “I will become a splendid disciple!” Ikeda asked this student, “Are you in good health?” The student shouted back, “I am healthy!” and confirmed that this was an experience he could never forget as long as he lived. Kondō asked the children to reflect on the experience of meeting Ikeda. One child reported that when Ikeda appeared, “I felt as if I wanted to die” (shinitaku shimashita). Another described a transformation at Ikeda’s touch, saying “when Sensei’s hand touched me, everything changed” (Sensei no te ni atatte zenbu kawatte kimashita), and that her entire body “reverberated” (hibiita). Another girl said that when Ikeda hugged her, the warmth from Ikeda’s body swept through her body like a wind. Returning to Osaka, the girl pledged that she was determined to spread this wind across the world. Around the same time as this meeting, the November 2007 issue of the monthly photo magazine Gurafu SGI featured a spread on Ikeda with the Osaka students. The article featured Ikeda wearing a blue blazer and white baseball cap, an outfit he often sported on trips outdoors, making his way down the line of uniformed schoolchildren. Ikeda is captured in a moment just before he hugs a schoolgirl. Below the photo is a caption in Japanese and English that includes the words of encouragement he offered the students, such as eraku narinasai (become outstanding people), and oya kōkō surundayo (carry out filial piety).30 On November 28, the Gakkai media company Shinano Kikaku released number sixty-four of the New Dialogue Series (shintaiwa shirīzu) of DVDs titled Taki no gotoku: Ikeda SGI kaichō to kōfu dai­ ni­maku e (Like the Waterfall: Toward the Second Act of kōsen rufu with SGI President Ikeda).31 The DVD was for sale at culture centers and other Gakkai facilities, at shops in Shinanomachi and in Gakkai centers in other major Japanese cities, reasonably priced at ¥1,000 (approximately $10) and designed to be screened at local meetings. Thousands of copies were distributed, and millions of members watched it in December 2007, some multiple times at different meetings throughout the month. The DVD is essentially composed of vignettes that catalogue honors bestowed on Ikeda. Perhaps due to Ikeda’s advanced age and then-diminishing number of globetrotting exploits, it mostly reminisces on his encounters with great leaders, including a dialogue with Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s. Three-quarters of the way through the fifteen-minute video, the cataloguing of Ikeda’s past abruptly shifts to a focus on the organization’s future. A shot of the Seikyō shinbun headquarters at Shinanomachi cuts to the groundfloor driveway at the building’s glass doors. A black limousine swings into the driveway in front of a double line of uniformed schoolchildren, who begin screaming and applauding as soon as it appears. Photographers and security personnel are stationed discreetly yet visibly behind the children. Cut to Ikeda

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standing at the front of the line of students; Ikeda looks the first boy in the eye, then the next, maintaining their gaze while he shakes their hands in a single firm pump, saying eraku nare (become outstanding) to each. A man with a microphone stands expectantly behind him, shadowing Ikeda down the line. Still cameras flash as he begins his greetings. Ikeda moves on to several girls and pulls their crying faces to his shoulder one at a time. A cut to Ikeda farther down the line, him saying, “You have fine faces, all of you” (ii kao shite iru, minna). Ikeda hangs on to the shoulders of one girl, looks her in the eyes and says, “I support you” (ōen shite iru yo). Another girl smiles up through her tears at him as she nods, saying, “Thank you very much!” (arigatō gozaimasu). Ikeda pulls her face to his shoulder in the approximation of a hug. Ikeda continues greeting the students with similar words of support and additional calls to give his greetings to their parents: “My regards to your mother.” He is careful to make meaningful eye contact with each child he greets. Toward the end of the line of children, he seizes one girl’s head with both hands, saying, “Don’t cry.” Another girl says, “Thank you for everything up to now.” He responds, “I understand,” nodding. “I will not forget this.” He grabs two girls’ heads and pulls them to his chest, saying, “Thank you for coming. My best wishes to your mothers.” As he reaches the end of the line, he takes the microphone from the organizer shadowing him to address all of the students. Two younger men in suits are seen moving down the line after Ikeda, distributing small packs of crackers or potato chips. These gifts may appear to be token gestures, yet when members receive food at a Gakkai event they invariably describe it as “received from Sensei.” Many members will return home with food and drink received “directly” from Ikeda and place them before the gohonzon in their home altar with a daimoku invocation. This binds items that bear Ikeda’s presence to members’ homes, their altars, their objects of worship, and ultimately to themselves when they finally consume them. Ikeda takes the microphone and says, “Thank you.” Cut to a shot of the line of children bursting into even more intense tears at the sound of his amplified voice. He then delivers a short speech: “Well, I am chanting for someone among you to win the Nobel Prize” (Anō, kono naka kara, Nōberushō o toru hito ga deru yō ni ne. Inoru kara).32 “Do you know the Nobel Prize?” Ikeda asks the children. The children cry out together “YES!” and “we know it!” “The number one prize in the world” (Sekai ichi no shō), Ikeda explains. “[A winner] is definitely here” (kanarazu iru). “Sensei also chants for this, all right? For the happiness of your households” (Sensei mo odaimoku o okuru. Ne. Goikka no shiawase no tame ni).33 Ikeda concludes by saying, “The important thing is that you achieve happiness by the end of life” (saigō ni shiawase ni nareba iin desu). “HAI!” the children scream. “Along the way, being poor or going through hard times is all right. In the end, you will definitely realize [success]. All right?” (Tochū wa binbō demo taihen demo iin

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desu. Saigō, zettai nareru. Ii ne?). “HAI!” the children shout once again in response. “Well, take care” (Jaa, genki de ne). “HAI! Arigatō gozaimashita,” the children shout repeatedly as they cry and bow. The vignette ends with shots of the line of children waving, tears streaming down their faces. The entire segment lasts approximately three minutes. Both Fujino in Tokyo and Kondō in Osaka reported that the encounter lasted about ten minutes in real time, start to finish. No commentary is supplied before or after the segment, and the DVD moves ahead directly to the next scene, a large choreographed dance number at Soka University that celebrated Ikeda Daisaku’s two hundred and twentieth honorary doctorate. Canon as Process: Gauging Orthodoxy with a Fluid Measure Canon is intrinsically political, in that canonical texts are assessed by each new regime to determine the extent to which they suit existing priorities. This is apparent in Buddhism, even within the Pāli Canon, which nominally exists as a closed body of literature.34 This closed canon has been subject to continual reappraisal, resulting in new collections made up of portions of its vast corpus, what Anne Blackburn calls the “practical” canon of the Theravāda tradition.35 Indeed, all Buddhist canons, including every body of Mahāyāna scriptures, are best understood as contingent, open-ended lists of authoritative texts.36 Buddhist canons that are widely regarded as definitive, such as the Taishō shinshū daizōkyō, the Chinese Tripiṭaka with Japanese Buddhist commentarial literature compiled in the early twentieth century under the guidance of Tokyo Imperial University professor of Sanskrit Takakusu Junjirō and the Buddhist scholar and cleric Watanabe Kaikyoku, are in fact products of politically troubled historical contingencies.37 As Orion Klautau observes, Takakusu pursued the Taishō Canon project to cultivate the Japanese people as a Buddhist citizenry, as imperial subjects steeled against the dangers of Western individualism—and loyal to an embattled Buddhist ­tradition— through the salvific power of Buddhist education.38 Collecting, refining, and rewriting unfolds within Soka Gakkai as it does within all canon-producing organizations, and changes to Gakkai texts always reflect social and political priorities.39 As discussed in chapter 3, Soka Gakkai celebrates its founding with the publication of Makiguchi Tsunesaburō’s Sōka kyōikugaku taikei. This work encourages educators to foster in children an attitude of pragmatic skepticism—including skepticism of religious and political authority—in order to cultivate a dynamic populace with a subjective understanding of beauty, value, and goodness. The Gakkai leadership apparently regarded Makiguchi’s foundational writings as problematic. Postwar editions of Makiguchi’s essays include inserted references to Nichiren Buddhism that justify exclusive faith in the Lotus Sutra, and though

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the first editions of the Shakubuku kyōten (Shakubuku Handbook) republished Makiguchi’s “Kachiron” (Theory of Value) as its second chapter, later editions relegated “Kachiron” in summary form to a few pages at the end of the book. Kachiron was released by Soka Gakkai as a separate volume in 1953 that revealed heavy-handed editing. In this and later Toda-supervised editions, Makiguchi’s discourse swerves into references to Nichiren, the Lotus, and even the atomic bomb, a curious anachronism that Gakkai editors obviously overlooked.40 Toda in turn was subjected to editing and re-presentation by his successor. Early in his presidency, Ikeda Daisaku oversaw the republication of numerous collections of his mentor’s addresses and essays. However, as Soka Gakkai expanded its institutional purview, and especially after Komeito’s founding in 1964, Toda’s singular focus on Nichiren and his assertions that Soka Gakkai took part in electoral politics solely to realize the national ordination platform lingered as increasingly unsuitable artifacts of a previous era. By the mid-1960s, Toda’s writings began to disappear from regular circulation. Late editions of the Shakubuku kyōten, which appeared in its final editions in 1969, saw Ikeda do to Toda what Toda did to Makiguchi. The earliest editions of the kyōten began with a more than sixty-page first chapter on Toda’s theory of seimeiron (life philosophy). After Ikeda’s appointment to the Gakkai presidency in 1960, the seimeiron chapter was reduced to less than forty pages and was rewritten to focus much more explicitly on the Lotus and Nichiren’s writings. Discussions of seimeiron still appear in Gakkai study materials, but they are tangential, and their appearance serves more to illustrate Ikeda’s loyalty to his mentor’s teachings than to promote the inherent potential of Toda’s life philosophy. Nichiren’s Gosho remains a staple text, yet members who came of age after the 1991 split with Nichiren Shōshū are most likely to learn Nichiren’s words through short Gosho passages presented within the Daibyaku renge (Great White Lotus) monthly study magazine. Daibyaku renge recasts quotations from Nichiren’s writings as oral transmissions from Ikeda Daisaku in paragraphs that sum up Nichiren’s teachings that begin with the phrase Ikeda meiyokaichō wa katatteimasu (Honorary President Ikeda speaks), an opening that resonates with “thus have I heard,” the ritual opening uttered by Śākyamuni’s disciple Ānanda at the beginning of the historical Buddha’s sutras. Even Ikeda’s words have undergone routine editing to conform with the organization’s shifting priorities. This is evident in the 2013 reissue of Ningen kakumei, most notably in sections where Gakkai characters interact with Nichiren Shōshū. At the time the novel was first composed, the parent sect was treated reverentially; in the new edition, it is reviled as a false claimant to Nichiren’s dharma. For example, in the chapter “Hitori tatsu” (Standing Alone) in the novel’s first volume, Toda, only two days after his release

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from Sugamo Prison in July 1945, encounters the Shōshū priest Horigome Nichijun, a long-time friend who would rise to the post of chief abbot in 1952. In the edition first published in 1965 and in the 1992 mass paperback re-­ release, Toda refers to Horigome by the honorific sensei and the novel’s narrative voice employs the elevated title sonshi (venerable teacher), indicating Gakkai reverence.41 The 1965 version eulogizes this meeting as the restoration of priest and laity in a unitary body (sōzoku ittai) and honors Horigome’s wartime efforts in the face of state oppression: “During the war, Horigome sonshi was the [Nichiren Shōshū] sect headquarters’ core, the one who stood and confronted the brunt of the attack. His flesh and bones were ground down in a full-force assault by oppressive state power he endured.”42 Ningen kakumei posits that later historians will remember Toda Jōsei and Horigome as the two Shōwa era (1926–1989) figures who endured the greatest sufferings for the dharma (hōnan). In the 2013 reissue, Toda greets Horigome not as sensei but with the icily polite title gojūshoku (priest). This lexical shift reinforces conventions for contemporary Gakkai readers, who live in a world wherein only Ikeda Daisaku is Sensei and all others in the organization, even the Soka Gakkai administrative president, insist on the humble suffix -san. In the 2013 Human Revolution, the narration has been expunged of any mention of cooperation between clerics and lay practitioners. The passage that had commemorated Horigome’s wartime service in the previous edition has been rewritten to contrast Toda’s bravery with cowardice on the part of Nichiren Shōshū: “For the sake of self-preservation, the sect headquarters ultimately ceded to the military government, yet Toda Jōsei, as the Gakkai’s key figure, confronted the military regime; he was utterly inundated by the sufferings of the dharma.”43 Gakkai leaders promote The Human Revolution as the organization’s “true history.” But it is a truth that continues to be revised. Routinizing Ikeda Soka Gakkai developed a well-ordered system for refining Ikeda Daisaku’s words and persona, a process apparent in the transformation of Ikeda’s speeches to the headquarters leaders meetings. In the first years of Ikeda’s presidency, members treasured chances to hear their leader’s voice on reelto-reel tape machines lugged by district leaders to study sessions. Members gathered at Gakkai culture centers to listen and later to watch film of Ikeda in newsreel-style clips. By the 1990s, Soka Gakkai controlled a proprietary system of satellite broadcasts of the headquarters meetings to its network of culture centers. Members refer to the monthly culture center broadcasts as dōji chūkei (simultaneous relay broadcast). They are not in fact live events, yet when the off-screen announcer declared that Ikeda had entered the hall,

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culture center attendees would stand and applaud Ikeda as he proceeded onscreen to his seat before the altar, and when Ikeda concluded the meeting by turning to chant to the enshrined object of worship, broadcast attendees would adopt the proper seiza sitting posture and chant along with the onscreen honorary president. When Ikeda appeared at headquarters’ meetings, he was preceded by division leaders, vice presidents, and other administrators who stood at attention and energetically delivered inspiring news. By his later years, Ikeda had developed into a master orator. Seated behind a desk, Ikeda contrasted radically with the other speakers. He was engaging, relaxed and humorous, turning to his script for the occasional quotation but mostly speaking extemporaneously. He would make joking asides that would elicit explosions of laughter from the crowd, and when he made the occasional inquiry ikaga desu ka? (how about that?) to appraise the attentiveness of his disciples, the entranced members would instantaneously shout “HAI!” in unison, right fists raised. Members in the audience were filmed staring at Ikeda with raging intensity: the broadcast would occasionally cut to shots of the crowd, divided by sex and division into different sections of the floor. Men’s Division and Young Men’s Division men were in ties and shirtsleeves, sweating from the effort of internalizing their mentor’s wisdom, and Young Women’s and Married Women’s Division members were just as attentive but perfectly coiffed and immaculate in either pink or blue skirt suits. Ikeda would identify specific administrators or ordinary members in the audience to thank for particular achievements, and he would sometimes remonstrate Gakkai administrators for not living up to the standard upheld by his mentor Toda. Meetings with Ikeda were subject to change based on his whims, but surprises rarely made it into the simultaneous broadcasts screened over four consecutive days each month at local culture centers. The first two days featured shortened versions of introductory talks by division leaders plus Ikeda’s edited address. By the third and fourth days, the division leaders were cut and subtitles (in Japanese) were added to the screen to allow viewers to follow Ikeda’s every word. Shortened versions of these transcriptions appeared after the broadcast over two days in the Seikyō shinbun; subleaders’ addresses were even more heavily edited and appeared in the paper the day before Ikeda’s speech. The newspaper versions of Ikeda’s headquarters speeches added headlines and topic subheadings and cut many of his extemporaneous asides. By the time his speeches were honed into the final print versions I was constantly urged to consult, Ikeda’s personality was winnowed down from the easy charisma members responded to with such enthusiasm into a standardized, easy-to-imitate style. In everyday Gakkai life, some of this charisma is revived as Ikeda’s words migrate back into oral transmission. Portions of his speeches are read aloud at countless small meetings across Japan, and local leaders summarize

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or even memorize selections to recite as means of encouraging fellow members. Speeches are quoted in installments of The New Human Revolution and live on in other Gakkai media. Members find themselves and those from their local Gakkai communities in these episodes. They seize on Soka Gakkai’s story as a way of narrating their lives, of mapping where they live, and as a way to deepen their affective bonds with the Gakkai’s founders. There is a palpable pushback among grassroots-level members against the solidification of Gakkai’s texts into a static final version. As members retell their story of Soka Gakkai, they confirm observations about canon formation in Buddhist and non-Buddhist contexts: it is a dynamic process that resists scriptural finality. Members’ everyday engagements confirm the allure of Soka Gakkai’s participatory canon and suggest that the inspiring possibility of appearing in a sacred narrative depends upon constantly re-placing oneself within it. Mapping the Canon: A Tour of Osaka through The Human Revolution In mid-November 2007, when I met with Mrs. Yoshiura at a hotel cafe near Soka Gakkai’s regional headquarters in Osaka, the impressions I had formed through our brief telephone conversation of a hesitant person were swept away by the whirlwind of gregarious energy she exuded. A slight and beautiful woman in her fifties, she exemplified the Kansai female ideal of her age: dressed gorgeously in colorful designer fashions and perfectly coiffed, her elegant exterior enveloped a friendly yet ferociously intense personality. At the cafe and everywhere else she took me on her tour of Osaka and the neighboring city Sakai, the industrial port where she grew up, Mrs. Yoshiura greeted old friends and made new ones. Some were Gakkai members, others were voters— members and nonmembers—who had supported her late husband, an influential Komeito politician who served numerous consecutive terms on the Sakai city council. Many were residents whom she engaged through her impressive array of business and civic interests. She handed one elderly man a calling card that announced her as a member of an association promoting manzai, a signature Osaka type of two-person stand-up comedy; she encouraged a woman at a neighborhood coffee shop to contact her regarding her home business buying and selling vintage kimono, a natural extension of her training in dressmaking and years spent working at Hanshin Department Store; and she invited another new friend to a meeting of local business owners who were seeking to promote Osaka’s colorful Minami district as a tourist destination. “Sensei tells us to broaden our social worlds,” Mrs. Yoshiura explained. “We must move beyond the organization to show Soka Gakkai’s best face.” “I lost my husband three years and five months ago,” she told me as we wended through narrow side streets to the original Kansai Culture Center, a modest building several blocks from the huge Osaka headquarters. Next to

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the culture center is a small garden filled with stone stelae inscribed with the names of over a hundred Young Men’s Division members, memorials to those who persevered through the 1957 Osaka incident and subsequent trials. Mrs. Yoshiura ran her fingers along her husband’s name; he was one of the young men initially embroiled in the election controversy. His name appeared close to three separate standing stones that reproduced the calligraphic signatures of Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda, each boldly hewn and painted gold. I told Mrs. Yoshiura about Ikeda’s items, including his shoes, that I saw on display at the Onshi Kinenshitsu. Mrs. Yoshiura confirmed that she had heard about these and mentioned that she saw a pair of Ikeda’s shoes under glass at a culture center in Adachi Ward, Tokyo. “Poor Sensei,” she laughed. “He must not have any belongings left!” In the days that followed, walking between Gakkai facilities, on trains, driving in her car, and while eating and drinking together, Mrs. Yoshiura wove an account of her life in Osaka into expressions of appreciation for Ikeda. She summarized her existence as an ongaeshi na jinsei (a life of returning obligation). Mrs. Yoshiura habitually fused Ikeda with the Gakkai’s object of worship in her descriptions of repaying gratitude as she repeated, “the gohonzon and I; Sensei and I.” With each mention of the mandala, she invoked Ikeda. Mrs. Yoshiura’s life kept pace with Ikeda’s rise and reconstruction of the organization. She converted to Soka Gakkai in September 1961 at seven years of age, during Ikeda’s second year as third president. Her father had abandoned her mother and older siblings shortly before she and her mother converted, leaving them with a rickety house in Sakai stuffed with Buddhist and Shinto altars and besieged by creditors who demanded payment from his defaulting construction company. Mrs. Yoshiura described the requisite act of hōbōbarai, the ritual burning of heterodox objects of worship, as a cathartic release from a painful past, and she characterized her subsequent upbringing in Soka Gakkai as life in a chigau gakkō (another school). She immersed herself in the study of Nichiren’s Gosho and enthusiastically participated in proselytizing campaigns. She spent evenings as a Student Division leader, then as a young leader in the Young Women’s Division and initiator of study meetings for Hanshin Department Store employees, and ultimately as a rising force in the Married Women’s Division after her marriage to the promising Komeito politician. Mrs. Yoshiura took me to Sakai, but we did not visit any place she lived. Instead, we arrived at the site of Ikeda Daisaku’s first Kansai-area zadankai—once a modest house, now replaced by a tall apartment complex. Mrs. Yoshiura circled the building, staring up at it. “I want to buy this building and turn it into a culture center, a hall where members can worship at the site of Sensei’s first arrival,” she told me, before looking around at the sidewalk. “There should at least be a marker on the street here, commemorating the moment.” Later that night, we stared up through the dark at the

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hall named Kōkaidō in central Osaka, speaking about the rally just over fifty years ago when members like her gathered there in the rain to celebrate Ikeda’s release from jail. “This is where the loudspeakers faced,” she told me, excitedly pulling me by my arm across the road in the direction of a nearby police station. “They purposefully turned them in the direction of the police here, to challenge the kenryokusha” (powerholders). Walking back toward the subway station, she talked about the moment when she and her mother converted to Soka Gakkai. All of her older siblings had been sent to live with other relatives, the two of them were left with a single ¥500 bill, and she and her mother wondering when they might die. “Castaways made Soka Gakkai,” she uttered with a mix of bitterness and pride. To spend time with me, an outsider seeking to learn about Soka Gakkai, meant narrating Osaka through a story that was simultaneously Ikeda’s and her own. Divisions between herself and Ikeda, between the institutional and the personal, disappeared in Mrs. Yoshiura’s mapping of the place where she grew up. “I was not at the Osaka rally. I was too young. But I want you to meet some people who were there.” From the Kōkaidō, Mrs. Yoshiura took me to a brightly lit coffee shop on Dōtonbori, the chaotic entertainment street in Osaka’s Minami neighborhood. “This shop is run by a well-known Gakkai member,” she told me as we pushed through crowds to get to the door. Osaka looks like a frantic mess, yet Mrs. Yoshiura made sense of the city by overlaying it with a grid of Ikeda’s biography and the locations of his faithful followers. We sat down with two long-term friends of Yoshiura’s, both women in their seventies who had joined Soka Gakkai in their youth. Mrs. Nagaoka, the eldest, recounted standing as a young woman in 1957 in the rain on the steps of the Kōkaidō next to her mother. “Not a single person thought to leave,” she told me. For her, greeting Ikeda after his release from jail was more than just member loyalty, given that she had already forged close ties with Toda and Ikeda through many meetings at the Kansai Culture Center. “It was a different atmosphere back then,” Mrs. Kashio murmured in assent. “We could enter the building at all hours, chant with Sensei, hear his lectures on doctrine, and ask his advice.” Sensei is ambiguous—did she mean Ikeda or Toda? I wondered later. Their conversation fixated on Ikeda, yet Toda and Ikeda melded together in their narrated reminiscences. The two veteran members, in effect, reaffirmed the fusion of the Gakkai presidents’ identities declared by Toda in The Human Revolution: for them, Ikeda truly is Toda’s bunshin, his other realized self. The Future of Soka Gakkai’s Participatory Canon After Ikeda withdrew from regular interaction with members in 2010, contestations over how Ikeda’s biography and teachings were to be interpreted

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increased. In the summer of 2015, thousands of demonstrators gathered in hundreds of locations to protest a September 19 vote in Japan’s National Diet that ushered in new security legislation. The laws were supported by Komeito, the junior partner in Japan’s governing coalition. These laws signaled a significant reinterpretation of the 1947 Constitution’s Article Nine, Japan’s peace clause, and indicated a willingness on the part of Komeito to support what some within Soka Gakkai regarded as a violation of the party’s, and the religion’s, foundational pacifism.44 In the months leading up to this vote, Japan’s mass media noted with surprise the participation of demonstrators waving Soka Gakkai’s tricolor flag and bearing placards that remonstrated Komeito politicians. On July 19, one protestor at a Kansai-area demonstration was photographed holding a sign with the words “Komeito Diet members—reread The Human Revolution!” emblazoned over the Gakkai flag. This protestor attended one of several demonstrations promoted on Twitter by an adherent who went by the handle Ōbai Tōri, or “cherry, plum, peach, damson.” This is a phrase from Nichiren’s Ongi kuden (Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings) that Ikeda Daisaku took up numerous times to urge Gakkai adherents to look beyond differences to work together toward organizational objectives. The protestors’ invocation of Nichiren’s and Ikeda’s writings indicates the success Soka Gakkai has met in canonizing its texts. It also indicates that, like all canons, Gakkai texts serve as arenas of contestation. In all editions of Ningen kakumei, the first lines of volume 1’s first chapter read, “There is nothing crueler than war. There is nothing so miserable as war.” The protestor who urged Komeito Diet members to reread the novel was, in all probability, thinking of these opening lines. However, Ikeda’s public absence invites arguments about how these lines should translate into actions that best represent Ikeda’s intent. The 2015 demonstrations and the reactions they triggered among Gakkai members indicate that members clash as they offer competing claims. When I asked him about his opinion of the Gakkai protestors, one Gakkai friend named Mr. Nishino, a Men’s Division member in his late forties who lives in Chiba Prefecture, defended support for the new security laws and expressed his revulsion for the protestors—a stance that appears widespread among adherents. Nishino’s justifications exemplify how practitioners have begun extending Nichiren doctrinal classification into defense of Ikeda as doctrine: In times like these, when opinions within the Gakkai’s administration and those of another support organization do not match up, what is there to do? I believe that an easy standard for determining this comes from the doctrine of gojū no sōtai (five-level comparison) found in Nichiren Buddhism. 1) Naige sōtai, or inner and outer comparison (Buddhism or non-Buddhist teachings).

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2) Daishō sōtai, or greater and lesser comparison (Mahāyāna or Hīnayāna Buddhism). 3) Gonjitsu sōtai, or provisional and true Mahāyāna Buddhism comparison (pre-Lotus Sutra teachings of the historical Buddha and the Lotus). 4) Honjaku sōtai, or origin and trace comparison (the origin (honmon) portion of the Lotus and the trace (shakumon) portion). 5) Shudatsu sōtai, or sowing and harvesting comparison (the Buddhadharma harvested beyond the text and the Buddhadharma of the text). Up to this point, Nichiren Shōshū and Soka Gakkai are in accord, but to extend these distinctions, my colleagues and I have the following personal take: 6) Shūsō sōtai, or sect and Gakkai comparison (Nichiren Shōshū or Soka Gakkai). 7) Chisō sōtai, or Ikeda and Soka comparison (Ikeda-sensei or Soka Gakkai).45 I think that, right now, the distinction needed to preserve a correct religion is level seven. The faction that opposes the security legislation cites from Ikeda as much [as other Gakkai members]. But who gains from their actions? People on the anti-Soka side who, as Gakkai watchers, gather protestors’ comments as their profession; mass media that makes a profit from viewers attracted to special reports on Soka Gakkai; and shady, parasitic Communists who secretively aim to expand the strength of their party. If people acting as members within Soka Gakkai bring about this kind of disorder, even if they employ many citations from Ikeda-sensei’s writings, and even if they seek to realize noble intentions, one cannot call them disciples of Ikeda-sensei who correctly receive and pass on the dharma; they are nothing other than worms within the lion’s body who infest Soka Gakkai.46

Nishino appears to put into practice an Ikeda-centered extension of kyōhan, the Tendai-to-Nichiren tradition of doctrinal classification—one that is made possible by an absence of interpretive intervention by Ikeda himself. For Nishino, Ikeda’s writings motivate doctrinal interpretation in the service of the organization’s imperative to preserve loyal discipleship by identifying and stigmatizing heterodoxy. It appears certain that, as living memory of Ikeda Daisaku fades and the prospect of appearing in canonized accounts of his life necessarily peters out, the imperative to define orthodox interpretations of texts Ikeda has left his disciples will increase in importance. We can anticipate increasing contestation over proper interpretations of Ikeda texts, particularly in the context of youth cultivation, a project that Soka Gakkai has emphasized since its founding.

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5

Cultivating Youth Discipleship through Standardized Education

“In fact, education could in a sense be called Japan’s national religion. Like any established religion it is intended to instill in people beliefs, values, and character, including national character.” Cutts, An Empire of Schools

“The monopoly of legitimate education is now more important, more central than is the monopoly of legitimate violence.” Gellner, Nations and Nationalism

November 25, 2007, and I’m nervous; I hate tests. I sit on the tatami-mat floor of a large culture center in Setagaya Ward about to take Soka Gakkai’s nin’yō shiken (appointment examination). The hall is lined with hundreds of low desks in neat rows, two people to a desk. An atmosphere of quiet tension hangs over the room as it does over a final for a massive lecture class at the end of freshman year. Around me, approximately five hundred other test-takers spend a final few minutes reading over their notes, looking one last time at the study guide published in the October 2007 issue of the Daibyaku renge or scrolling through messages on their portable phones, some no doubt reading transcribed sections of Nichiren’s Gosho sent to them by their Gakkai mentors. I assume that the people in the room are all or mostly members, and not curious kaiyū such as myself. Kaiyū (association friend) is a designation used since the tenure of Fifth President Akiya Einosuke (July 1981 to November 2006) for nonmembers who take part in Gakkai activities or who are otherIT’S NEARLY ONE O’CLOCK ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON,

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wise sympathetic to the organization; I have been called kaiyū during many introductions by Gakkai friends. Most of the people in the room are young, but the group basically represents a cross section of contemporary Tokyo. Many are teenaged boys and girls in their school uniforms, but some are also women and men in their fifties and older who could be their parents. Most are dressed conservatively and most have come laden with study materials, but some are kogyaru—­ fashion-fixated young women with styled blond tresses, heavy eyeshadow, and lacquered nails—who sit texting away on sequined phones, and here and there are young men who sport spiky hair and flashy clothes and slouch in front of empty desks. A young woman with elaborate tattoos visible on her neck and back sits in front of me beside a white-haired gentleman who wears the navy-blue cottons of a construction worker. Two non-Japanese other than myself can be seen: a bald Caucasian man and a young South Asian woman. Sharing my desk is a serious-looking teenager who pulls an amazing number of pencils out of her bag before she frantically leafs through a dog-eared copy of Daibyaku renge that is covered in notes and highlighted passages. I came to the hall with a group of fellow jukensha, a standard word in Japanese for test-takers, from a district Young Men’s Division, or yangu, in western Tokyo. The yangu men have welcomed me as a nonmember participant at weekly meetings and invited me to regular late-night chanting sessions over the last few months. They have taken me to large Gakkai events such as satellite broadcasts, Renaissance Great Schools, and special study sessions for the appointment examination. We have come to know each other well at official Gakkai events and casual get-togethers, and during one-onone interviews where they talked about their complex lives as Gakkai members and as students, company workers, sons, and in some cases as fathers. Since September, I have shared a room for weeks at a time with Itahashi Kei­ tarō, one of the District’s nyū rīdā (new leaders), the first leadership position granted to Youth Division members. Twenty-four years old and unmarried, Keitarō lives with his eighty-three-year-old grandmother in a tiny apartment on the ground floor of a small cement housing complex in Setagaya Ward. I was encouraged by Keitarō and others in his yangu cohort to take the introductory doctrinal examination in order to experience the training regimen urged on young members. So, for the past few weeks I have studied with three division members—Ryōsuke and Shinya, two second-generation adherents barely out of their teens who live with their families in nearby apartment blocks, and Shimada, a recent convert in his mid-thirties who commutes to meetings from almost an hour away.1 Over the autumn, we met many times in special study sessions where we memorized passages from Nichiren’s writings, Buddhist terminology, details associated with Nichiren’s life and with the Gakkai founders’ biogra-

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phies, and the errors of Nikken-shū (Nikken sect), Soka Gakkai’s denigrative term for Nichiren Shōshū under Chief Abbot Abe Nikken. The whirlwind of study leading up to the exam has proven exhausting. This morning we jukensha crammed for several hours at the home of Ōmura, the regional Young Men’s Division leader, quizzing one other until the last minute. What are the names of the Three Great Enemies of Buddhism? The title of Nichiren’s treatise of 1260? The date Toda Jōsei was released from wartime incarceration? Ōmura’s wife, four-year-old daughter, and two-year-old son waved goodbye and shouted ganbatte! (do your best) as we walked down the steep stairs outside his apartment to two vans that took us to the test site. In the weeks leading up to the test, Young Men’s Division leaders drove us through tangled streets to the homes of members who ran study groups and oversaw our individual study. Although many division leaders commute long distances to jobs in central Tokyo that demand long overtime hours and make frequent business trips around Japan and overseas, and though some have wives and children waiting at home, they devoted many late weekday nights and almost every waking hour on weekends to Gakkai activities. We met every Thursday night at the family home of Yamaguchi Yō, a twenty-nine-year-old district division subleader who works as a programmer in Japan’s mobile phone sector. Yō hosted a weekly late-night shōdaikai (chanting session), one of many such events at the home; barely a night goes by without the sound of namu-myōhō-renge-kyō leaking from the Yamaguchis’ front door. Yō’s late father had transformed the ground floor of the family’s three-story house into a Soka Gakkai kyoten (hub or stronghold) before dying tragically from a fall out of a top-floor window. Since the group’s inception, Gakkai members have offered up their homes as kyoten for local activities. At the Yamaguchi home, the large altar in the center of the ground floor room was surrounded by a lively jumble of Gakkai items, including photographs of Ikeda, certificates that commemorate achievements within the Gakkai by the Yamaguchi family, and large piles of Seikyō shinbun, Daibyaku renge, and other Gakkai publications. On a low shelf to the right of the altar sat a photograph of Yō’s father in fishing gear, smiling at the camera. Beer and shōchū (a popular distilled liquor) he enjoyed in life were placed in front of the photo as memorial offerings. Recently, the yangu meetings, which often lasted well past midnight, focused less on chanting and more on study for the appointment examination. Attendance by junior members at test study sessions was sometimes compelled by the district’s local leaders, especially in the case of the recalcitrant Ryōsuke, who was dragged out of his home by expeditions from the district Young Men’s Division. Ryōsuke laughed about the stern yet jocular treatment by his Gakkai colleagues, most of whom he has known since birth; “I’ve been abducted!” (rachi sareta yo), he cried to their mutual amusement.

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Cultivating Youth: Discipleship through Standardized Education  115

When asked on the morning of the test whether he was prepared, he quipped, “I’ve been forced to study, so yes” (hai, benkyō saserareta). Ryōsuke, a slight, shaggy-haired young man who just turned twenty, generally made jokes of this sort to chide his Gakkai friends. He, Keitarō, and Yō formed a close-knit unit, often hanging out until all hours at the twenty-four-hour McDonalds or cheap tachikui (stand-and-eat) bar next to the train station, trading barbed jokes in a shorthand developed over a childhood spent together first in the Student’s Division and now in the Young Men’s Division. Ryōsuke had graduated the previous March from one of Tokyo’s many two-year vocational training schools with a computer animation diploma, but had not yet committed himself to the stressful demands of Japan’s job search activities (shūshoku katsudō). This is a codified series of resumes, company examinations, and interviews that fill even confident applicants with anxiety, much less shy kids like Ryōsuke, who, when not with his lifelong Gakkai friends, preferred to spend his days and nights playing video games. Ryōsuke’s Young Men’s Division companions encouraged him to see the appointment examination as a means for him to jump-start his ambitions for a career in game design. He went along with their encouragements and, with prodding, attended every study session. The Gakkai exam received the approbation of his friends and family, and thereby provided an acceptable delay to the job search. Seeming to fear the return to daily-life pressures, Ryōsuke took to wearing a facemask—a common practice in Japan meant to prevent passing on infections—during the last week, and complained of feeling kaze-gimi (onset of a cold). This afternoon’s one-hour test is the first of the biannual appointment examination sessions; a second session with different test questions (to deter cheating) runs from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. in the same hall. In all, more than 135,000 people in 1,519 locations across Japan took Soka Gakkai’s appointment examination on November 25, 2007.2 Versions of the test are also offered outside Japan by branches of Soka Gakkai International, such as SGI-USA’s Buddhist Learning Review held every October.3 Those who pass the appointment examination in Japan receive the introductory rank of joshi (instructor). Soka Gakkai’s doctrine department appointment examination (kyōgakubu nin’yō shiken) is a test intended primarily for young members in the Young Men’s Division, Young Women’s Division, and Student Division, though members from the Men’s Division and Married Women’s Division take it as well. It is the introductory examination for two series’ of ranks, one for the Youth Division, another for Men’s and Married Women’s Divisions, administered by the Gakkai’s Shihan Kaigi (Doctrinal Teachers Committee). It is the test taken by the largest number of adherents. Within the youth divisions, the appointment examination is followed by a series of increasingly difficult exams that confer ranks of sankyū, nikyū, then ikkyū, (grade 3, grade 2, grade 1), given on

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a three-year cycle. Members of the Men’s Division and Married Women’s Division take a parallel series: shokyū shiken, chūkyū shiken, then jōkyū shiken (beginner, middle, and advanced tests), which grant the respective ranks candidate assistant professor ( jokyōjuhō), assistant professor ( jokyōju), and professor (kyōju). Only those holding the rank of professor and those who receive the higher positions of associate doctrine teacher ( junshihan) and doctrine teacher (shihan) are allowed to administer and grade the appointment examination. It is hardly necessary to point out Soka Gakkai’s mimesis of academia as it affords educational ranks to its doctrine instructors. Several Men’s Division members, ranking professors responsible for grading our tests, sit at a table at the head of the examination hall. When the clock chimes one, a handful of blue-jacketed members from the Sōkahan close the doors, and an elderly gentleman serving as proctor stands, welcomes everyone, and reads out a message of encouragement sent by Ikeda to the 2007 test-takers. Ikeda sings the praises of the appointment examination, a test that “sparkles across history” (rekishi ni kagayaki wataru). He quotes Nichiren: “Exert yourself on the two paths of practice and study. Without practice and study, there can be no Buddhism.”4 Ikeda extols the two ways of practice and study ( gyōgaku no nidō) as the wellspring of human victory, the direct route to realizing happiness, and the root of world peace. He congratulates the examinees on taking the test and asserts that the exam is for the purpose of human revolution (ningen kakumei), for the realization of Buddhahood in this lifetime (isshō jōbutsu), and the launch of new hopes. Ikeda prays that every person will become a great philosopher of happiness (kōfuku no daitetsugakusha) and a great leader (instructor) of victory (shōri no daishidōsha).5 After this address, all of us begin filling in the multiple-choice and short-answer questions. These include supplying words left out of three passages from Nichiren’s Gosho we were assigned to memorize, choosing phrases that best fit descriptions of Nichiren’s battle with Kamakura authorities, correctly naming the Ten Worlds ( jukkai or jikkai) in order, and writing in the Chinese characters for other Buddhist terms. There is also a concluding section with short questions regarding Soka Gakkai’s three founding presidents and multiple-choice selections from Gosho quotes that demonstrate ways Nichiren Buddhism points to the errors of Nikken-shū. One by one, the examinees complete the test questions and an attached form that calls for name, address, Gakkai ward and district, and asks how many times we have taken the examination in the past. As each test-taker finishes, we file out past the Sōkahan guards minding the door, past a line of Men’s and Married Women’s Division leaders at the reception desks in the foyer, and outside to meet supporters who wait eagerly to congratulate us. Outside the doors to the facility, numerous contingents from local Young Men’s and Young Women’s

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Cultivating Youth: Discipleship through Standardized Education  117

Division groups greet each of their returning charges with cries of “otsukare­ sama deshita!” (job well done) and “omedetō!” (congratulations). Keitarō, Yō, and others from the local Young Men’s Division find me and the three other test-takers from the local branch among the throng of well-wishers and congratulate each of us. Shimada, the recent convert, is already waiting outside by the time I finish; he completed the test in twenty-five minutes and later confirmed that he received a perfect score.6 Shimada consistently surprised the other Young Men’s Division members with his enthusiasm, beginning when he walked into the Setagaya facility less than three months before and asked the staff on duty how one goes about joining Soka Gakkai. During the morning cram session, Ōmura, a yangu member who led our study sessions, remarked on Shimada’s extraordinary ability to write the difficult kanji (Chinese characters) for every Buddhist vocabulary term. Soka Gakkai no longer requires that its members master this ability, and younger members are mostly unaccustomed to writing Buddhist terminology, or even reading materials on Buddhism not supplemented with furigana phonetic syllabary characters written next to Chinese characters to show the pronunciation. “Even I can’t write the kanji for takoku shinpitsunan!” Ōmura exclaimed.7 I spend approximately forty minutes completing the test and checking my answers and am followed out of the hall by Ryōsuke. “Can I catch a cold now?” (kaze o hitchatte ii) Ryōsuke laughingly requests as he joins our group, clearly feeling the release of pressure. Religion as Pedagogy In August 1936, Makiguchi Tsunesaburō led his first summer lecture series at Taisekiji for six Gakkai members who accompanied him and Toda; there they combined worship before the daigohonzon with study of Makiguchi’s essays on educational reform.8 By 1941, more than 180 adherents, young and old, were taking part in the summer Taisekiji lecture-series-cum-pilgrimage, and members were otherwise meeting regularly in local areas in what were then termed taizen seikatsu jikken shōmei zadankai (study meetings for practical proof of a life of great benefit), precursors to the zadankai (study meetings) that became a staple postwar Gakkai practice. Immediately after World War II, Toda Jōsei made leadership training modeled on modern schooling a key reconstruction strategy. From January 1946, Toda relaunched lectures on the Lotus and organized thrice-weekly zadankai at the Gakkai headquarters. He organized these gatherings into three-month semesters ( gakki) organized around curricula designed to hone his young charges into leaders of the group’s nascent subdivisions. Select graduates from the first semesters went on to formulate key Gakkai initiatives.

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Soon after Toda announced the start of the Great March of Shakubuku on May 3, 1951, when he became second president, he expanded Gakkai training into a more systematic program. On September 1, 1951, the Lecture Division (Kōgibu) was renamed the Doctrine Division (Kyōgakubu). Its leaders were charged with instructing local members in Nichiren Buddhism. To aid member instruction, on November 18, 1951, the organization published the Shakubuku kyōten, a handbook that provided a summary of Nichiren’s teachings along with arguments against rival sects, and on April 28, 1952, Soka Gakkai published the Gosho, a volume that was the product of intensive labor by Doctrine Division members. These texts became required reading for every member. Toda expanded his school-based training program to staff Soka Gakkai’s burgeoning administration. The core of this training regimen was Nichiren Buddhist doctrinal instruction delivered through modern education: classes, textbooks, examinations, certificates, and academic ranks. Doctrinal instruction was not an end in itself but a support mechanism for the group’s growing administrative needs. By January 1952, Toda had reformed the Gakkai’s administration into a pyramidal hierarchy divided into area (shibu), district (chiku), team (han), and group (kumi) under a central headquarters in Tokyo. By May 1952, the month Soka Gakkai received Japanese government recognition as a religious juridical person (shūkyō hōjin) under the 1951 Religious Corporation Law, members of the Young Men’s Division were mustered into four butai (military corps)—Head of Administration (kanbuchō), Education Administration (kyōiku kanbu), Strategy Administration (sakusen kanbu), and Internal Affairs Administration (naimu kanbu)—under an Officers Division (sanbōbu). Each butai had a corps flag (butaiki). ­Military-style administration facilitated rapid institutional expansion, and Gakkai regiments quickly gained new recruits. By the end of 1952, Soka Gakkai was conferring more than two thousand gohonzon on new converts every month.9 The movement was building momentum and the organization required a loyal cadre of young leaders trained in the group’s fundamental teachings. To this end, in 1952 Toda established a series of kyōgaku shiken (doctrinal examinations); and by the beginning of 1953 he set up Soka Gakkai’s first nin’yō shiken (appointment examination) to select doctrinal instructors. Exam-oriented training programs formed the basis for a scholastic model that Soka Gakkai has applied to its youth divisions. Inose Yūri, in her study of how Gakkai members instill faith in their children, highlights the central role of school-based curricula under Toda Jōsei and Ikeda Daisaku. In the Toda years, before the Gakkai established its Future Division (Miraibu), teenagers in particularly active districts in Tokyo were mustered initially in the Shōnenbu (Youth Division), which was transformed later into the Kōtōbu (High School Division). Setting a pattern that would become stan-

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Cultivating Youth: Discipleship through Standardized Education  119

dard in Soka Gakkai, youth training that began as a means of selecting an elite cadre transformed over time into a broadly inclusive suborganization that all Gakkai youth were expected to join. The Shōnenbu began in 1954 as a subdivision limited to Urata and Hongō in Tokyo, and Sakai in southern Osaka, and was initially reserved as a way to identify future leaders.10 Entry was difficult, and the organization aimed to cultivate youth who aspired to attend university. However, as youth training expanded under the High School Division and eventually the Future Division, all young members, regardless of their abilities or future plans, were enjoined to take part. Toda maintained that students’ devotion to doctrinal study and success in school relied on faith in the gohonzon. Inose notes that, under Ikeda, focus shifted from praising students for their devotion to the gohonzon toward celebrating Gakkai youth who revered Ikeda himself. This emphasis grew with the establishment of the Gakkai’s private high schools from 1968 and Soka University in 1971, which from the outset were crucibles of Ikeda devotion. As Soka Gakkai shifted from the 1970s onward in favor of fostering second-generation adherents, the institution increased its attention to internal training programs that encourage a longing for (shibo) Ikeda Daisaku. Youth Division doctrinal training that took shape from this era clearly takes up this imperative.11 Understanding Soka Gakkai as mimetic of the modern nation state makes sense of the purpose behind the Gakkai’s youth training initiatives. Within modern nation-states, educational systems persist as far more than opportunities for individuals to acquire vocational skills or realize academic objectives. Education cultivates a disposition of seeking to perpetuate society itself through conformity and self-sacrifice. Émile Durkheim observed that “society can survive only if there exists among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity; education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in the mind of the child, from the beginning, the essential similarities that social life demands.”12 In the same way, Gakkai youth training organs instill within young adherents a lifelong commitment to Soka Gakkai through standard, and standardizing, techniques. Coming of age in Soka Gakkai came to be equated with shouldering division responsibilities. As Inose points out, being a fully developed Soka Gakkai adult is equated with exhibiting a willingness to participate in Gakkai activities, and children who turn away from Soka Gakkai training are regarded as not having achieved adulthood. Blame for wayward children typically falls on the mother, the parent primarily responsible for the education of the child, just as a mother would be blamed for her child’s poor academic performance.13 Soka Gakkai’s divisions that oversee children confirm its commitment to standardized education. Socialization of young members begins in early childhood, with special meetings for the Future Division, which involves children up to their graduation from elementary school (usually at

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twelve years old). Young members then take part in the Student’s Division, which runs from middle school to high school. Although member children are not formally divided by sex, these early divisions are largely homosocial— boys and girls tend to meet separately, and their activities anticipate the ­gender-specific activities they are expected to undertake as adult Gakkai leaders. After the age of eighteen, when they are expected to graduate from high school, Gakkai youth are separated into the Young Women’s and Young Men’s Divisions. Thereafter, they undertake training in specialized suborganizations dedicated to the protection and expansion of Soka Gakkai. Young Men’s Division members are encouraged to join the Sōkahan (Value Creation Team), or to join the Gajōkai (Society of Fortress Protectors), and Young Women’s Division members join the Byakuren Gurūpu (White Lotus Group). Sōkahan and Gajōkai men are responsible for security at culture centers; women in the Byakuren Gurūpu take charge of matters inside Gakkai buildings, including reception, administration, cleaning, and serving tea.14 By the time they reach adulthood, members have been conditioned to conform to demanding, ­gender-specific roles. The Exam Is Not the Test: Participation in Modern Educational Systems The single hour spent writing the Youth Division’s appointment examination, though certainly memorable, was a comparatively minor aspect of the overall cultivation process I experienced. The true rite of passage consisted of hours steeped in exam preparation. The test, the single document that bestowed a certification, is not the real test; far more important in the eyes of the Gakkai community is proof of sincere devotion to the path the test symbolizes by understanding the moral value of self-sacrifice to Soka Gakkai through study. On the days leading up to the appointment examination, I received phone calls from member friends across Japan who encouraged my efforts. “Passing or failing, either one is all right,” Mrs. Yoshiura in Osaka had told me two days earlier. No one cares if you fail, or even whether you end up joining Soka Gakkai, she assured me; what matters is that, in committing yourself to studying Nichiren’s Gosho, you have decided your mission (shimei o kimete) and opened new roads (michi o fuete iru).15 I received similar support from Married Women’s Division friends, including Mrs. Hashimoto in Kyūshū and Mrs. Kumano in Aichi Prefecture. Both reassured me with the same formula: passing or failing, either one is fine ( gōkaku, fugōkaku, dochira demo kamaimasen). The centrality of this belief came to light when it was echoed one week after the November 25 appointment examination in Myōji no gen, a daily front-page Seikyō shinbun column, which declared that no matter whether the 135,000 test-takers pass, every one of them has developed his or her faith and “carved out an emotional drama” (kandō no dorama o kizan-

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Cultivating Youth: Discipleship through Standardized Education  121

da).16 Members all over Japan called me on the morning before I took the exam, in the afternoon after the exam, and the following day. They told me that they were chanting for my daishōri, my great victory. The true nature of this victory, far more important than my receiving a certificate that confirmed my ability to memorize Buddhist terminology, was proof of my sincerity in persevering on the path toward success. Soka Gakkai’s ethos of stressing commitment over mastery reflects a central concern within educational systems. In modern standardized education, only a few students rise to the top. Mass education in modern societies, however, is designed to accommodate everyone and instill in all students a sense of their mutual investment. Large-scale educational systems are not designed only for those who pass their tests; they are aimed at fostering an ethos of universal social commitment. Ernest Gellner contends that the most important development in modern societies, one that supersedes even the development of capitalism stressed by Max Weber, is the institution of a standardized educational system controlled by a central administration. In preindustrial societies, knowledge and skills could be passed on privately, in nonstandardized ways, from one generation to the next. However, to maintain the large-scale bureaucracies necessary to a modern state enterprise, “the only kind of knowledge we can respect is that authenticated by reasonably impartial centres of learning, which issue certificates on the basis of honest, impartially administered examinations.”17 Modern societies, Gellner explains, can only survive if everyone receives generic schooling that fosters universal acceptance of the society’s norms, and a modern society “is one in which no sub-community, below the size of one capable of sustaining an independent educational system, can any longer reproduce itself.”18 Education can only be provided by something resembling a modern “national” educational system, a pyramid at whose base there are primary schools, staffed by teachers trained at secondary schools, staffed by university-trained teachers, led by the products of advanced graduate schools. Such a pyramid provides the criterion for the minimum size for a viable political unit.19

Soka Gakkai has taken shape along the parameters Gellner sets out for an independent educational system. By reassuring appointment examination test-takers that either passing or failing exams is immaterial in comparison with remaining committed to study itself, Gakkai members reinforce belief in the intrinsic value of universal education. The Gakkai appeal to lifelong learning structured around examinations makes even more sense in historical and regional context. Japan from the late nineteenth century created a national educational system along lines that were standardized in England,

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the United States, and other imperialist nations. Pioneered by such systems as the Indian civil service examination under the British, the Prussian Abitur, and the French baccalauréat, imperialist nations of the late nineteenth century saw success in examinations equated with personal merit. The notion that social advancement should be determined by merit arose in combination with the rise of the market economy, the corresponding demands of modern empire, and the popularity of Darwinian thought—all trends that shaped modern Japan. By the time former schoolteacher Toda Jōsei reformed Soka Gakkai in the mid-twentieth century, a demanding training regimen that depended on standardized examinations was the most obvious way to staff his organization’s bureaucracy.20 Japanese social hierarchies are profoundly influenced by perceptions of merit associated with Japan’s famed shiken jigoku (examination hell), wherein Japanese families make great sacrifices to prepare their children for entrance examinations. Soka Gakkai’s doctrinal training system replicates Japan’s national examination hell, and its standardized, meritocratic examinations lead to positions within its administrative hierarchy. In Soka Gakkai, selfless dedication to the institution’s training mechanisms is rewarded with recognized ranks, respect from one’s peers, and the responsibility to guide others’ development—the very rewards that Japan’s educational system ­promotes. Origins of the Appointment Examination: One Member’s Experience I first met Mrs. Kanabe in November 2007 at the Gakkai’s Kansai-area headquarters in Osaka.21 In her late seventies when I met her, she is known to members for her pivotal role in pioneering Soka Gakkai in Kansai, yet in her youth she was far from the limelight and instead represented a combination of social marginalizations. Born to a rural family, at three years of age she was adopted as the single child of a childless couple who were poor but not starving, like many in the semirural area on the southern fringe of Osaka where the family lived. After she graduated from high school, Mrs. Kanabe remained home with her adoptive mother, who was often ill. Mrs. Kanabe recounted having been painfully shy as a child and young woman, and having not distinguished herself in school; she completed high school and entered the workforce at eighteen. She preferred to stay home and read historical novels rather than go out, and until she joined Soka Gakkai was hesitant to speak to anyone outside her immediate circle. In March 1953, when Mrs. Kanabe was ­twenty-one years old, her mother attended a Gakkai study meeting (zadankai), an encounter that precipitated the whole family’s conversion. Ten days after she joined, Mrs. Kanabe went to her first zadankai in central Osaka. The attendees at this meeting were mostly elderly women who urged Kanabe to study Buddhism with all

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of her conviction to demonstrate the greatness of this teaching to the world. This religion was different from others she had encountered, Mrs. Kanabe told me, in its emphasis on engagement through study. On August 8, 1953, Second President Toda and Ikeda Daisaku, then head of the Young Men’s Division, met in Osaka to establish the Young Women’s Division in the Kansai region. As was his custom, at the end of the formal meeting Toda held a question and answer session, calling on the twenty or so people assembled to consult with him regarding their personal difficulties. At first, participants were hesitant to come forward with questions, and some responded that they had no particular problems. In his characteristically fiery manner, Toda barked back, “nayami ga nai na, usō deshō!” (saying you have no problems, that’s a lie). “How,” he asked them, “can you young people in this nation, Japan, which is in such a state of confusion, say you have no difficulties?” Mrs. Kanabe remarked to me that, up to this point, she had never thought of her own life in national terms. She credits this meeting with expanding her viewpoint, for extending her sympathies to other young people struggling in Japan. Soka Gakkai revealed itself to her as not just a way of self-cultivation but a route to national belonging. This inspiration transformed Mrs. Kanabe from a retiring young woman into a proactive leader. She began caring for the members she ­converted—and she converted hundreds over the course of her life—as she traveled with her junior charges on proselytizing trips. She solidified her status within Soka Gakkai and her own sense of self-worth through a study program that began the day after her meeting with Toda. On August 9, 1953, she and other members began an intensive five-day doctrinal study session. From 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with only short breaks, twenty-seven members from the Osaka region (shibu), men and women, young and old, were led by Kodaira Yoshihei, then head of the Doctrine Division, in a session Mrs. Kanabe called a kanzume kyōgaku benkyōkai (packed doctrinal study meeting).22 The participants were seeking to become the first Doctrine Division appointees from Osaka. They were lectured without cease on the contents of the Shakubuku kyōten and sections of Nichiren’s Gosho, including the “Kyōdaishō” (Letter to the Brothers) and “Sado gosho” (Letter from Sado); both of these letters deal with the importance of shakubuku, the inevitability of meeting harsh trials and opposition, and the need to uphold faith no matter the cost. When the participants were seen to be getting sleepy, they were ordered by the instructor to continue studying standing up. This training sounds severe, but what Mrs. Kanabe felt, she told me, was kansha, kansha (gratitude, gratitude). This was, she said, the first time she had really studied anything. Mrs. Kanabe emphasized to me that she was grateful for the chance to study sono mono (in and of itself). This, more than anything, expresses a core aspect of Soka Gakkai’s appeal.

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One month later, the students from the intensive study session took an oral doctrinal examination called the shikaku shiken (qualifying examination), a step Soka Gakkai has since eliminated. Only one-third of the applicants passed, including Mrs. Kanabe. On December 27, she and eight others traveled to Tokyo where they joined a total of ninety-seven candidates from across Japan at Gakkai headquarters at the first written version of the appointment examination.23 Toda Jōsei himself proctored the very challenging test, which called for essay questions that demonstrated mastery of a large amount of Mahāyāna Buddhist terminology and the entirety of the 1,600 pages of Nichiren’s collected writings. Mrs. Kanabe scored 86 percent on the test, the highest mark of any member that year. After the written portion, Toda gave the test-takers a final oral question. “If you can answer this,” he told them, “you will be granted the rank of kyōju (professor).” “Now, at the dawn of the spread of our faith (kōsen rufu no akatsuki ni wa),” Toda asked them, “how shall we, Soka Gakkai, deal with Christianity?” Mrs. Kanabe considered Toda’s question. No matter how zealously she and her Gakkai compatriots urged exclusive belief in Nichiren’s teachings, Christianity persisted in Japan. Not one test-taker wrote down the answer Toda sought: montei no ruzūbun o mochiiru (make use of the propagation portion of the sutra as understood from the depths of the text). The ruzūbun is the last of three sections into which Buddhist scriptures are divided. In Nichiren Shōshū exegesis, the jo (introductory), shō (main), and ruzū (propagation) sections of the Lotus are divided into five successive levels of increasing profundity, the most profound being montei (the “depths of the text”). In the ruzū section, the Buddha praises the sutra and urges that his disciples propagate it so the teachings will flourish in future ages. Mrs. Kanabe told me that she continued to reflect on this matter after the examination. The examinees were not to simply seek to supersede or eliminate Christianity, she concluded, but to include it within the greater mission of spreading Buddhism. She came to realize that her efforts in Soka Gakkai were a process, not a final destination (shūchakuten ja nai). This conception broadened possibilities for her: by extension, politics, humanism, and all areas were opened as avenues to expand Soka Gakkai. As a reward for her achievement on the examination, Mrs. Kanabe was granted the highest doctrinal rank made available by Toda at that time, that of kōshi (lecturer), and in February of the following year she was appointed leader of the newly formed Osaka branch of the Young Women’s Division. She went on to become one of the first full-time employees at the Kansai Soka Gakkai headquarters and devoted her life thereafter to the expansion of the organization. Although Mrs. Kanabe’s experience was in some ways exceptional, she is like millions of men and women who were persuaded by the Gakkai’s emphasis on service through study and by opportu-

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nities the organization afforded through success measured by school-based standards. Building an Exam-Oriented Curriculum When Mrs. Kanabe took the appointment examination, Soka Gakkai had produced relatively few study materials. The group’s basic textbook was its 1952 single-volume Gosho, and even this resource was initially difficult to find outside Tokyo; Mrs. Kanabe told me that Shiraki Gi’ichirō, then head of the Gakkai’s Osaka headquarters, purchased a copy for her on a trip to Tokyo. Shiraki was well known in 1950s Japan as a baseball pitcher. He first ran for office in 1956 and subsequently spent decades as a Komeito representative in the National Diet. His younger cousin is Ikeda Kaneko, Ikeda Daisaku’s wife. In my interviews with members who were active in the Toda years I was continually struck by the intimate bonds between high-profile leaders. Soka Gakkai administrators today describe the thousands of employees as a single Sōka famirī (family), but in the early days of the Gakkai’s formation the group’s core members were frequently famirī in a literal sense, bonded by marriage or blood. Much of Mrs. Kanabe’s introduction to Buddhist doctrine took the form of reading Nichiren’s letters to his lay followers out loud to her adoptive mother, who was illiterate. Members in the early 1950s also turned to the Shakubuku kyōten and the Daibyaku renge. Though Toda remained the organization’s final authority on Buddhist doctrine, a review of the study materials authored during his lifetime reveals the pivotal role of Doctrine Division head Kodaira Yoshihei. The first editions of Gakkai doctrinal training texts list Toda Jōsei as supervising editor but list the author in the publishing credits as Kodaira. Editions after 1960 list Ikeda as supervising editor and the Sōka Gakkai Kyōgakubu (Doctrine Division) as author. This confirms the increasing Ikeda centralization of the organization and the institutionalization, and eventual anonymizing, of the educational apparatus under his command. In addition to writing the first editions of the Shakubuku kyōten, Kodaira also produced supplementary study materials for division members. For instance, by 1954, Soka Gakkai published the Kyōgaku mondai no kaisetsu (Explanation of Doctrinal Questions), which, like the Shakubuku kyōten, lists Toda as general editor and Kodaira as author. Like the first editions of the Shakubuku kyōten, the book begins with Gakkai philosophy. Kodaira’s study guide starts with a short first chapter on Makiguchi’s kachiron (philosophy of value). The second chapter covers basic Buddhist doctrinal ideas, beginning with the aggressive Nichiren Buddhist formula shika no kakugen,24 followed by formulas from Buddhist tradition, including the Three Delusions (sanwaku), the Five Heinous Sins ( gogyaku or gogyakuzai), the Four Noble Truths (shitai), and the Twelve-Linked Chain of Dependent Origination ( jūni innen).25 Ensu-

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ing chapters cover the Lotus, fundamental principles of Nichiren Buddhism, Nichiren Shōshū doctrine, a brief history of sectarian Buddhism in China and Japan, and a biography of Nichiren and major disciples in the Fuji lineage who preceded Nichiren Shōshū. Knowledge in this text is broken down for the purpose of memorization and utilization as a tool in conversion campaigns. Soka Gakkai encouraged its members to carry out proselytization by attacking the teachings of rival religious groups—other Buddhist sects in particular, but also Shinto, Christianity, and New Religions such as Risshō Kōseikai, Reiyūkai, Konkōkyō, and other proselytizing organizations that compete with Soka Gakkai for converts. In this way, it is similar to the more widely consumed Shakubuku kyōten, in that both texts begin with short chapters on Makiguchi’s and Toda’s philosophy and follow with explanations of Buddhist doctrine. However, Kodaira’s study volume, unlike the Kyōten, is written in highly academic Japanese with no furigana (phonetic syllables), even for the most difficult Buddhist terminology, and presupposes that its reader is versed in Nichiren’s Gosho. The content of the Kyōgaku mondai no kaisetsu indicates that Toda raised the bar high for those who wished to take a leadership role in Soka Gakkai. “Once you become a Department of Doctrine instructor ( joshi) and appear at lectures in local areas, you do so as my representative,” Toda warned the first nin’yō shiken examinees.26 Well into the early Ikeda years, Gakkai members’ educational level ranked significantly below the national average; in a 1967 survey by the newspaper Yomiuri shinbun, 55 percent of Gakkai respondents had ended their education at middle school, and only 4 percent had attended university.27 Rather than accommodating most members’ lower educational levels, Toda challenged nascent leaders to not only read material beyond their experience but to rise to the level of being able to teach it. He formulated a system divided by elementary, middle, and high school levels supplemented by Gakkai-published study materials. For the elementary school equivalent, Toda recommended that members read experiences (taikendan) in the Seikyō shinbun and a novel on the life of Nichiren (titled Shosetsu / Nichiren daishōnin) serialized in early editions of the Daibyaku renge.28 Middle and high school levels consisted of Seikyō shinbun editorials and Daibyaku renge columns that explored Gosho sections called kantōgen, explanatory portions that still appear in the magazine and comprise the core of doctrinal study in monthly meetings. University-level doctrinal study was to include study of the Daibyaku renge’s “Kanjin honzonshō bundan haidoku” (Readings from the Kanjin honzonshō), which concentrated on what is considered Nichiren’s most important writing.29 When it came to creating a core set of teachings, Soka Gakkai under Toda focused almost exclusively on Nichiren. Toda’s addendum to Kanabe’s 1953 examination regarding the montei section of the Lotus alluded to an

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understanding that Nichiren’s teachings underlay all phenomena, even heresy, and that correct understanding of this warranted the highest rank in the instruction system. This way of understanding placed a potent tool in the hands of his youth leaders. Examinees were expected to develop a capacity to explain Nichiren Buddhism extemporaneously, to demonstrate to the senior leadership that they were versed in the rhetorical means of fostering loyalty in new converts, to show that their Gakkai training had honed their intellectual capacity to the point that they could be trusted to lead conversion efforts. Ironies abound: at a time when its cadres were fiercely regimented in an uncompromisingly military style, Soka Gakkai relied on qualitative rather than quantitative methods of assessing its young leaders, and a young woman took top honors in a meritocratic test given by an organization that prevents women from occupying its highest administrative ranks.30 The Appointment Examination in the Twenty-First Century The decades since Toda instituted the appointment examination have seen Soka Gakkai rationalize its doctrinal training system. In 1953, Kanabe persevered through a series of tests that eliminated more than one-third of an already small number of applicants. She received a percentile grade that demonstrated her placement atop a ranking system intended to winnow a pool of prospective leaders into a narrow elite. In November 2007, more than 135,000 Gakkai members took the appointment exam, and on November 22, 2015, the Seikyō shinbun reported that more than 110,000 people took the same test at 1,507 locations across Japan. This recent drop in the number of test-takers is perhaps best viewed as a peak and downward trend in numbers of young people in Japan generally, including within Soka Gakkai, rather than an indication that test-oriented training is waning in importance within the organization.31 Even though its test-taker numbers are diminishing, Soka Gakkai still doubtless maintains one of Japan’s largest Buddhist doctrinal training systems. Building this mass-oriented system has come with costs. Let us jump to the study materials for the November 2007 exam to get a sense of changes that have unfolded since its inception. Unlike the written test under Toda, which consisted of essay-form answers, the entire 2007 examination was multiple choice or short (one- or two-word) answers. Outside my circle of fellow Young Men’s Division test-takers, members half-jokingly advised me that “if you can’t remember the answer, just write in namu-myōhō-renge-kyō instead.” Although most laughed when they said this, their advice matched the overall intention of the test as a declaration of devotion to Soka Gakkai over comprehensive mastery of Buddhist ideas. “I think you will pass with no problem,” said a senior administrator I met in Osaka. “When he sees a for-

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eign name and your title kaiyū (friend of the Gakkai) on the test, the leader marking it will surely pass you. Did you write the answers in English?” I told him I had not. “You know you’re allowed to do that, don’t you?” I didn’t. I felt sheepish enough filling in a few answers with hiragana syllabics where I had forgotten how to write the kanji for some Buddhist terms. In fact, it would have been considerably more difficult to answer the questions in English. The test was strictly a matter of memorizing the study materials and reproducing them, word for word, and not an attempt to explain them. Ōmura, the leader responsible for instructing the local Young Men’s Division, had summed it up at a study session earlier that month: “This is a standard Japanese test. It is tedious” (taikutsu na mono desu). The 2007 appointment examination relied entirely on material printed on pages 68 through 188 of the October 2007 issue of the Daibyaku renge, a special section called “Nin’yō shiken no tame ni” (For the purpose of the appointment examination). This section included three subsections: three short selections from the Gosho, “Introduction to Doctrine” (Kyōgaku nyūmon), and “Worldwide Propagation and Soka Gakkai” (Sekai kōfu to Sōka gakkai). Every member I asked told me that all I needed to pass the test was this special issue of the Daibyaku renge; I did not need my own copy of the Gosho or any other study aids. This was striking, given that every older member I knew owned a copy of Nichiren’s collected writings and read it extensively. Elderly members regularly astounded me with their ability to recite entire pages of Nichiren’s thirteenth-century Japanese from memory. One elderly gentleman I interviewed in Chiba Prefecture in September 2007 seemed to have memorized just about every well-known writing by Nichiren, earning him the nickname “a walking Gosho” in the local Gakkai community. This gentleman, a native of Akita Prefecture who joined Soka Gakkai in the Toda era, did not finish high school, yet reached the highest levels of the Gakkai’s doctrinal training. He was not the only elderly member whom I heard referred to as a walking Gosho. I have met a few younger members who study Nichiren’s writings intensely but none who internalized the text to the extent that they earned this nickname. Soka Gakkai produces a large number of books, manga, interactive DVDs, and online sources that teach Buddhist doctrine. The Ikeda era has seen an explosion of instructional materials, part of the overall burgeoning of the Gakkai’s media wing. Popular doctrinal instruction books bearing Ikeda’s name include topical treatises on Nichiren’s writings, such as the “Shōji ichi­ daiji ketsumyakushō kōgi” (Lecture on The Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life), which argues against the exclusive lineage claims of the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood, and “Ikeda meiyo kaichō no Hokekyō hōbenpon / juryōhon kōgi” (Honorary President Ikeda’s lectures on the “Skillful Means” and “Lifespan” chapters of the Lotus Sutra), which frames the second and sixteenth chapters

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of the Lotus in terms of Gakkai-focused discipleship; this series of books was used by the Young Men’s Division in training sessions for its Future Division. Other recent Gakkai titles on doctrine are mostly authored by the Doctrine Division staff collectively. These include the Sōka gakkai nyūmon (Introduction to Soka Gakkai), a book published first in 1980 as a replacement for the Shakubuku kyōten. Shops at Shinanomachi and other Gakkai centers carry the 2002 Kyōgaku no kiso: Bukkyō rikai no tame ni (Foundations of Doctrine: For the Purpose of Understanding Buddhism), a dense sourcebook that introduces Nichiren Buddhism and the lives of the three founding Gakkai presidents, and many Gakkai bookstores stock the 2007 two-volume Jissen no tame no kyōgaku nyūmon (Introduction to Doctrine for Actual Practice), which introduces key Buddhist ideas in the form of a friendly dialogue between two Gakkai practitioners, a young man called Renge-kun (Young Mr. Lotus) and his mentor Daibyaku-hakase (Dr. Great White); their names combined form Daibyaku renge, and the book is authored by the editors of the magazine of the same name. Starting in 2015, training for the examination began to favor online instruction. One Gakkai member-run website that serves as a repository for exam prep materials notes that it is still acceptable to use appointment examination workbooks, but that the recommended method is now to watch online lectures that lay out short reading selections and provide preset multiple choices with the correct responses.32 Although numerous, Soka Gakkai’s published resources on Buddhist doctrine now make up only a small proportion of its corpus. And, when members read about Buddhism, the material is largely framed in terms that centralize Ikeda. This tendency was apparent in the format of the 2007 Nin’yō shiken study guide. The opening section on Nichiren’s writings presented short excerpts from three writings: “Sado gosho” (Letter from Sado), “Uenodono gohenji” (Reply to Ueno), and “Jimyō hokke mondō shō” (Questions and answers on embracing the Lotus Sutra). In each case, the Nichiren excerpt appeared on the right in large, bold print, with a translation into modern Japanese below, and the page on the left (Japanese books generally proceed from right to left) discussed the passage’s significance and concluded with quotations from Ikeda Daisaku. The “Letter from Sado” excerpt for the examination reads as follows: Beasts naturally threaten the weak and fear the strong. Our contemporary scholars from various lineages are just like them. They despise a wise man without power but fear evil rulers. They are nothing but servile courtiers. Only by defeating a powerful enemy can one prove one’s true strength. When an evil ruler who cooperates with heretical priests tries to destroy true Buddhism and banish a person of wisdom, those with the heart of a lion king will

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surely attain Buddhahood as Nichiren did. I say this not in arrogance but because I am committed to true Buddhism.33

The Gakkai’s Doctrine Division glosses the cited passage as follows (the following is a slightly condensed translation): Stand courageously! Like the lion! Nichiren’s disciples could only fight like a lion king (shishō no gotoku) to realize the ultimate victory of Buddhahood in their lifetimes. No matter the thisworldly respect earned by the monks who oppressed Nichiren, their life essence (seimei no honshitsu) was nothing other than that of beasts (chikushō).34 These evil monks colluded with the corrupt powerholders of their day to persecute the practitioners of true Buddhism, in keeping with the conditions of mappō, the Latter Day of the Buddha’s Law. We are taught that it is only in battling strong enemies that we can demonstrate proof of our real strength. Those who fight through obstacles to protect Buddhism driven by the spirit of shakubuku (shakubuku seishin) certainly achieve Buddhahood. Those with the bravery of a lion king, as they shatter evil enemies, break down indecision and doubt. In this way, one accesses the splendid realization of Buddhahood in this lifetime, as Nichiren did. As Nichiren explains, he is a model for his disciples, and elsewhere stated “disciples, fight bravely like great masters” (deshitachi yo, shishō no gotoku yūkan ni tatakau no da).35 Honorary President Ikeda speaks: “It is only in times when the situation is tough that one must summon courage. Cowards do not become Buddhas; if one does not possess the heart of a lion king, one does not become a Buddha. The tougher the situation, the more one is spurred on. This is the true essence of the Gakkai spirit. The most important point is that only by moving forward oneself does the path open up.” By summoning the courage of the lion king and fearing nothing, let us break through to the victory of our lives and the spread of Soka Gakkai.36

All three of the Nichiren excerpts in the test were presented in the same format: Nichiren’s text, then Doctrine Division exegesis emphasizing adherents’ responsibilities, capped with a paragraph that began with the phrase “Honorary President Ikeda speaks” (Ikeda meiyo kaichō wa katatte imasu). This line is reminiscent of the formula “thus have I heard” attributed to Śākyamuni’s disciple Ānanda that appears at the beginning of Buddhist sutras. Ikeda speaks and, just like Ānanda, Gakkai disciples listen and commit themselves to propagating transmissions from the authority on the true

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dharma. The selection from Nichiren’s writings and the manner in which Ikeda rephrases them for his disciples elevates the efforts of Gakkai adherents to heroic sacrifices performed in the name of a transcendent mission and as a disciple’s loyalty to the true dharma heir. This framing pattern was repeated in every Doctrine Division instructional scenario I encountered during my exam preparation. For example, while in Nagoya in early November 2007, I attended a study meeting at a large culture center that included a screening of an instructional DVD recorded at the Doctrine Division’s Tokyo headquarters.37 I sat in a small room at low desks (the same format as the examination itself, it would turn out) with sixteen members—seven teenage girls, five boys, three elderly men, and one other non-Japanese participant, a member friend who brought me to the meeting. We watched a screen on which several Gakkai administrators, including the head of the Doctrine Division, took turns reciting explanations for terms in the October 2007 Daibyaku renge. After informing us that they wished us to memorize the Gosho passages “to the extent of being able to write them ourselves” (kakeru yō ni oboete hoshii), the leader followed with extended quotations from Ikeda’s speeches the previous month in which he urged reading Nichiren’s writings for the sake of human revolution (ningen kakumei) and recalled his own study under Toda. After this, the video instructors recited each Gosho quotation, explained them briefly, then moved on to Nichiren’s biography and Buddhist terminology. In every case, they read out the first few lines of the Daibyaku renge explanation essentially verbatim and stressed quantifiable content: places, names, dates, and numbered items. Occasionally the video would switch away from the instructor at his podium to scan his audience, which was made up of a small number of Young Men’s Division members in ties and shirtsleeves, studiously taking notes. Shots of these exemplary young male disciples increased in frequency toward the end of the session, when the doctrine instructors turned to the final condemnation of Nikken-shū. “Let us learn about evil” (aku ni tsuite manande ikimashō), the instructor began, before he led us through Gosho passages used to defend Soka Gakkai’s post-1991 stance on the irrelevance of priests. The DVD ended with an entreaty for all of us to fight together against Nikken-shū and to take care of our health in the cold weather before the examination. All the way through the screening, the young students around me mirrored the young men on the DVD. As they listened to the lecture, they scanned the Daibyaku renge text and marked words most likely to appear on the test using a variety of highlighter colors. Many of the keywords for the test were obvious; the instructor would stress a name or date, and the Daibyaku even printed some terms in bold. The students’ strategy at this session clearly emerged from techniques learned in school tutoring aimed at maximizing test grades through efficient memorization.

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Inculcation in Soka Gakkai’s Campaign Cycle “My name is Tsutsui. I was born on April 28, 1972, the anniversary of Nichi­ ren’s first declaration of his teaching” (risshū sengen). Back in Tokyo on November 18, a Doctrine Division leader assigned to the area introduced himself to a small group that gathered in a member home at 10:00 a.m. With me were fellow test-takers from my local Young Men’s Division group and some of our leaders, even though most of them had passed the exam years ago. Tsutsui dressed professionally in suit and tie. He was obviously adept at presenting the appointment examination materials. “What if your girlfriend or wife doesn’t want you to practice? What if she complains about you going out to a study session like this? Life is full of these kinds of barriers. We in Soka Gakkai call them the Three Hindrances and Four Demons” (sanshō shima).38 Like his Doctrine Division superiors in the video, Tsutsui departed little from the terms in the Gakkai publication we were expected to memorize. He extemporized only to link members’ life experiences to key concepts. All of us read the Gosho section out loud in unison, after which the instructor gave a short explanation that mostly repeated the Daibyaku renge text. Tsutsui summed up all three of the Gosho excerpts as a way of encouraging shakubuku, then moved on without delay to the “Introduction to Doctrine” section. This included concepts such as the Ten Worlds ( jukkai) and the Fivefold Comparison ( gojū no sōtai).39 It ended with the Gakkai formula shinjin soku seikatsu (faith is, as it is, nothing other than our [regular] activities).40 We ended with the biographies of the sandai shishō, the Three Great Mentors Makiguchi, Toda, and Ikeda. “Today is an especially important day,” Tsutsui stressed, “as it is the seventy-seventh anniversary of the Gakkai’s founding.” Because it was indeed a special day for Soka Gakkai, I had to leave the study session before Tsutsui’s instruction on the evils of Nikken-shū. First I met with members who arrived from all over Japan at the Shinanomachi headquarters. I then attended a study meeting with Keitarō in Setagaya, a special joint session of two blocks to celebrate the anniversary. After this, Ōmura, Keitarō, Yō, Ryōsuke and I headed out once again to another exam prep session, this time at a different local leader’s house in a far-flung district of Setagaya Ward. In the car on the way there Ōmura and the other young leaders quizzed us: “What are the names of the Three Powerful Enemies? What are the Three Proofs?”41 When we walked in the door, Tsutsui greeted us once again. He had changed from a suit into sweats but he began the 10:00 p.m. study period in the same energetic manner as he had twelve hours earlier. Around me sat ten young men, half with the bleached hair and baggy clothes associated with a working-class youth fashion aesthetic. A young man with spiky blond hair and numerous earrings conferred with his local leader, who commended him for filling a notebook with neat lines of kanji script, all

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Buddhist terms called for on the test. Tsutsui continued to lecture, and our local leaders stayed with us past midnight. By the end of this session, everyone seemed delirious with fatigue. The next night, the local Young Men’s Division members convened again in Yō’s crowded living room to study. All of us were fading. Late that night, Ōmura summarized the intent of the examination. “The appointment examination is part of the cycle of life in Soka Gakkai,” he explained. The test is held in November, near the eighteenth, the date of the Gakkai’s founding. December is the end of the year and the time when members give monetary donations (zaimu) to the organization. January is New Year’s and Ikeda-Sensei’s birthday (on January 2), and both January and February are months devoted to shakubuku conversion campaigns. In the spring we celebrate the inauguration of Ikeda as president on May 3, then the Day of Mentor and Disciple on July 3, then Ikeda’s conversion on August 24 in the summer. After this, we are back to the fall and the entire cycle begins again. Layered atop these memorial dates are the Gakkai’s regular campaigns, such as electioneering for Komeito and other special events, such as this appointment exam.

“The exam,” Ōmura concluded, “is fundamentally a way to introduce young members to the cycle of life inside the movement.” His comments made it clear that the cycle of activities members join through intense activities such as exam study are part of Soka Gakkai’s mimetic equivalent of an annual cycle of national observances. Ōmura’s comments reinforced an overall impression that life in Soka Gakkai does not focus on a particular endpoint but instead comprises an endless cycle of campaigns that cultivate an ever-deepening commitment to the organization. He confirmed Mrs. Kanabe’s revelation in 1953 during her appointment examination under Toda: commitment to study is commitment to a process, not a single goal. After weeks of intense training, the single hour of the appointment examination on November 25 seemed to disappear quickly. The questions on the Gosho passages consisted of a few sentences from Nichiren’s text with some words left blank to be filled in. Nichiren’s biography, the doctrine ­questions—by far the most time-consuming aspect of the test preparation due to their complexity and distance from modern Japanese—and the Gakkai history questions called for single-word or multiple-choice answers. The easiest section was the final one on Nikken-shū, and the only real surprise came with the inclusion of a question on Toda’s philosophy regarding absolute (zettai­ teki) versus relative (sōtaiteki) happiness. The Daibyaku renge study materials had touched on Toda’s writings only briefly. This gesture toward Ikeda’s

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mentor confirmed the organization’s focus on the indivisible bond of teacher and disciple. On November 29, 2007, a mere three days after the appointment examination, Soka Gakkai announced the national test results. Of the more than 135,000 who took the test, 85,000 passed—including me and the three members who went through the yangu training with me. Just under 63 percent, about two-thirds, of the test-takers attained the rank of instructor. In each of the test locations, the professor on hand graded the examinations and then passed the results to the Doctrine Division, which “strictly determined who passed and who failed.”42 A senior Gakkai administrator told me later that Soka Gakkai’s Shihan Kaigi (Doctrine Teacher’s Council), a select committee of senior administrators, now meets in advance to decide on the test’s pass-fail ratio and plots examination results on a curve at each location to fit the policy.43 Unlike the examination under Toda, when the test-­ takers received percentile grades, examinees in 2007 only learned whether they passed or they failed. The examination has been rationalized even further in recent years. Members still prepare by memorizing terms related to Nichiren Buddhist doctrine, Gakkai history, and anti-Nichiren Shōshū orthodoxy, but they are no longer required to write anything at all. In 2014, the Doctrine Division adopted a marking system (māku hōshiki) that includes a scan-ready standardized sheet. The appointment examination is now all multiple choice. No longer will young members be required to master the difficult stroke order of specialized Buddhist terminology written in Chinese characters. No longer must they spend hours studying together. What this recent turn to individual, computer-based study over group-supported training means for the Gakkai’s generations-old cultivation practices remains an open question. Educating the Next Generation Previously a highly competitive meritocratic way of selecting leaders by determining their mastery of Nichiren Buddhism, the appointment examination is now a comparatively easy way to reward Gakkai youth for institutional participation. The test was once a transparent measure of an examinee’s knowledge of Buddhist doctrine, with clear objectives and results expressed in a percentile score. Individual efforts are now obscured inside an institutional calculus in which a pass or fail are determined by institutional mandate. The test that was once significant to members because it was exclusive now seeks participants by being inclusive. It is not difficult to identify reasons for this reversal. The appointment examination had been a way of disciplining the Gakkai’s youth vanguard and now serves primarily to initiate the overwhelmingly second- and

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Cultivating Youth: Discipleship through Standardized Education  135

third-generation youth wing into Soka Gakkai participation. This shift from outward to inward focus is evident in the doctrinal teachings covered by the examination. By 2007, explicit aggression toward other Buddhist sects and other religions was gone. There was no more mention of Nichiren’s four dictums (shika no kakugen) against rival schools or the dangers of embracing false teachings. Previously, the test presented a history of Buddhism to hone attacks on rivals and define Nichiren Shōshū orthodoxy to advance an expansionist campaign. Today, the group directs aggression inward by sidestepping conflict with outsider groups and encouraging the fight against Nikken-shū. The contemporary onus is on clarifying orthodoxy within the tradition rather than expanding beyond it. Differences between the Toda-era test and the twenty-first century test also indicate broad changes in Japanese society and corresponding mimetic shifts within Soka Gakkai. Educational institutions in Japan today, from the largest universities to the smallest tutoring programs, attempt to instill an ethos of self-sacrifice for the sake of exam success in a dwindling population of young people who do not face the same competitive pressures their parents did. Exam competition remains a powerful social force in Japan. Aspirants who vie for entry to Japan’s schools, from kindergarten to university, still devote a cumulative total of years of their lives to examination preparation. Nonetheless, however intense the culture of examination preparation remains in Japan, young Japanese today face a future applying to educational institutions that, once in a position of weeding out applicants, now mostly vie for students in a struggle to survive. Entrance examinations, though still standard, are diminishing in importance. Outside top schools, exams are increasingly pro forma, and an increasing number of institutions are supplementing them with other selection methods. Since 2000, Japanese universities have followed recommendations from the National Council for Educational Reform to reduce emphasis on memory-centered tests and to otherwise open entrance to postsecondary education to a wider body of applicants. In 2002, 34 percent of new university entrants entered university on the basis of recommendation from school principals, bypassing entrance examinations altogether.44 This trend in Japanese education away from exclusivity toward inclusivity appears to have accelerated. By the mid-2000s, an estimated 50 percent of Japanese universities accepted students without any examinations—a percentage that seems destined to increase as the number of young people in Japan continues to dwindle.45 Soka Gakkai’s appointment examination, which was modeled on Japan’s intensely competitive examination system of the immediate postwar era, continues to mirror Japanese examination culture in the twenty-first century. The test is now not so much a tool for selecting an elite leadership as it is a means of drawing a diminishing pool of second- and third-generation mem-

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bers into the Gakkai’s overall mission. However, although “examination hell” may have cooled, status in Japan is still determined by the extent to which one perseveres in study. People still judge themselves and others based on expectations this system creates, and Soka Gakkai continues to mobilize its members through an appeal to exam-based educational success. Success is judged not by the number of Buddhist terms one memorizes but by the level of commitment one demonstrates to Soka Gakkai through study. Despite a measurable drop in academic expectations as the test expanded after the Toda years, the overall institutional intent of fostering devoted members through school-based conventions has prevailed. Soka Gakkai may face struggles as it appeals to its young members to continue investing in the exam-oriented model at the center of Japan’s development as a modern nation. Mrs. Kanabe, the veteran member who thrived under Toda Jōsei’s tutelage, expressed profound gratitude for the chance to study at all, to take part in the system that set the standard for social legitimacy. Ryōsuke, the hesitant second-generation adherent who had to be dragged to study meetings by his division colleagues, may represent something of a twenty-first century Gakkai norm: ambivalent about self-sacrifice within a system modeled on Japan’s national rise. Even as it accommodates a turn toward individualized study, Soka Gakkai continues to draw on twentieth-century educational ideals. The relevance of these increasingly ­ antiquated academic aspirations to the generations that will take Soka Gakkai into the future remains unclear.

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6

Good Wives, Wise Mothers, and Foot Soldiers of Conversion

ON NOVEMBER 18, 2007, I ACCOMPANIED MARRIED Women’s Division members on a pilgrimage to Shinanomachi to celebrate Soka Gakkai’s sixty-seventh anniversary. One of these members, Mrs. Hashimoto, had come from a small town in northern Kyushu. When she learned that I was studying to take the Gakkai’s appointment examination the following week, she provided a detailed explanation of the Nichiren Buddhist concept of sanshō (the three proofs): monshō (documentary), rishō (logical), and genshō (manifest). Mrs. Hashimoto explained that documentary evidence is found in Buddhism’s textual traditions, while intellectual proof is reflected in the gohonzon. These will appeal to only a few people, she cautioned, because only a few are able to fathom the Lotus, and the gohonzon, though beautiful, is not an efficacious way of spreading Nichiren’s teachings in the absence of practice. It is through adherents, through those with faith, that I will understand religion, she told me. She also cautioned that it is important that I not limit my research to speaking only with the faithful. “You should talk with people who do not agree with Soka Gakkai,” she advised. “Speak with people who have parted ways with the practice.” I was genuinely shocked by this advice. Over my years with members, not once had one suggested that I look outside the organization for insight, much less to people who have split from the group. “Please come to my home in Kyushu,” she asked. “I want you to meet my son. Please get him to practice shakubuku” (shakubuku sasete kudasai). I was not certain that I understood her correctly. Did she want me, a nonmember, to meet her son, a child of a Gakkai family, to attempt to make him proselytize? I was intrigued. 137

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The Married Women’s Division: Paradoxically Powerful Soka Gakkai’s basic unit of measurement is the family home. The group determines its total membership in Japan by setai (households), in keeping with the convention set by the national census. The modern Japanese neologism katei (home) entered the language at the end of the nineteenth century. Katei proposed a Western-style middle-class home as the model for the state.1 As Toda Jōsei transformed the prewar Gakkai into a postwar religious mass movement, his decision to build his organization on families, not individual members, mimicked modern Japan’s national fixation on the nuclear family. Toda’s decision ensured that women, defined as wives and mothers, became Soka Gakkai’s most important practitioners. The Gakkai administration’s top priorities—conversion, soliciting subscriptions to Gakkai publications, the cycle of regular meetings at the local level, electioneering for Komeito, raising the next generation of adherents—continue to depend to a disproportionate degree on Married Women’s Division members. Although women people the majority of the Gakkai’s day-to-day operations, they are notable by their absence at the top levels of the group’s administration. Women are prohibited from occupying Gakkai administrative posts outside the Young Women’s and Married Women’s Divisions. At the same time, the Gakkai leadership consistently acknowledges the key role women play in its mission. Soka Gakkai declared the twenty-first century to be the Century of the Woman, and the group caters to its female members with numerous fujin kaikan (Married Women’s meeting halls), which men are forbidden from entering. And, over the past three decades, the Gakkai has greatly amplified the profile of Ikeda Kaneko, Ikeda Daisaku’s wife and personification of the married woman’s ideal. The Gakkai’s focus on Ikeda Kaneko as its institutional paragon confirms that it promotes a domestic feminine ideal, one in keeping with twentieth-century Japanese state-supported norms. From the Meiji era (1868–1912), national reformers promoted ryōsai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) as an ethical principle to exhort mothers to raise new generations of loyal imperial subjects and soldiers.2 Inspired by pronatalist policies adopted by Western imperialist rivals as well as neo-Confucian principles, Meiji statesmen declared that a woman’s primary duties were household management and family education. The ryōsai kenbo ideal was transported from elite Meiji circles into an early twentieth-century middle-class sensibility that idealized women as obedient homemakers.3 Even after women gained suffrage under the 1947 Constitution, the postwar era saw an extension of the ryōsai kenbo ideal in the valorization of the sengyō shufu (professional housewife), who ensures a stable domestic base for her salaried husband and the education of their children.4 Soka Gakkai institutionalized Japan’s gendered social divisions. But, as we shall observe in the case studies that follow, Gakkai women’s lives are far

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Good Wives, Wise Mothers, and Foot Soldiers of Conversion  139

more complex than the professional housewife ideal suggests. Gakkai women are not passive followers who have been misled into obedience within an oppressive power structure but are instead self-conscious agents who emerge from a complex web of aspirations and values. In this regard, they resemble women in other religious communities who exercise power from below by learning to navigate and ultimately transform paternalistic authority. In her study of women’s Islamic piety movements in Egypt, Saba Mahmood elaborates on observations by Michel Foucault and Judith Butler to observe that power is not solely a top-down mode of domination, something possessed and deployed by sovereign individuals over others. Rather, it is a strategic relation of force that permeates life, one that produces its own forms of desires. It is unproductive to understand women adherents in socially conservative religious organizations as frustrated, undeveloped individuals who seek emancipation. Mahmood identifies agency at the bottom of hierarchical power structures and suggests that the exercise of agency frequently sees social norms not only destabilized but also recapitulated. She also stresses that it is problematic to impose emancipation-oriented politics onto individuals in the first place because doing so assumes a prescriptive ideal that silences voices of the women in question.5 Research by other scholars on women devotees confirms Mahmood’s characterization of power relations. Marie Griffith describes how women evangelicals in the American Women Aglow movement navigate domestic power relations as they celebrate their rebirth as Christian wives and mothers. Through daily devotional practices, they influence the behavior of male authorities as they realize themselves as “whole and joyful selves.”6 On the Japan side, Helen Hardacre’s study of women in the Nichiren B ­ uddhism– based religion Reiyūkai stresses that one of the reasons the group was able to cultivate a loyal following was its endorsement of housewives as professionals who form the basis of society.7 Hardacre makes the important point that ­Reiyūkai—and, by extension, other Japanese New Religions like Soka Gakkai—offer opportunities for married women to expand on their vocational duties as housewives. Although their roles as local-level leaders reinforce rather than challenge prevailing gender norms, women in these groups derive deep personal meaning through their organizational commitments and come together to form highly motivated, if largely unpaid, workforces.8 In observations that resonate with those later made by Mahmood, Hardacre describes ways in which women Reiyūkai members control the course of their personal lives as they develop “strategies of weakness”; by performing exaggerated forms of obeisance to male authorities even as they establish themselves as unquestioned authorities in matters such as child-rearing and running the family home, Reiyūkai women make the men in their lives dependent on them and shape social relations until “normative inequality does not represent the balance of power in the relationship.”9 Hardacre’s conclusions connect with

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James C. Scott’s theories regarding “everyday resistance” by people at the bottom of unequal social relations who change systems for their benefit through a process of “foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage and so on.”10 Strategies devised by women in Reiyūkai and in Soka Gakkai tend to be more subtle and less destructive than those Scott identifies, yet small-scale changes by ordinary women members of these groups combine in ways similar to those he observed to produce profound cumulative effects. Gakkai women shape their individual subjectivities through devotional activities that simultaneously reiterate male-dominated power structures as they formulate women-driven power relations. Soka Gakkai reproduces Japan’s home front–oriented female ideal that dominated during the organization’s formative decades. Gakkai women’s roles also cohere with norms maintained by what Jessica Starling identifies as “domestic religious professionals.” Starling brings these roles to light in her work on the bōmori (temple wives) of Jōdo Shinshū (True Pure Land Buddhism), Japan’s largest temple-based Buddhist denomination. She observes that Shinshū temples, commonly thought of as the domain of male priests, are better understood as simultaneously domestic and public spaces created by the bōmori through ritual and informal ties she maintains with parishioners. Through quotidian engagements, the bōmori blurs the private with the public as she carries our her duties as parent and religious professional charged with the survival of the sect.11 The subjectivities Gakkai women develop emerge from mutually contradictory demands that Soka Gakkai places upon them. Gakkai women should be conceived as religious professionals—the mimetic equivalent of the nation’s professional housewives—who occupy a challenging combination of private and public roles. Incompatibilities emerge as Gakkai women maintain their homes as family spaces and public arenas for Gakkai activities. They are pulled into time-consuming commitments to Soka Gakkai campaigns, Komeito electioneering, and other responsibilities that conflict with domestic obligations. This paradox invites questions: how does the demand that Gakkai women serve as both housewives and campaign contributors shape their everyday existence? How do Gakkai women reconcile responsibilities imposed by their families, society, and Soka Gakkai with their personal aspirations? And what happens to women when Soka Gakkai’s domestic model fails, when domestic life becomes domestic abuse? “Raising Children Is Spiritual Training”: The Costs of Conflicting Obligations On Saturday, June 14, 2008, Mrs. Hashimoto meets me in the early afternoon at a station about ninety minutes by express train from Fukuoka and drives

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us to her home nearby. Mrs. Aoki and Mrs. Kumano are already waiting, having made a long journey to reunite in this scenic northern Kyushu town. We enter the house, where my small gift to the Hashimoto household is presented to the gohonzon with the customary thrice-repeated namu-myōhō-renge-kyō invocation. Seated on tatami mats in front of the family altar, we look through books that Mrs. Hashimoto keeps on a large shelf. All are Gakkai publications, and most are commemorative volumes the Gakkai administration sent to members who made significant monetary contributions. We look through a photobook published twenty years earlier that includes pictures of Ikeda Daisaku and Kaneko in what appears to be their family home. Mrs. Hashimoto, Mrs. Aoki, and Mrs. Kumano all comment admiringly on shots of the Ikedas’ contented married life. In one photo, Mrs. Ikeda brings tea to her husband as he sits at a low table, writing in a notebook, and in another the couple both kneel before a home altar with hands raised in prayer, Mrs. Ikeda several paces behind her husband. You can see that the honorary president is an ordinary man, the assembled women exclaim. All of them emphasize the depths of Ikeda’s humility; he gives 99 percent of everything he receives right back to Soka Gakkai, and he and his wife live completely ordinary lives just like us, they stress to one another, and to me. As we talk, Mrs. Hashimoto asks me to describe myself. In keeping with my other meetings with Married Women’s Division members, she and the others in the room are most interested in hearing about my parents, my wife, and my future aspirations. After I speak about these matters for a short time, she leaves the room and returns quickly with an impromptu hand-­written form that she has made for me to fill out. It asks for my name, the names and ages of my family members, and what I hope for in the future. I fill these out, stating that, in the future, I hope to become a published scholar. All present also take notes on my future hopes, but Mrs. Hashimoto warns them not to spread my personal information regarding my family. This is a private matter that she will reserve for a report she will make directly to Honorary President Ikeda. I am again reminded of the importance of the family home as Soka Gakkai building block, and what this means in practice: even small get-togethers are imbued with administrative responsibility. At times, Soka Gakkai’s modus operandi almost too obviously exemplifies the system of disciplinary power through mutual surveillance made famous by Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. Indeed, local Gakkai members demonstrate an extraordinary inclination to acquire and share information. For instance, in late 2011 I met with a retired Gakkai administrator in the United States who told me he heard good things about a presentation I gave on Soka Gakkai several months before—in Singapore. That talk had been attended by a group from the Singapore Soka Association’s Women’s Division.

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My visit to this Kyushu town has occasioned some excitement in the Gakkai community, and the visiting members have treated my arrival as an opportunity to proselytize. In keeping with her expansive nature, Mrs. Kumano has brought several people with her: her eighty-five-year-old mother and her elder sister, who, traumatized by her impoverished youth in this area, has not visited Kyushu for more than thirty years. One other person has joined the party, a Mrs. Noguchi, who is a friend of Mrs. Kumano’s elder sister. Mrs. Noguchi, a nonmember, came with Mrs. Kumano’s sister from Mie Prefecture (near Nagoya) to spend a couple of days in the nearby hot spring baths. All of us proceed to a nearby restaurant, where Mrs. Hashimoto begins relating her experience joining Soka Gakkai as a young woman. She speaks directly to Mrs. Noguchi, appealing to her as a woman of a similar age. Mrs. Hashimoto emphasizes her family’s poverty, and she talks about how she was impressed by how reasonable Soka Gakkai adherence was by contrast to her elder brother’s involvement in the radical left-wing student movement and her own interest in communism during her teenage years. She speaks warmly about the follies of youth and about the trials of her parents, but then ends her testimonial rather precipitously, in part because we are off to a study meeting, and also perhaps because Mrs. Noguchi does not appear to be responding with any empathy to Mrs. Hashimoto’s story. After the meal, all of us, including an increasingly uncomfortable-​ looking Mrs. Noguchi, drive to a district study meeting held in a home behind an auto body shop, after which we return to Mrs. Hashimoto’s home for coffee and cake. “I hope that you will get a chance to meet my son,” Mrs. Hashimoto says to everyone, laughing a little nervously. Her son Yasuo has yet to appear. He works for a company that produces pottery, a product for which northern Kyushu has been famous for centuries, and he coaches a middle-school soccer team, we learn. As we assemble in the Hashimotos’ spacious living room around the irori (traditional fire pit), Mrs. Hashimoto once again addresses Mrs. Noguchi. “What did you think of the study meeting?” she asks. Mrs. Noguchi dissembles: “Everything was new to me. I could not really understand what was happening.” Mrs. Hashimoto commiserates, saying that she also had trouble understanding what was going on when she first encountered Soka Gakkai. “I left for Fukuoka when I was eighteen,” she says, “following a big argument with my father over my life choices. He died the following year, before I had a chance to speak with him again, and the last time I saw him was at his funeral. In order to repay my obligations to my parents, I converted to Soka Gakkai when I was nineteen years old.” Mrs. Hashimoto presses Mrs. Noguchi a little further, but her guest is clearly discomfited by the way things are going. The mood is lightened somewhat by a steady stream of chatter from Mrs. Kumano’s mother about how much she is enjoying her cake; her daughter shushes her, telling her that talk of faith (shinjin no hanashi) is going on.

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The guests all take their leave soon after, and their departure breaks the tense atmosphere in the room. Yasuo has not yet returned home.

* * * * * “World peace? Before you went off fighting for world peace, why didn’t you protect the peace of your own family?” It is 8:45 p.m. the next evening (June 15), and Mrs. Hashimoto and Yasuo are arguing loudly. We have been enjoying a feast of barbecued meat and shellfish cooked over the fire pit in the living room. We have all been drinking a fair amount of beer, especially Yasuo, a gregarious thirty-five-year-old who welcomed me into the home and appears unfazed by my presence. He is even more uninhibited at the moment. When his mother started talking to me about her Gakkai activities and how she envisioned how her own small-scale efforts contributed to Soka Gakkai’s overall mission of bringing peace to the world, something erupted from within him. He and his mother have begun a heated exchange about their family’s past, Yasuo firing bitter accusations and his mother responding defensively. Mr. Hashimoto, a gentle, soft-spoken man, has drifted silently out of the room. “You talk about everything you have done, all the things you have accomplished thanks to Soka Gakkai. But what about the costs? What about the sacrifices? When you say ‘it’s thanks to Soka Gakkai,’ what you really mean is that you have done well thanks to your own actions. You are selfish,” Yasuo accuses her. “That’s not true,” retorts Mrs. Hashimoto. “You are right that I may be a selfish person, but what I did was for the purpose of world peace.” “World peace? Is that the purpose of Soka Gakkai? If that’s the case, then why does your family suffer so much for this goal?” Over and over again, Yasuo expresses profound bitterness at the organization. In retrospect, his absence from home the previous night appears to have been calculated to avoid conversation with a group of proselytizing adherents. “Are you a member of Soka Gakkai?” I ask him. “No. I hate Soka Gakkai. I am completely opposed to Buddhism,” he responds. Overall, Yasuo is easygoing. As we drink beer and laugh, he smokes about half a pack of cigarettes as he tosses around plans for his future. He is relatively happy in his company job, but he dreams of having his own business. Maybe I’ll move to America and open a restaurant in Philadelphia, he suggests. “That’s the city where they filmed Rocky, isn’t it?” Yet despite his affable nature and apparent light-hearted approach to life, Yasuo obviously has strong opinions, especially when it comes to his family’s religion. Both of his parents have pursued their faith since their

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youth and now have senior posts in the regional Gakkai administration. His elder sister graduated from Soka University in Tokyo, married another Gakkai member, and now lives in Nagoya with two sons and two daughters. With the exception of Yasuo, the Hashimotos appears to be a model Gakkai family. Yet Mrs. Hashimoto wanted most of all for me to meet her son, the most wayward of her clan. Mother and son resume their argument: “Explain to me why you practice the Buddhism of Soka Gakkai.” “For human revolution.” “Human revolution? Is that what you call what’s happened in your life? What is human revolution, exactly?” “Human revolution is a revolutionary, authentic transformation” (shinjitsu no henkaku). “What does that mean? I hate specialized religious language. Explain it to me in plain terms. You can’t, can you? What is this transformation? Before you talk of human revolution and all that, offer me some proof of your own personal human revolution. What kind of personal transformation can you name?” “I know that I have many problems, but my philosophy is the correct one.” “Is Soka Gakkai correct?” “Soka Gakkai is correct.” “I don’t think so.” Yasuo reminisces about his childhood. “You were never there during the ‘golden time,’ ” he says bitterly. “The hours between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., when parents spend the most time with their children, helping them with their homework, talking to them, listening to them. You were always out fighting for the Gakkai. All we would come home to was an empty kitchen. I made all of my own meals. I prepared my own school lunches. As a kid, I was always alone.” Now, he tells us, when children in the soccer team he coaches tell him that their parents are unable to take them to a weekend match or pick them up after an evening practice, his first thought is “ah, your parents must be Soka Gakkai.” “Where were you all those nights?” “I was out fighting for kōsen rufu.” “I said I hate Buddhist language. What does that mean? What is kōsen rufu, really?” “Fighting for Soka Gakkai, fighting for Komeito.” “What about the sacrifices for your family?”

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He and his mother get a little quieter, but noticeably more bitter, when talk of sacrifices leads Mrs. Hashimoto to remember what she did for Yasuo’s sister. When her daughter was only in elementary school, she began working toward entering Soka University. To save for her daughter’s tuition at the Gakkai’s private university, Mrs. Hashimoto worked in the evenings for nine straight years at a local drinking establishment. During this long period, she sacrificed her regular Gakkai responsibilities, along with time spent with her children, to supplement the modest income her husband earned digging ditches to lay wires for NTT, Japan’s national telecommunications corporation. The argument peters out a little after this. It is now close to 11:00 p.m. and all of us are sleepy. Mrs. Hashimoto begins washing dishes, and I lie next to the dying fire across from Yasuo, who lights another cigarette. I think about the manner in which he battled his mother. He was happy to attack the Gakkai administration and Buddhism, but not once did he mention Ikeda Daisaku. Even when he shouted about his hatred of Soka Gakkai, he seemed aware of acceptable parameters. Going after the administrators is fine, attacking teachings is fair game, and he can criticize his mother all night. Yet Ikeda looms silently over this conflict, untouched. His mother leaves the room to prepare a bath. “Do you ever chant?” I ask him. “No, never,” he says. “Well,” he adds, after a long pause. “Sometimes. Eleven years ago, my friend was very ill. I chanted in a long session at home for many hours, praying for my friend to get better. Which he did.” I ask him about this, chanting to the object of worship despite his avowed hatred of Soka Gakkai. “There’s nothing I can do about it,” he says. “Soka Gakkai is part of me. It’s what I was brought up in. It’s what I know.” The next morning, as Mrs. Hashimoto and I eat breakfast after Yasuo has left for work, I mention his telling me about his chanting. “That wasn’t the only time,” she says. “When his sister was pregnant with her second child, a difficult pregnancy, he chanted for hours and hours here at home for her safe delivery. He was just a poor kid at the time, trying to make ends meet. He wanted to give her something, but all he could afford was the chant.” “Let me show you something,” she says, and leaves the room momentarily, returning with a small book. “This is my daimoku diary.” It is a lined notebook filled with dates, short notes, and a column of numbers that begins on June 6, 2000. It records the number of namu-myōhō-renge-kyō repetitions that she intoned each day. Mrs. Hashimoto chose to begin her diary on Makiguchi Tsunesaburō’s birthday. The year 2000 was a period of transition for my faith (shinjin no tenkanki), she tells me. She is oblique as to what exactly transpired at this point, but she does say that she considered divorcing her husband. “I had fallen into hell,” she says, employing the Buddhist cosmological metaphor of the Ten Worlds, implying that she was full of anger and had grown distant from the intentions of Gakkai practice. In order

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to overcome these difficulties, she poured herself into chanting the daimoku. She set herself two objectives with her diary: first, to keep meticulous records of her progress in chanting, in part to be able to report on her activities to Gakkai superiors; and, second, to establish goals for self-improvement that connected her personal objectives with milestones in the lives of the Gakkai’s founders. She initially set herself the goal of one million repetitions of namumyōhō-renge-kyō to resolve her conflicts with her husband. To this end, she began chanting in earnest on February 23, 2000; she calculated that she could meet the one million daimoku goal by August 24, the anniversary of Ikeda’s conversion to Soka Gakkai. To chant enough yet keep up with her regular responsibilities, Mrs. Hashimoto put herself on a punishing schedule. For months on end, she slept no more than three hours every night. She would crawl into her futon at 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. and wake up at 6:00 a.m. to prepare breakfast. Gakkai activities and hours of chanting kept her active until close to 11:00 p.m. most nights, after which she would chant again until she could no longer stay awake. The winter months were particularly hard, she tells me, because she would freeze in the seiza position and her entire body would ache for hours after. Yet, on August 24, she achieved her objective of one million daimoku. Mrs. Hashimoto immediately decided on a goal for her next round of one million daimoku repetitions. She relaxed her schedule somewhat and aimed at two million daimoku by August 24 of the following year, identifying the objective of realizing transformation of her karmic burden (shukumei no tenkan), a less specific goal than her first. This change in objectives was perhaps influenced by improved relations with her husband. He had started chanting alongside her—not at the same grueling pace, but enough to demonstrate support. Once she hit the two million mark, she reflected on her life and realized that she no longer had personal difficulties. Unexpectedly, when she came to this realization, she found herself unable to continue chanting, something that itself became a difficulty. She would kneel for hours before the altar, unable to summon the syllables namu-myōhō-renge-kyō. Finally, on December 31, 2002, with tears streaming down her face, she began chanting again. After this, she proceeded smoothly through three, four, and then five million daimoku. At five million, she had forgotten about her difficulties, because “everything had been solved” (mattaku kaiketsu shita). She continued chanting—six million, and then seven million dai­ moku. On the day she reached seven million daimoku, her husband reached three million. The Hashimoto couple could then claim an amazing ten million repetitions of the title of the Lotus Sutra. She describes how she and her husband established a rhythm: now they both ride along easily in a regular mode of chanting for half an hour every morning and an hour at night, a routine that

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has grown into a natural part of their daily lives. Mrs. Hashimoto reached ten million daimoku of her own on June 21, 2007. Before we depart for the train station, Mrs. Hashimoto implores me to call the Gakkai administrators at Shinanomachi to inform them about my recent meetings with members. “It is very important that you pass this information on,” she tells me, because it is all eventually passed up to Honorary President Ikeda. We drive to the station, and Mrs. Hashimoto rides with me on the express train back to Fukuoka. During the ride, Mrs. Hashimoto recites the dates of her encounters with Ikeda with a fluency that speaks to many repetitions of the same stories, no doubt recited as testimonials. Yet at times she grows more reflective, less rehearsed, when she speaks about the friends who were with her at these meetings, some of whom who are now ill, or deceased. As we reach the end of our journey, I ask Mrs. Hashimoto about her relationship with her son. She laughs wryly. “He and I are very much alike. We both have B blood type, so we’re both passionate and stubborn.” I ask if they often argue like they did last night. “No, rarely. We’ve had fights like that in the past, but that was one of the worst.” My presence seems to have exposed some nerves. We draw close to Hakata station in Fukuoka. “Raising children,” she says after a pause, “is a form of spiritual training (shugyō). If you don’t take on this training, you cannot save your children.” The Married Women’s Division’s Ambiguous Place in Soka Gakkai History A Married Women’s Division ethos of domesticity and self-sacrifice emerges from the group’s earliest history, when the Gakkai’s vision of women’s roles took shape in wartime Japan.12 In October 1940, Makiguchi Tsunesaburō established the Gakkai’s Fujinbu (Married Women’s Division) as part of an administrative overhaul of the then-small lay association. The division began with approximately five hundred members who were headed by the division’s leader, Kashiwabara Yasu. From this point until Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai was forcibly disbanded in 1943, the group held monthly division assemblies at which Makiguchi and Toda would lecture on the place of women in Nichiren Buddhist doctrine. When Makiguchi was arrested in 1943, Toda refused to recant his support of his mentor. Other senior Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai leaders renounced their ties with the group. It is widely believed that the others were convinced to recant by their wives, who feared consequences that would befall their families if their husbands were imprisoned. On July 3, 1945, Toda walked out of Sugamo Prison into a Tokyo devastated by Allied firebombing. In a speech he delivered on May 3, 1951, as he was appointed second president, Toda recalled that there were only two people waiting for him outside the prison

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gates: Kashiwabara Yasu and her fellow division member Izumi Miyo.13 The Gakkai’s 1943 dissolution was blamed on women, and yet the only Gakkai faithful who came to greet Toda in July 1945 were women. At its origins, the Gakkai regarded its women members as untrustworthy traitors and the most reliable devotees, and since its postwar reconstruction the group has simultaneously depended on women to energize the organization as it marginalized them. In the 1950s, Toda was quick to appeal to women members as key to the Gakkai’s early development. He lectured to women on the possibilities of shukumei no tenkan (reversal of one’s karmic hindrances) by abandoning the false teachings of rival religions and becoming aware of one’s own Buddha nature through chanting the Lotus Sutra. Women who turned to Soka Gakkai learned that by embracing the Lotus they had the power to overcome their particularly heavy karmic burden through dedication to Gakkai duties. In the early Toda era, women were appointed as doctrinal teachers and were responsible for teaching both women and men. In February 1957, Toda gave a speech on the topic of doctrinal teaching for the Married Women’s Division in which he declared that regional Married Women’s Division leaders (shibu fujinbuchō) were to be regarded as equivalent in rank to male division leaders (shibuchō). This came after years of upholding the women members as the true strength behind Soka Gakkai, expressed through repeated declarations that “married women truly are the Gakkai’s driving force” ( fujin koso Gakkai no gendōryoku) and “the spread of kōsen rufu is in the hands of its Married Women” (kōsen rufu wa fujin no te de). Toda backed his support of women with references to the Nichiren Buddhist tradition. He discussed the dragon king’s daughter from the Devadatta chapter of the Lotus Sutra, a classic source in Buddhist scripture for considering women’s potential for enlightenment. When the dragon king’s daughter was told at the Lotus assembly that women were incapable of attaining Buddhahood, she immediately manifested the state of Buddhahood in her own body.14 Toda cited the conclusion of the Ongi kuden (Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings [of Nichiren]) in this regard: “as the sutra explains, because Śākyamuni, Mañjuśrī, Devadatta, and the dragon king’s daughter are all karmic results (kunō) of the singular seed of namu-myōhō-renge-kyō, all have already attained Buddhahood.”15 He turned to the Gosho to declare the superiority of Gakkai women over all others, male or female, by quoting Nichiren’s response to Shijō Kingō’s wife in the first month of 1275: “only in the Lotus Sutra can we see that women who uphold the sutra are not only superior to all other women but transcend all men.”16 At the same time that he praised women as the core of the Gakkai’s strength, Toda repeatedly resorted to misogynistic Buddhist explanations to diagnose problems that faced female adherents. He elaborated on Nichiren’s

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implication that women could realize their immanent Buddha nature. “The dragon king’s daughter was a dragon. There was no correcting this,” Toda cautioned the members. “[Just like] trying to remove things like jealousy ( yakimochi), greed for self-benefit (don’yoku), and ignorance ( guchi) from women—this is impossible. It’s obvious.”17 Gakkai women leaders under Toda also perpetuated an image of women as intrinsically flawed. They taught that, through Gakkai practice, women can undergo transformation of their karmic burden, though they struggle perpetually with flaws that men do not have. Inoue Shimako, the Married Women’s Division leader for Tokyo’s Bunkyō-ku District, penned an essay taken up by Soka Gakkai as the Women’s Credo (Fujinkun) in which she wrote that “we married women . . . unfortunately have a narrow outlook on life and our ignorance is great.” To overcome this burden, “we must recognize our own shortcomings, and while we weep over these faults, let us rely on the gohonzon.”18 Paradoxically, Gakkai leaders in the 1950s explicitly denigrated women as they appointed them to administrative positions which they were later prevented from occupying. In the early 1950s, women took the posts of regional administrator (shibu kanji) and district leader (chiku buchō), yet as the Gakkai administration expanded, women were relegated to positions in the Young Women’s and Married Women’s Divisions. Kashiwabara Yasu remained the only woman in Soka Gakkai to hold a top leadership position. She taught at the same elementary school as Makiguchi and joined Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai as a founding member. Kashiwabara was one of six executive directors (riji) present at the establishment of Soka Gakkai in May 1946. She was one of the first members to take the doctrinal rank of professor (kyōju), and was appointed first head of the postwar Soka Gakkai Married Women’s Division, a post she retained until 1968. In 1953, she was appointed ahead of male members as district leader (shibuchō) of the Suginami-ku District in Tokyo, and in 1956 she was one of the first Gakkai members to run for public office. She was elected as an independent to the Upper House in 1959, and when Komeito was founded in 1964 she was the only woman among eighteen members appointed to the party’s Central Administration (Chūō Kanbukai). In 1967, she became the Married Women’s Division leader for Komeito, a post she held until she retired in 1984. Until her death at eighty-nine in 2006, Kashiwabara remained a senior advisor to top Gakkai leadership. After Ikeda Kaneko, she is still the most high-profile woman in Gakkai history. She features prominently in The Human Revolution and The New Human Revolution as the character Kiyohara Katsu, and many other Gakkai sources reproduce her speeches and testimonials. Demonstrating that Gakkai women had the potential to rise within the organization and succeed impressively in professional pursuits outside the home, she consistently counseled women members to expand on their

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domestic roles. When she accompanied Ikeda Daisaku during his first overseas mission, to the United States in 1960, she urged Japanese women married to former US servicemen to become America’s “top ladies” (toppu redī) and to realize a “family revolution” (katei kakumei) by creating Gakkai households abroad. In Japan, Kashiwabara urged women to become politicians, company presidents, and PhDs, and she directed them to rule their families: “a woman will treat the master of the home as her seat cushion” (onna wa teishu o zabuton ni seyo). Nonetheless, as the Gakkai expanded institutionally under Ikeda Daisaku, women’s domesticity was emphasized with increasing conviction and female adherents were relegated to women-only roles in the group’s administration. This could be attributed in part to the Gakkai mandate to replicate appurtenances of the nation-state: to staff the mimetic equivalents of a state bureaucracy, wives and mothers were deemed necessary to guide children through the Gakkai’s educational apparatus. In the transition from Toda to Ikeda, Soka Gakkai shifted from a relatively narrow focus on Nichiren Buddhism to a more comprehensive engagement with society through culture. The Gakkai’s transformation into a culture movement offered women increased opportunities. In 1961, one year into his presidency, Ikeda established the Culture Bureau (Bunkakyoku), which operated as a forum for women members to engage in cultural activities to strengthen grassroots-level ties. Some of the earliest examples of women’s cultural engagement was the formation of women’s choruses across Japan. On September 5, 1962, the one-hundred-voice Shirayuri (White Lily) Choir was founded in Tokyo, taking its name from a poem written by Toda to the Married Women’s Division.19 Choruses were soon founded in other areas, all with names that stressed femininity through floral imagery, including the Akebono (Flowering Cherry) Choir in the Kansai region, and the Shiragiku (White Chrysanthemum) Choir in Japan’s Chūbu area around Nagoya. In a speech commemorating the Shirayuri Choir’s founding, Ikeda “humorously” reprised his mentor’s Buddhism-tinged rhetoric to describe benefits women would derive from singing in the choir: It is especially meaningful for Married Women’s Division members to be able to take part in a chorus. For married women, who carry on by force of habit, they mostly become tediously housewifely (nukamisokusai). Then they fail at their activities, and because of their ignorance ( guchi) and jealousy ( yakimochi) they experience no true development. Unfortunately, this has been the appearance of married women up to this point. Let the Married Women’s Division, as the pioneer of culture activities, make this choir its parent organization. I wish to see the Married Women’s Division grow to become the first phase of a world-class culture initiative.20

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However, from the 1960s, the overall use of terminology in Soka Gakkai that denigrated women’s nature eased somewhat as women members were called upon to increase their social and political engagements. In January 1966, sixty Married Women’s Division members met with Ikeda for the first of several tōronkai (debate sessions), which saw the emergence of a new generation of division leaders. In 1968, Kashiwabara stepped down as Married Women’s Division leader. This opened the door to women who came of age in the postwar era. The division adopted a new slogan in that year, shōgai, seishun (lifelong spring), which appealed to a new generation enthusiastic about youth. Division members were encouraged to become tetsugaku aru josei (women with a philosophy), and to become as informed and as energized as the Gakkai’s Youth Division. The year 1968 was a chaotic one in Japan. The streets of major cities were filled with demonstrations against the Vietnam War and the soon-to-be renewed US-Japan Security Treaty. Students shut down the campuses of the University of Tokyo and other schools, and the Married Women’s Division organized gatherings in keeping with the national sentiment of social revolution. In October 1968, the division launched the Tōkyō Shufu Dōmei (Tokyo Housewives’s Alliance) and the Hataraku Fujin no Kai (Working Wives’ Association). The Working Wives’ Association comprised numerous subgroups, each named for a different flower. The Nazuna (Shepherd’s Purse) group was for hostesses and women working in bars and restaurants; Himawari (Sunflower) for clothiers; Sakura (Cherry Blossom) for hairdressers; Nadeshiko (Pink) for nurses and midwives; Ayame (Iris) for insurance, sales, and related industries; Tsutsuji (Azalea) for laborers and school cafeteria employees; Sumire (Violet) for company and shop employees; and Tanpopo (Dandelion) for women who took on piecework. Around the same time, Soka Gakkai created new subgroups for Married Women’s Division members in the Salaried Employees Division (Shakaibu) and the Culture Division (Bunkabu). These subdivisions exemplify the obsessive extent to which the Gakkai codes its women with floral symbols. Today, flower names continue to dominate Young Women’s and Married Women’s Division subgroups, and the white lily remains the most prominent symbol for Gakkai women; Ikeda Kaneko uses the shirayuri (white lily) in her personal seal. The Working Wives’ Association sought to help women preserve their home-based responsibilities as wives and mothers while they worked outside the home and electioneered on behalf of Komeito. All of this exemplified what Soka Gakkai at that time called chūdō shugi (middle path-ism), a principle that drew on Buddhist tenets to appeal to people caught between skepticism about postwar capitalist society and antipathy toward the radicalism of socialist protestors.21 Division initiatives around this time formed part of a larger move by Soka Gakkai to organize the Married Women’s Division as a major political

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force. The January 1, 1968, edition of the Seikyō shinbun called for solidarity among Gakkai women to secure Komeito votes in the Lower House election of that year. In September 1968, Gakkai women urged candidates who were running in local city council elections to address concerns with rising taxes and a sudden surge in commodity prices. Soka Gakkai recognized its women as the organization’s primary mobilizing force, and Komeito campaigns have consistently appealed to women by opposing rising commodity prices, fighting government corruption, and improving citizens’ welfare.22 Also in 1968 Soka Gakkai opened its first middle school and high school in Tokyo and began its massive fundraising campaign to construct the great hall Shōhondō at Taisekiji. All of these efforts reflected the priorities of its female members: political policies that exerted an impact on homemakers, the education of Gakkai youth, and the creation of a magnificent memorial that both celebrated and depended on sacrifices by countless individual adherents. In 1969, a male administrator was appointed head of the Married Women’s Division for the first time. Although it can be interpreted as a move toward oppressing women members, male leadership also potentially lent the division greater weight within the Gakkai’s male-dominated culture and reflected the degree to which the administration sought to integrate the Married Women’s Division into the organization’s power structure. By 1969, Soka Gakkai had attained tremendous growth, attributable in large part to efforts of women. At a February 26 meeting that year, it was announced that Soka Gakkai had converted seven million households in Japan, that ten thousand members had passed doctrinal examinations to reach the rank of professor (kyōju), and that the group had already raised a staggering ¥35.5 billion to construct the Shōhondō. Komeito had also made impressive gains: By 1969, the party claimed 107 prefectural councilors, 1,211 members of city councils, 132 ward council members in metropolitan Tokyo, 590 town council members, and twenty-four Upper House and forty-seven Lower House representatives. Events surrounding the Gakkai’s attempt in 1969 to block the publication of Fujiwara Hirotatsu’s critical book I Denounce Soka Gakkai shaped the role of women in the organization. Already the target of considerable negative publicity before this scandal, Soka Gakkai became even more notorious for its political activities. With this scandal, the Married Women’s Division was vilified in the popular press as the shock troops of a Gakkai attempt to establish theocratic rule. On May 3, 1970, Ikeda Daisaku announced a new Gakkai policy of seikyō bunri (separation of politics and religion), and three days later, at a Married Women’s Division general meeting, Ikeda announced new priorities for women members. Henceforth, the division was to focus on educating children, securing the economic stability of the home, and promoting the study of culture and Buddhist doctrine. These goals appeared to augur a regression to a domestic impera-

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tive. At the same time, the organization developed more resources to mobilize Married Women’s Division members outside the home. In 1971, the division announced its theme as creating chiiki de shinrai sareru josei (women who can be trusted in the local area). To do this, they split division members into age-related subgroups. Married women in their twenties and thirties were delegated to the Yangu Misesu (Young Mrs.) group, and women over sixty were designated as members of the Shidōbu (Guidance) group. These subdivisions mirrored the Young Men’s and Men’s Divisions. Throughout the 1970s, the Married Women’s Division continued to broaden its mandate to include more sophisticated political engagements. Despite the putative separation of Soka Gakkai and Komeito, Gakkai women powered Komeito electioneering and also began to shape division activities along political lines. They engaged with particular intensity in social welfare issues as they published and lectured on such topics as violence in schools, students who refused to attend class, and other problems related to education and children. Slogans for the division of this era included banseki na katei (the family is a sturdy rock), a motto that the division still invokes today, and women were encouraged to become the katei no taiyō (sun of the family home), the family’s gravitational center and ever-cheerful source of illumination. As the prominence of the Married Women’s Division rose in the 1970s, so did the profile of Ikeda Kaneko. When Ikeda Daisaku became third president in 1960, Kaneko was a peripheral presence; she is a meek bit player in The Human Revolution, as we observed in chapter 3. However, she began to accompany Ikeda on overseas missions from 1975, and from this point began to appear at the center of group photographs of senior Gakkai administrators even though she did not hold an official position within the organization. As the Married Women’s Division continued to broaden its mandate, Ikeda Kaneko took on an increasingly public role. For decades, she addressed members at broadcasts and large meetings, and regularly received awards along with her husband, including honorary citizenships, doctorates, and professorships. For members, Kaneko’s profile escalated with the publication in 2005 of Kanekoshō (Selections from Kaneko), an edited compilation that consists of interviews and sentimental recollections of her unmei no deai (fateful meeting) with Daisaku, their marriage, and hints to readers on how to foster a happy family. The book is published by the non-Gakkai press Shufu no Tomo (Housewives’ Friend), a company that contributed significantly to the twentieth-century Japanese image of women as nurturing wives and frugal homemakers. This company’s magazine by the same name grew popular in the wartime years and by 1952 was the third-most popular magazine of any kind in Japanese homes.23 Kanekoshō does include passages that suggest to women readers that they may choose to pursue a life path other than that of a housewife. However, as the book begins with a preface by her son Hiromasa

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and is paired as the second volume in a box set called Meotoshishō (Selections for Husband and Wife) with a Shufu no Tomo-published book by Ikeda Daisaku titled Shin fujinshō: Kokoro ni hibiku kotoba (New Selections for Married Women: Words that Resonate in the Heart), it remains clear that Ikeda Kaneko’s place in the Gakkai leadership relies on an identity that perpetuates Japan’s good wife, wise mother ideal. The 1970s and 1980s saw Soka Gakkai’s self-characterization as an international peace movement expand. Soka Gakkai celebrates the origins of this movement with Toda Jōsei’s September 8, 1957, declaration against hydrogen bombs ( gensuibaku kinshi sengen), in which Toda called for the death penalty for anyone ordering their use. Nonetheless, the Gakkai did not primarily conceive of its mission in terms of a peace movement until the late 1970s. This transformation was propelled by the Married Women’s Division. In 1979, the Youth Division convened the Peace Association (Heiwa Kaigi), which included the Women’s Peace and Culture Committee (Josei Heiwa Bunka Iinkai). Also in 1979, the Married Women’s Division launched an International Division (Kokusaibu), an initiative that included sending a division envoy to the People’s Republic of China. The first Soka Gakkai International general meeting in 1980 included a Married Women’s Division peace committee, which the organization credits as the real beginning of the Gakkai’s peace movement and the inspiration for the more comprehensive 1982 Soka Gakkai Peace Committee. From this time, the Married Women’s Division produced publications that emphasized women as victims of war. At the 1984 Married Women’s Division general meeting, Ikeda announced points of guidance for women members: Married Women’s Division members were to pray for peace, to create the “flowering of wisdom” in their life activities, and to seek truth (kyūdō) and progress (shinpo). As peace envoys, Married Women’s Division responsibilities grew beyond the household to the international stage. In 1988, Ikeda declared May 3 to be Soka Gakkai’s Mother’s Day (haha no hi), and the organization’s women were declared mothers of kōsen rufu (kōfu no haha). May 3 is Soka Gakkai’s President’s Day, the date when both Toda and Ikeda were appointed to the top of Soka Gakkai, and is Ikeda Kaneko and Daisaku’s wedding anniversary. The 1988 declaration connected the Gakkai’s most celebrated date even more closely with women members. At the meeting, a proposal was made to create a Married Women’s Division flag, and an example was provided: a tricolor red, yellow, and blue design. This flag has subsequently been adopted as the flag for Soka Gakkai and Soka Gakkai International. Few members know that the Gakkai flag was a Married Women’s Division initiative. This is typical in Soka Gakkai, where it appears that the origin of many important Gakkai practices—the peace movement and Komeito campaigning, not to mention regular activities on the local level— grew out of Married Women’s Division efforts. The Gakkai administration

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continues to refine its structure to catch up to the reality that women make up the majority of its active membership even as it obscures the full extent to which it depends on its women to move forward. Since 1998, women members have been able to take the position of district head (chiku tantōin, or chikutan), which allows them to operate with the same authority as a Men’s Division district leader, and in the same year Soka Gakkai created the post of assistant district Married Women’s Division leader (chiku fuku fujinbuchō), which solidified the administrative presence of local women leaders. As these are strictly local-level posts, these moves have reinforced the association of women with the grassroots and do not provide opportunities for upward mobility. In the highest levels of the Gakkai administration, only the top leaders of the Young Women’s and Married Women’s Divisions participate in the Chūō Kaigi (Permanent Central Administration). Soka Gakkai has hundreds of vice presidents, not one of whom is a woman. Curiously, by barring women members from positions of administrative influence, Soka Gakkai may have strengthened an affective one-to-one bond between Gakkai women and Honorary President Ikeda. Many women adherents characterize Ikeda as someone who circumvents the massive and frequently troublesome bureaucracy that stands between him and them. They connect with him through an intimate bond that transcends bureaucratic channels. Mrs. Hashimoto and other women devotees may scrupulously observe administrative protocols, yet their connection with Ikeda is a relationship not limited by ranks or regulations. This connection grew stronger when Soka Gakkai was excommunicated from Nichiren Shōshū in 1991. No longer able to make the pilgrimage to the daigohonzon at Taisekiji, and faced with a sudden need to justify their claim on Nichiren’s teachings over and above priestly authority, Soka Gakkai’s women deepened their commitment to Ikeda as their spiritual guide and sole authority. Women members tend to characterize their bond with Ikeda as an unmediated connection to a parent, or to a cherished friend, and to a transcendent power. As they call on the gohonzon for guidance, they frequently invoke a triangular connection between themselves, Ikeda, and the object of worship. Where once members flocked to Taisekiji, now they flood into Shinanomachi to connect with Ikeda. And, in keeping with vocational responsibilities that have defined Gakkai women’s roles from the group’s origins, women members shape their homes into Gakkai spaces in which Ikeda persists as an immanent presence. The Gakkai Home as Private and Institutional Space “Soka Gakkai must look really weird to someone who hasn’t grown up in it,” muses Mrs. Watanabe as she rushes about the condominium. It is a Tues-

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day evening in late September 2007, and I am spending several days at the Watanabe family home in suburban Chiba Prefecture, just outside Tokyo. Mrs. Watanabe has just returned home from a long day at her full-time job teaching at an elementary school. She is talking to me and her seven-year-old daughter Fumika as she prepares dinner and sets up the condo for tonight’s kyōgikai, a planning meeting for district leaders to set the schedule of local Gakkai events. Fumika came home with her mother from her after-school program. Mr. Watanabe has not yet returned from his office in central Tokyo, where he works as a civil servant for the metropolitan Tokyo government’s Board of Education. Mrs. and Mr. Watanabe are second-generation Gakkai members. They both graduated from Tokyo’s Sōka Gakuen (High School) and Soka ­University—Mr. Watanabe attended Soka Middle School in Tokyo as well. They connected as university students in the early 1990s through their mutual involvement in the Soka University orchestra club, when Mr. Watanabe tutored his future wife on violin. The Watanabe family now lives in a well-appointed condominium on the tenth floor of a massive development in a Chiba suburb near Tokyo Disneyland. Fumika’s elementary school is visible from their balcony, a two-minute walk, and the enormous fake volcano at Disney Sea looms just a few kilometers away. Both parents commute long distances to their jobs. When they are not working, almost all of their time is consumed by Gakkai responsibilities. Every minute of every day must be rigorously scheduled. Mrs. Watanabe prepares curry rice and miso soup. She selects each numbered ingredient in order from a foam cooler by the door. Mrs. Watanabe subscribes to a grocery service that delivers coolers packed with dry ice full of ready-to-prepare meals, complete with detailed recipes and nutritional information. This service is particularly appealing to working mothers because it allows them to live up to the expectations that they prepare tezukuri (hand-made) meals for their children, a definitive aspect of a mother’s role in Japan.24 Fumika and I eat quickly, urged by Mrs. Watanabe to finish and help her clean up before members start arriving for the 7:30 p.m. meeting. Mrs. Watanabe eats standing up, grabbing bites between washing dishes, gathering clothes and toys, and rushing over to flick on the lights in the open altar that sits against the far wall of the living room. Her seemingly cavalier inclusion of Gakkai ritual into housework manifests in the living room, which represents a synthesis of Soka Gakkai and the things of everyday life. The altar sits against the middle of the back wall, between a television on the right and a small upright electric piano on the left. A giant Mickey Mouse watch hangs as a clock on the wall to the left of the altar. Beneath this is a low shelf loaded with twenty or thirty videotapes from Shinano Kikaku, the Gakkai video production company. Many are from the Taiwa shirīzu (Dialogue

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Series), produced for screening at study meetings, and a few are older (and now rare) titles, including video retrospectives on culture festivals (bunkasai) from more than ten years ago and a look back at the foundation of the Shōhondō in 1972. The shelf is also loaded with photographs, many of Ikeda Daisaku. A bronze frame holds two photographs, one a shot of Ikeda playing the piano, the other a photo, presumably taken by Ikeda, of flowering cherry blossoms. Above it hang a calendar distributed to Seikyō shinbun subscribers, and two Gakkai awards issued to Mrs. Watanabe for her contributions, each bearing Ikeda Daisaku’s red seal. In front of the shelf sits Mr. Watanabe’s folding music stand, which is loaded with the sheet music for several violin concertos, and the piano is covered in workbooks for Fumika’s music lessons. The Watanabes’ gohonzon is housed in a modern-looking wooden altar that, when closed, would appear as an unassuming cabinet.25 The Watanabe couple initially disagreed on the type of altar to buy for their home, but eventually went with Mrs. Watanabe’s preference for a low-key modern design over a more traditional, butsudan-rashii butsudan (appropriately altar-like) model Mr. Watanabe wished to select from the catalog.26 In any case, it is unmistakably a Buddhist altar. The shelf in front of the object of worship and the low table before the altar are loaded with standard ritual implements and handcrafted additions, making it impossible to close. Like the room that surrounds it, the altar presents a palimpsest of institutional objectives and life in the Watanabe home. A green construction paper clock made by Fumika that points perpetually at four o’clock sits beside a sheaf of lists for chanting objectives that are written out meticulously in Mrs. Watanabe’s hand. The lists form a kind of archaeology of supplication, with each page a new layer of personal aspirations fused with Gakkai objectives that proceed back in time: for the “self-erasure of Nikken” (Nikken bokumetsu),27 for the success of Komeito candidates in this past summer’s Upper House election, for a cure to Mrs. Watanabe’s chronic rheumatoid arthritis, for Fumika to one day meet Ikeda Daisaku. The entreaty for electoral victory is scratched out and the words arigatō gozaimashita!! (thank you very much) are written below, even though Komeito fell far short of the ten million-vote objective that Gakkai members pursued.28 Mrs. Watanabe’s list evokes the Gakkai’s campaign aesthetic: although they regularly commemorate the completion of arduous tasks, members are dissuaded from lingering on achievements, or, as in the case of the July 2007 electoral campaign, on disappointments. Old objectives are routinely set aside in a constant scramble forward toward a brilliant future. This aspirational tone resonates quietly through the Watanabe home. As casual as daily life feels here, Mrs. Watanabe’s objectives reinscribe the Gakkai’s institutional imperatives onto the family’s life. All three of us pitch in to tidy the living room and kitchen. Many

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wives in Japan regard kitchen and cleaning duties as sovereign territory and will allow only their closest women friends to help them with household chores. Mrs. Watanabe, however, often puts her husband to work sweeping and vacuuming, and she is happy to let me wash the dishes as she prepares the home for the meeting. Mrs. Watanabe encourages her daughter to help her straighten up the floor in front of the altar, which served early this morning as the stage for an elaborate play directed by Fumika that starred her large collection of stuffed animals. As we clean, Mrs. Watanabe tells me that, for her, Soka Gakkai has always been a natural part of her life, and because of this she has had difficulty explaining her faith to nonmembers. She tells me that she has only had one successful shakubuku so far, even though she introduced many friends in her youth to the practice and even convinced several of them to try chanting with her. At exactly 7:30 p.m., people start arriving. By the end of the evening seven local members of the Married Women’s Division and three men are present: the Branch Leader Mr. Matsubara, a gentleman in his seventies named Mr. Murao who arrives with his wife, and Mr. Watanabe, who left work earlier than usual to make it home by 8:30 p.m. One woman brings her daughter, who is Fumika’s age, and the two children spend the evening playing in Fumika’s bedroom and running around the apartment, squealing with laughter. The evening begins with the adults kneeling before the altar and intoning the daimoku sanshō, three repetitions of namu-myōhō-renge-kyō that mark the ceremonial beginning of any Gakkai event. The chant is led by Mr. Matsubara, a jolly man in his mid-seventies. After this, everyone takes a seat at the long dining room table that serves as the Watanabe household’s base of operations. The table is located next to the kitchen and faces the television and the gohonzon. It is where meals, homework, and Gakkai activities all take place. Mr. Matsubara sits at the head of the table and begins the meeting by passing out copies of a chart that reports the block’s numbers for shinbun keimō (newspaper enlightenment), or Seikyō shinbun subscriptions. He then moves quickly through three other orders of business. He tells us about a potential convert, an elderly gentleman who lives next to him in his condominium complex, for whom he has filled in a wish card (kibō kādo), an application for membership to send to Gakkai headquarters. Mr. Matsubara lays out meticulous information on this potential convert: his full name, year of birth (Taishō 12, or 1923), his address, his history to date with Soka Gakkai (which includes initial contacts up to five years ago), and personal problems he has dealt with recently, most of which are health-related. Mr. Matsubara then passes around a list of five people in the area (chiku) who are slated to take the appointment examination in November, listed by name and Gakkai subgroup affiliation. He asks that everyone chant for their success. Finally, he discusses a moving testimonial given by a Chiba-area member at a meet-

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ing for Young Men’s Division members two days ago. Potential converts who came to this meeting were particularly moved by this young man’s account of persevering through illness and divorce, he tells us. Mr. Matsubara’s report lasts a little more than ten minutes. After this, he cedes the floor to Mrs. Yoshida, the area’s Married Women’s Division leader, who, though nominally lower than Mr. Matsubara in the Gakkai hierarchy, essentially takes over. She spends more than an hour setting the agenda for the upcoming month. The assembled members plan to hold an area festival (chiiki fesutā), a family event where members can invite nonmember friends to enjoy events in an atmosphere that displays no overt Soka Gakkai content. The men remain silent as the Married Women’s Division members discuss several options for the festival, including baking a chiffon cake, holding a choir concert or staging a chamber music recital, making dumplings, or leading a bus tour to Tokyo Disneyland. After a discussion that calls on the opinions of all of the women, they settle on bacon-making (bēkon-zukuri), an outdoorsy cookout activity held last year to a positive reception. Everyone who took part took home heaps of delicious bacon, they remember, and it created a positive environment in which members and nonmembers could interact. The bacon-making will be supplemented by a short chamber concert, for which Mrs. Watanabe volunteers Mr. Watanabe in his absence. Mr. Watanabe arrives home minutes later and learns about his upcoming performance, just as Mr. Matsubara begins putting the women members’ plans into motion by calling a local shop to book bacon-making. Mrs. Yoshida then pulls out a flyer for a Komeito candidate who is running in a local election in another Chiba Prefecture city. She passes around this advertisement, which was faxed to her home, makes sure that everyone there records the candidate’s name, and urges the members to spread the word to anyone in that municipality to vote for her. Announcements like this for Komeito candidates are common at Gakkai meetings, as are coordinated electioneering efforts, despite the nominal separation between Soka Gakkai and its political affiliate.29 After this, the crowded schedule for the rest of the month is discussed in great detail. A Gakkai activity is slated for almost every day of the coming month. This schedule does not take into account many other events held by subgroups, such as the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Divisions, the Men’s Division, or the activities of the Doctors’ Group, Artists’ Group, and others to which members in the district also belong. The assistant district Married Women’s Division leader then elaborates on the newspaper enlightenment results Mr. Matsubara introduced. In September, members in the district recorded twenty-six new subscriptions for a total of sixty-five points for the month. The assembled members greet this news with applause. The total for this year is 624 points, she tells us, still 201 shy of the 2007 district objective of 825 points.30 “Let’s try to raise our

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totals to one hundred points per month from now on,” she urges everyone, “so that we can exceed our goal.” Talk then moves on to conversion efforts. This conversation takes the form of creating a list of people whom the members have approached this month. One woman talks about her neighbor, a woman in her forties, who reacted vehemently against attempts to solicit her vote for Komeito but agreed to take a month’s subscription to the Seikyō shinbun. More stories follow from the other members at the table. Another woman talks about a school classmate whom she approached to convert only to learn that another member had already “scooped” her two years ago by getting the classmate to subscribe to the newspaper. Mrs. Matsuo tells a story about she and her husband making a trip out to a town on Chiba’s Pacific shore to see one of their nephews about converting, only to be rebuffed. She sums up the encounter sardonically: “He doesn’t have interest in religion. We were defeated” (shūkyō to kanshin nai. Yararechatta). The Married Women’s Division leader assembles information on the potential converts by name, sex, age, and address to compose a list for every member to put on her home altar. Mr. Watanabe dutifully records all of this information in a notebook. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Matsubara resumes his leadership role. He announces that Mr. Watanabe has passed the interview process at Soka Gakkai’s Chiba Prefecture level and has been appointed district manager (chiku kanji), which makes him responsible for the district’s membership roster and accounts. Matsubara once again asks everyone to chant for the success of those taking the appointment examination, to chant for newspaper enlightenment, and for successful conversion efforts. The meeting ends officially with three chants of namu-myōhō-renge-kyō led at the altar by Mr. Matsubara. Later that evening, after the guests have departed, Mrs. Watanabe kneels before the altar on the special low padded stool that allows her, with her rheumatoid arthritis, to approximate the seiza position. Mr. Watanabe kneels behind her. Mrs. Watanabe asks Fumika, who is still running back and forth between the living room and her bedroom, if she would like to join them for the evening recitation. “Hm,” Fumika responds. “You don’t have to, you know,” says her mother. “Either way is fine,” her daughter says. “That’s not good enough,” answers Mrs. Watanabe. “Either you decide you definitely want to chant, or don’t do it.” Fumika plays happily with her toys behind us in the living room and her mother beats the small chime on the altar three times to signal the beginning of gongyō. She gestures behind her, inviting me to join them should I so wish, and hands me a small kyōbon (liturgy). I kneel behind her husband, raise my hands in prayer, holding the small book close to eye level between thumbs and forefingers while I train my gaze at the object of worship. Later, I mention to Mr. Watanabe that I was struck by the fact that it was his wife and not he who led the chanting session; I have oth-

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erwise observed that, in other households, the husband often leads gongyō. “It’s always been that way in our house,” he tells me. “She is superior to me” (kanojo no hō ga erai desu). He says this sincerely, without irony. The Watanabe family leads a happy and harmonious life. Harmony, however, is achieved thanks to Mrs. Watanabe’s extraordinary capacity for organization and to Mr. Watanabe’s willingness to cede authority on all matters on the home front. Mrs. Watanabe is able to actualize the Married Women’s Division ideal only through hard work, by taking advantage of time-saving solutions, and by building her cooperative family’s sequence of everyday activities around a schedule determined by Gakkai priorities. For Mrs. Watanabe, everyday life is Soka Gakkai practice. Mrs. Watanabe does not hold a lofty administrative position—she was a comparatively humble assistant district Married Women’s Division leader ( fuku chiku fujinbuchō) at the time of this September 2007 evening. Yet she, along with her fellow division members, clearly occupies a commanding position among local leaders. Mr. Matsubara may sit at the head of the table, but Mrs. Watanabe and the other women control Gakkai activity at the local level. The home, Soka Gakkai’s staging ground, is a realm created by women, one rendered ambiguous through a fusion of domestic and institutional mandates. Because Soka Gakkai relies on the household as its basic unit, it necessarily relies on women to transform their private domain into a public forum open to frequent visitors. Mrs. Watanabe must shape the family’s domestic routine around administrative responsibilities that infuse the intimate zone where she and her husband raise their daughter. Quotidian events of the Watanabe household are manifestly woven into the Gakkai’s greater mission. Soka Gakkai’s success as an institution depends upon the stability of the family. But what happens when a Gakkai household falls apart? Perhaps most fraught for Soka Gakkai are dilemmas that arise when a member is victimized by parents who are themselves devotees. How does a survivor of a traumatic Gakkai home go about constructing her life, and how does she come to terms with faith? When the Home Is Compromised: Miho’s Struggle “It was only many years later, after I started therapy, that I learned what happened to me was abuse.” It is December 6, 2007, and I am meeting Miho at her condominium in Osaka. Miho is in her late thirties. She is approximately the same age as Mrs. Watanabe, and like Mrs. Watanabe was born into a Gakkai family. Also like Mrs. Watanabe, and the other Gakkai women who have appeared in this chapter, she is a married woman who chants daily and reveres Ikeda Daisaku. However, unlike the others, she is not committed to the Married Women’s Division, and she almost never operates within the institution.

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Miho almost never leaves her condominium. She lives with four cats she rescued from neighborhood parks, and her husband, who is only home intermittently on brief furloughs between long business stints overseas. About one year ago, Miho began to emerge from an intense depression that had left her incapacitated for more than a decade. I first met Miho in 1998 when I became friends with her husband, who was one of the first Gakkai members I met in Japan. Her husband told me that she was experiencing some difficulties at that time, but it was only when I spoke with Miho years later that she told me the full extent of her problems. Miho was physically and psychologically damaged in a Gakkai home by a father who used Soka Gakkai teachings as part of his arsenal of abuse. Nonetheless, Miho turned to Gakkai practice to work her way out of mental illness. The single most formative influence in Miho’s life is her father. Father figures dominated in our conversations. Her father, who is a restaurant chef, her mother, her younger sister, and she lived in a small city in Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four major islands. Her mother had converted to Soka Gakkai before she was born, but her father had resisted for many years. When Miho was twelve years old, her father picked up the first volume of The Human Revolution. Though he had limited formal education, he was always reading, she tells me. This novel has interesting things to say, he announced, and he read all of the volumes in their entirety. After this, he essentially self-converted to Soka Gakkai. He went to a Nichiren Shōshū temple to receive an object of worship, and he brought with him his assistant from the restaurant, a young man who suffered from schizophrenia. “On the day my father converted, he already had one conversion of his own” (shakubuku ichi), Miho tells me. “This was typical of him.” Miho’s father was as proud as he was intense. After his conversion, he still had to learn how to chant gongyō. For close to a year, he would lock himself in the room with the family altar and close the blinds, not wanting his family to witness him working through the prayer book at an agonizingly slow pace. Miho’s home was not a happy place. Her father was an alcoholic and a violent drunk. At first, when she was a child, her parents would fight when she and her sister were asleep, but would stop fighting if they woke up. Gradually, her father started punching and kicking her mother in front of her, and when Miho got older, he started beating her as well. “I didn’t know this wasn’t normal,” she tells me. “I thought this was what life as a kid was like.” But she knew that she was unhappy. School was not a refuge for Miho. She rebelled against her school’s many rules and found her teachers unimaginative and dull. Miho’s parents sent her and her sister to Gakkai activities aimed at middle and high school students, but she and her sister found these boring. They would often skip the meetings and lie to their parents, saying they had attended. “We were typical second-generation Gakkai kids that way,” she

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laughs. Miho had few friends and she became increasingly introverted in her teenage years. She would stay home during the day and listen to music on her headphones for hours at a time, singing along to her favorite rock songs so loudly that neighbors sometimes called the police. Just before she turned seventeen, she began to read The Human Revolution. She was particularly struck by the episode when Ikeda, as his alter ego Yamamoto Shin’ichi, attends his first study meeting and meets Toda Jōsei for the first time. The novel expanded her perspective. Why was I born as the person that I am? Where does life come from, and where is it going? She came to the realization that her personal concerns were tiny in comparison with these questions. She grew determined to live her life as a good person, with a greater concern for well-being. “I knew at that point that I had to leave home,” she says. On her seventeenth birthday, Miho applied for and was accepted to a position as an office worker at a large company in Osaka. She left home with a bare minimum of possessions: two suits to wear at work, some cosmetics required for her new position, and an alarm clock. Though Osaka is relatively close to Shikoku, her father only came to visit her once while she was working at the company, when he was in the city for his own work-related reasons. He brought with him several pieces of luggage packed with items to supplement her meager belongings, and he took her to a Soka Gakkai bookshop. “Tell me which of these books you have not yet read and I’ll buy them for you.” Miho understood his intent. With his daughter living in a place beyond his supervision, he felt that as long as she was still being instructed by Soka Gakkai he could be assured that she would be all right. The book she remembers her father buying her was Ikeda Daisaku’s Joseishō (Writings for Women). Her first two years in the company dormitory were trying. She roomed with colleagues who objected to Soka Gakkai and would not let her enshrine a gohonzon. She was forced to chant morning gongyō kneeling on the building’s stone foyer and evening gongyō either at a nearby Nichiren Shōshū temple or the home of a Married Women’s Division leader who would leave her door open for Miho to come in to chant. During her second year in the dormitory, she called her father to ask him to help her move into her own apartment. He accused her of being weak in her faith. “Only when you cease calling to cry about your problems will good things start to happen for you,” he told her. “Go ask your roommates again if you can install the gohonzon.” She did this, and they once again refused. Her father then grudgingly agreed to help her move out. Around this time, she participated enthusiastically in local Young Women’s Division activities. “I took part in every activity and every meeting. I mean, everything,” she says. She was especially involved in Komeito electioneering and in soliciting Seikyō shinbun subscriptions. Miho enjoyed asking people at her company to sign up for one month or two months of the

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newspaper so that her district could add new subscriptions to their tally. “This was fun,” she says. When she turned twenty, the coming-of-age year in Japan, her father bought her Soka Gakkai’s multivolume Nichiren Daishōnin jiten (Great sage Nichiren dictionary), a resource produced for doctrinal study. Her mother complained; young women coming of age should get kimono, she said, not giant reference works. “Nonsense,” said her father. “This is all she will ever need.” You can turn to this when you are reading the Gosho, he told his daughter. “My father is one who is never unsure of his direction” (mayoi no nai hito), says Miho. “When he decides on something, he puts himself to work on it with maximum effort.” People like this are important, she says. “Important for Soka Gakkai.” Miho’s life seemed to improve through her twenties. She got married, quit working at her company, and moved with her husband into a larger apartment. In the spring of 1996, shortly after their wedding, she and her new husband went to see her family in Shikoku. This turned into a visit that ruined her mental health. During a family dinner, she argued with her father. He launched into his most vicious verbal attack on her. “You, you’re useless. Just go and die. You are not necessary for kōsen rufu. Why don’t you just kill yourself?” Five minutes passed, then ten, while her father continued to abuse her and she stood silent, listening. Finally, distraught, she ran out of the house into the night toward the nearby sea. Her husband and sister searched the neighborhood for her on bicycle. Her sister finally spotted Miho wading out to drown herself. Her husband dove in and pulled her to shore. “What are you doing?” her sister screamed at her. It was only then that Miho started crying. The entire time that her father berated her, she stayed strong, she tells me, but “when I heard my sister ask this, I could not stop sobbing.” Miho returned to Osaka in a deep shock. For the first year and a half after her suicide attempt, she was essentially catatonic. She underwent periods when she would not rise from her futon for days on end, afraid of being unable to resist throwing herself from the balcony of her apartment or hanging herself. She became violent, toward herself and her husband. She would attack her husband with kitchen knives, and it reached the point where he would go to work with a bag full of all of the cords and sharp implements from the house, afraid that she would attempt suicide in his absence or attack him at the door when he returned. “At first, I thought that I would get better quickly. I soon realized that that idea was a joke.” Although she credits therapy and prescription medications for helping her, Miho stresses that what pulled her back from the brink was reading. Approximately a year and a half after her breakdown, she began to keep a journal in which she recorded her thoughts on books she borrowed from a bookmobile that operated in her neighborhood. From September 1997 to July

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1998, she filled a thick journal with page after page of carefully composed impressions of one hundred and one books. This period of intensive selfguided study made Miho determined not to let her experience with domestic trauma lead her toward moral corruption or violence against others. In July 1998, she developed a passion for the novels of Miyamoto Teru, in whom she discovered important connections: he was Osaka-based, a devout Gakkai member, and suffered from debilitating social anxiety. His novels deal with family strife, loss, suicide, and depression. Miho discovered Gakkai publications that included testimonials by Miyamoto and encouragements he received directly from Ikeda Daisaku, such as “let a writer of the wondrous dharma emerge!” (myōhō no sakka o ideyō). She was surprised to find that Miyamoto himself participated frequently on an online message board dedicated to his work. In response to a message Miho wrote on her fears about suicide, Miyamoto asked her to place her life in the context of the cosmos. Thinking that one is going to die is not a great concern in the grand scheme of things. Imagine your countless existences at lower realms, your innumerable lifetimes as animals. Every person has lived, and every person dies. No matter your kokoro no byōki (illness of the heart or spirit) you must practice being calm by repeating to yourself, “I am good. Existing is all right.” “Miyamoto Teru reminds me of my father,” Miho tells me. “I’m not sure why, but there’s just something about him.” Thereafter, she returned to reading The Human Revolution. In October 2007, two months before our conversation, she made a rare trip out of her home to attend a satellite broadcast at a local culture center at which the famed jazz musician Herbie Hancock, a devout Gakkai member, made an inspiring appearance. “I can’t go on like this,” she decided during that broadcast. Staying in the house all day every day, feeding her cats, reading books. “I remember the great inspiration I received when I first read the novel as a teenager,” she says, “so I sought out this experience again. I decided ‘let’s return to origins’ ( genten ni modorō) by reading The Human Revolution. Second- and third-generation members, we’re not like first-generation converts. We need to be reminded that this religion is amazing.” As a child in Gakkai meetings, she never felt an emotional connection to the group. It was only through personal reflection on the novel, she tells me, that she truly understood Ikeda Daisaku’s sugosa, his “amazingness.” In meetings for Gakkai youth, children are consistently encouraged to declare in testimonials that they want to do the same things as Ikeda. “I’m always suspicious of a child who claims to have been affected emotionally by a speech given by an adult. ‘Is that kid all right?’ I think to myself. Formulaic teaching to kids—this is not how they learn the real value of a religion.” Miho stresses that members have to be motivated themselves, have to go through

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tough life experiences that inspire “let’s do it!” ( yarō) moments. She sees child members who imitate adults by giving model testimonials and making declarations as dangerous and unnatural. “All of the kids at Gakkai schools grow up like this,” she tells me. “They’re trained to shout ‘I will become Yamamoto Shin’ichi!’ and quote long passages from Ikeda’s novel. How will you become Yamamoto Shin’ichi? What will you do, exactly, to become him? Mere imitation is wrong. How will you pursue a faith that is true to yourself? Can you do this in an organization within which it is increasingly difficult to say what you really want to say, where everyone always says the same thing and applauds one another?” Now, Miho only occasionally attends satellite broadcasts and never goes to other Gakkai meetings. The broadcasts are the real thing (honmono), she tells me, where Ikeda’s sincerity (shinkensa) is transmitted. Miho says that she is unimpressed with the routine at local meetings. “Everyone comes once a month at 7:00 p.m., does the same series of things, says the obvious things, then leaves immediately. When I’ve gone, I’m left thinking, ‘why did we even get together?’ No one leaves thinking, ‘Ikeda is wonderful! Faith is wonderful! I feel that I can face tomorrow with greater hope!’ I used to have those kinds of study meetings at my family home,” she recalls. “My father would go off on long speeches. He would not hold to the typical ‘every person says something’ (hitori hatsugen) practice of all other meetings. Some people like to talk, others don’t want to say anything. When someone speaks who doesn’t want to be talking, who would be moved by hearing him?” Miho has not seen her father since her breakdown. When I met with her in 2007, her daily life was ordered by Gakkai practice: reading Gakkai publications and regular chanting every morning and evening. She had recently weaned herself of sleeping pills through several months of concentrated gongyō. I ask her if she has done anything with the local Married Women’s Division. “No,” she responded. Did they ever come to her house to check up on her, I ask, thinking of katei hōmon (home visits), a regular division practice. “Once, maybe twice, two of them came by unannounced. I think they could tell that I did not like them.” As a woman with no children and no interest in the Married Women’s Division, Miho defies Gakkai expectations about how a woman member should carry out her duties to the organization. No one, however, could question her dedication to Gakkai practice, or her commitment to Ikeda Daisaku. Unresolved tensions hang over Miho’s experience: Soka Gakkai’s twin legacies of Nichiren Buddhism and humanism were wielded against Miho by her father as tools of abuse, but they also served as her way of escaping self-destruction. Even when the Gakkai household is compromised, its teachings can enable traumatized individuals to recover by placing themselves back within Soka Gakkai’s dramatic narrative.

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The Future of Soka Gakkai’s Married Woman Ideal Inose Yūri, in her study of how Gakkai families work to transmit faith generationally, presents a wealth of data to demonstrate that children born to Soka Gakkai households will practice if they are cultivated to do so by their mothers; their fathers play a measurable but less important role in this regard. A key factor in instilling Gakkai loyalty is the level of the mother’s faith when the child is in middle school, the years when Gakkai children take on leadership responsibilities in the Future Division.31 Just as middle school is devoted to exam preparation for entry into high school, so do the ages of twelve to fourteen determine whether a Soka Gakkai child will enter the group’s administrative ranks and proceed through the group’s mimetic version of education for civil service. The systems that enable both high school entrance exams and entry into Soka Gakkai are predicated on mothers’ sacrifices. Inose analyzes Gakkai publications that present a set testimonial pattern in which children express gratitude to their mothers, whose actions serve as a model of forbearance for them to emulate. Mother and child develop dedication and tenacity together as they participate in Gakkai activities, where they learn from the writings and biographical example of Ikeda Daisaku.32 However, Married Women’s Division members are perpetually torn between conflicting and unresolvable priorities that challenge their capacity to fulfill this responsibility to instill faith in their children. Gakkai mothers maintain the family home, yet Gakkai campaigns pull them away from their domestic roles. At times, conflicting loyalties produce lasting resentment, as we saw in the fraught relationship between Mrs. Hashimoto and her son Yasuo. For Mrs. Hashimoto, her Gakkai devotion simultaneously assuaged and produced crises in her life, and her dedication to Soka Gakkai certainly left Yasuo bitter about his upbringing. Paradox also hangs over Miho’s Gakkai experience, as the faith her father employed as a way of destroying her mental health also gave her the resources to survive his abuse. Even in what we might call this chapter’s happy case, that of the Watanabe family, it is far from clear that Fumika will follow in her mother’s footsteps. Exposing Fumika to Soka Gakkai in an organic fashion by transforming the Watanabe home into a local base of operations, and letting her take part in chanting, or not, by her own volition certainly made Gakkai practice a stress-free proposition for her. But whether she will take up the responsibilities demanded by the Married Women’s Division when she gets older is an open question. Women coming of age within Soka Gakkai today may find the Gakkai’s gendered expectations increasingly alien. It is difficult to imagine that an entire generation of women will willingly take on the conflicting domestic and institutional priorities that shaped their mothers’ lives. It is even more difficult to imagine that nonmember women, in any numbers, will be inspired to

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168  Chapter 6

convert to a religion that persists in limiting its women adherents to local-level administration and an idealized version of maternal femininity conceived in a previous century. Although the Married Women’s Division appears to have developed historically in ways that reflect a concern for its members’ everyday concerns, it is unclear whether the group fully acknowledges the burden it places on married women. It is not difficult to imagine that for every happy child like Fumika there is a corresponding Yasuo, resentful of the sacrifices Soka Gakkai has demanded and living with conflicting pieties borne of a fraught upbringing within the faith. Reasons for why the Gakkai persists in promoting the ideal of women as wives and mothers are persuasive. It is expedient for Soka Gakkai to retain the socially conservative model of a household held together by a housewife charged with raising the next generation of Gakkai adherents. Just as the modern Japanese state supported the housewife track as a professional designation, Soka Gakkai’s nation-like apparatus has clung to the housewife ideal. The Married Women’s Division has pioneered many of the Gakkai’s institutional developments that are mimetic of the nation: armies of committed division members who guard the home front, cultivate Gakkai-focused families, and engage local communities through well-organized campaigns to pursue institutional expansion. However, it may be difficult for Soka Gakkai to maintain its gender-​ based administrative conventions for a number of reasons. Simply put, Soka Gakkai is so ubiquitous within Japanese society that it must necessarily follow the nation’s demographic trends. Today, as Japan faces a chronic labor shortage and dismal predictions about its economic future, women are entering the workforce in higher numbers, marrying later, if at all, and often choosing to not have children. In response to a June 2015 survey of eighteen- to thirty-four-year-olds by Japan’s National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS), the proportion of young never-married Japanese women who saw full-time housewife as an ideal life course dropped to 7.5 percent. The largest percentage of respondents, still fewer than one-third (28.2 percent), regarded managing both work and family as ideal.33 Japan maintains one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. In 2005, Japan’s rate hit a historic low of 1.26 babies per woman, and in 2006, children fourteen years and under made up only 13.5 percent of the population, one of the lowest percentages of any nation.34 In 2015, a record low 635,000 couples in Japan were married, part of a long downward trend. In 2005, 59 percent of women age twenty-five to twenty-nine remained unmarried, whereas in 1975 90 percent were married by the time they reached thirty. On average, women in Japan who married in 2015 were 29.4 years old.35 These figures may be attributable to the fact that young women and men are increasingly unlikely to even spend time with one another: the IPSS found that in 2015, 69.8 percent of

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Good Wives, Wise Mothers, and Foot Soldiers of Conversion  169

single men and 59.1 percent of single women reported not having any relationship with the opposite sex. Soka Gakkai’s stark gender gap may appear old-­fashioned, but, it does seem to reflect pervasive Japanese social divisions. At the current fertility rate, Japanese government projections indicate that, by 2055, the population will drop from today’s approximately 127 million people to 89.9 million, and that more than 40 percent of people in Japan will be over the age of sixty. Given this dramatic drop, it will be important to observe whether the Gakkai administration adjusts its claim of 8.27 million households in Japan. Because this membership claim rests on households, it necessarily depends on the dedication of the Married Women’s Division. And, as Japanese women distance themselves from the domestic track and the number of children declines, reliance on Gakkai women codified as wives and mothers will grow increasingly strained. Justifications for perpetuating the woman-as-homemaker ideal are evaporating, even as institutions like Soka Gakkai encourage women to preserve the natalist ethos of earlier generations. Miho is clearly an extreme case, but she perhaps exemplifies some of the dilemmas that face Soka Gakkai today. She represents a move away from the good wife, wise mother ideal that powered the rise of modern Japan: unlike members in previous generations who sought upward mobility within Soka Gakkai’s bureaucratic framework and equated their objectives with the Gakkai’s institutional aims, Miho deals only with personal crises. In this regard, Miho may be typical of younger members, who seek to realize personal aspirations that may not cohere with the self-sacrifice to institutions that Soka Gakkai demands. The organization does not seem well equipped to shift away from its mass mobilization that resulted in stunning successes in Japan’s era of rapid growth. Because of this, it may be alienating some of those who are otherwise committed to its ideals.

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Afterword Vocational Paths

THE FIRST MEMBER I MET WHEN I began fieldwork in 2000 was Mrs. Shibata. After my wife Lauren and I moved into a small apartment in Narashino City, a Chiba Prefecture suburb about an hour by train from central Tokyo, I contacted a Gakkai member friend I knew through a former employer to ask about subscribing to the Seikyō shinbun. I left a note for the person who delivered the paper to introduce myself: a researcher from Canada, affiliated with the University of Tokyo, interested in learning about life inside local Gakkai communities. The delivery person, a Married Women’s Division member in her fifties, responded positively to my message and to my follow-up request to observe local zadankai study meetings. Mrs. Shibata opened her home to me. She would leave me long, kindly worded letters when she delivered the paper asking about me and my wife. She and her fellow local members welcomed me to meetings at her home and in other members’ homes, and she would drive me to satellite broadcasts at a nearby Soka Gakkai Culture Center. On October 23, 2000, Lauren went to see a doctor at the University of Tokyo hospital, worried about nerve troubles. The doctor identified what he described as a critical neurological condition. “If it’s cancer, we can’t operate here,” he told us as he pointed to a white dot that popped out from the middle of her brain on an MRI scan. We were terrified about what might happen. Lauren flew to New York to consult with a neurosurgeon at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, and I remained behind to take care of loose ends as best I could before flying out a day later. As I was cleaning the apartment on October 25, the night before my flight to New York, there was a knock at the door. There stood Mr. Inoue, a district Men’s Division leader I had met 170

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Vocational Paths  171

once or twice before at local assemblies. Mrs. Shibata stood behind him, an anxious look on her face. “If you chant to the gohonzon, your wife will get well,” Inoue asserted. He urged me to join him and Mrs. Shibata at her home for a chanting session: “Come with us now.” I have no time for this, I told him, and closed the door in his face. I was disgusted by Inoue’s attempt to exploit my grief, and I told myself that the visit was his idea and not Mrs. Shibata’s. But I was a bit angry at Mrs. Shibata as well. I had repeatedly stressed to all the local members that I was there as a researcher, not as an aspiring member. “This is what I always tell first year med students: never believe anything you see in one picture.” In New York, several days later, Lauren and I sat across a desk from one of the world’s most prominent neurosurgeons. There was no dot on the new fMRI image we looked at together; the first scan produced a technical glitch, and the University of Tokyo doctor made a faulty prognosis based on that. “I never get to give people good news. Get out of my office!” he shouted happily. Weeks passed before we returned to our Chiba apartment. It was strange to be back; I had prepared myself to never see Japan again. In late November, I rang the doorbell at Mrs. Shibata’s apartment. She greeted me happily and apologized for our last meeting. More than anything, she worried that she ruined our friendship when she let Inoue talk her into visiting me at what she knew would be my lowest moment. When I told her about the University of Tokyo doctor’s mistake, Mrs. Shibata looked relieved, but not surprised. She then told me about the local members’ chanting campaign on Lauren’s behalf. “As soon as we learned about Lauren’s health, we set up a schedule.” For six weeks, ten local members, most from the Married Women’s Division, chanted every day in half-hour shifts from 7:00 a.m. to noon at their Buddhist altars, concentrating their chant on Lauren’s recovery. When one member completed her chant, she would call the next person on a list Shibata created for this task. Sometimes the members would gather for a shōdaikai, an hours-long group chanting session, on Lauren’s behalf. Mrs. Shibata revealed that a young man whom her daughter had recently started dating was so impressed when he saw her family chanting together for the health of a nonmember—one who did not even know this was happening— that he agreed to convert, a decision he had wavered on for some time. He eventually received a gohonzon on December 2, 2000. My friendship with the Shibata family anchored my life in Japan, even as our relationship experienced ups and downs. Mrs. Shibata ambushed me one more time about a year later, again under Mr. Inoue’s direction. I showed up for what I thought was coffee and a chat to find Inoue, another more senior Men’s Division leader, and Shibata seated before her altar. Mr. Inoue told me the three of them were gravely concerned about what would befall me should I not receive my own gohonzon, and considered by atten-

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172  Afterword

dance at Gakkai meetings to that point as sufficient time spent practicing to warrant membership. Mrs. Shibata even had a kibō kādo (wish card) filled out for me, complete with a photo of my face cut from a group picture of a recent block meeting. After I responded negatively and walked out, Mrs. Shibata and I patched up our relationship once again. “My son would have been almost exactly your age,” she told me quietly, tears on her face; he had died when he was only one year old. We seemed to reach an understanding after that. Mrs. Shibata brought me to block and district study meetings, where I learned the rhythm of member testimonials and how they engaged with Gakkai texts. Mrs. Shibata was the local delivery person for the Seikyō shinbun. On two occasions, she allowed me to follow her on her early-morning bicycle route around the neighborhood, which she began every day just before 5:00 a.m., no matter the weather. She taught me the trick to silently clicking the bicycle stand into place to not wake people in surrounding apartments. She told me which households took additional publications such as the Kōmei shinbun (Komeito party newspaper), and how to carefully fold the papers to slip them soundlessly through mail slots. She talked enthusiastically of how her delivery duties initiated her into a select circle. The Gakkai maintains its Delivery Division (Haitatsubu) that holds special chanting meetings at Shinanomachi to pray for the safety of its members. Also, she got to know young men who delivered the Yomiuri and Asahi newspapers. Mrs. Shibata felt that she had joined a special club of early-morning workers that those in normal jobs didn’t quite understand, she told me. These young men agreed to subscribe to the Seikyō shinbun, but they deflected her efforts to bring them to Gakkai meetings. Gradually, it became clear to me that Mrs. Shibata conceived of her Gakkai responsibilities in vocational terms. Her attempts to convert me were certainly driven by personal motivations, but they were also part of a long list of what should be thought of as professional responsibilities that came with her practice. In November 2007, I met with Mrs. Shibata after a bit of a hiatus. She had moved from Chiba to a suburb of Nagoya in central Japan to join Mr. Shibata, who had been moved by his company to work at a factory in the region. She looked exhausted; she was spending almost every day traveling back and forth between her city and a neighboring municipality, which had called in Married Women’s Division members to help with Komeito electioneering. “They call Nagoya the ‘Democratic Party Kingdom,’ ” she sighed. Komeito didn’t stand a chance. Electioneering was piled atop her duties as the block Married Women’s Division leader, her participation in local study sessions, and a host of other responsibilities. “I look forward to retiring around the age of sixty,” she told me. “I’d like to take part in volunteering, helping with social welfare programs. But that will have to wait until I can suspend my Gakkai duties” ( yakushoku).

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Vocational Paths  173

My initial reaction was cynical. “Retire from what?” I wondered. Mrs. Shibata had never earned a salary. On reflection, I changed my mind. For Mrs. Shibata, Soka Gakkai membership was an occupation that warranted retirement in the same way that a lifetime in civil service should end with a well-deserved release from onerous responsibilities. Mrs. Shibata passed the age of sixty, and though she did pull back somewhat from intense Gakkai activity—having been advised to do so by a concerned doctor—day in and day out, her life continued to be informed by Married Women’s Division events. Just as abandoning a vocation would be far more difficult than quitting an ordinary job, extrication from Gakkai duties was not something Mrs. Shibata could carry out with ease. A vocation, literally a “calling,” is not something one ceases to heed while remaining true to ethical commitments.1 Some members conceive of their non–Soka Gakkai labor as a contribution to their Gakkai vocational duties. This was certainly true for Mrs. Kumano, the member who traveled from Nagoya to Kyushu with her mother and sister to meet with me at the Hashimoto home. Mrs. Kumano is a gregarious woman, with a huge smile, an even bigger laugh, and seemingly inexhaustible energy. She characterized her role in life as seeking to contribute materially to Soka Gakkai in monetary terms, given that she and her husband have no children. When I went with her to Shinanomachi in November 2007, she introduced herself to fellow members, including strangers, by declaring, “my role is to make [monetary] contributions!” ( gokuyō), sometimes to their obvious surprise. Mrs. Kumano considered it her duty to transmit her hardearned material gains from her career at a company into Soka Gakkai fundraising campaigns. Mrs. Kumano retired after three decades at a small company outside Nagoya that manufactured machine parts, a place where she reported having warm relations with nonmember fellow employees. When Mrs. Kumano retired in 2002, as is customary in Japan, her company gave her a large retirement bonus (taishokukin) to reward her for years of service. She took the entire bonus, a sum in excess of ¥10,000,000 (approximately $100,000) and gave it to the then-newly founded Soka University of America (SUA). Mrs. Kumano was careful to time her donation to coincide with the fiftieth, or golden anniversary, of Daisaku and Kaneko Ikeda’s marriage, on May 3, 2002. Soka Gakkai celebrates May 3 as its President’s Day, but most significant for Mrs. Kumano was the wedding anniversary. SUA used her donation to create a scholarship to fund one student’s education. Mrs. Kumano showed me a photo of her standing before a wall at the California school where her name was emblazoned in English. She was pictured smiling and embracing a tall young Caucasian man, the student chosen for her scholarship, who was dressed in graduation robes. “His name is Peter,” she told me. He spoke no Japanese and she spoke no English, but she told me that the first thing she did

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174  Afterword

when she saw him was burst into tears and greet him with a huge hug. “We were both crying,” she said. Mrs. Kumano visited the Gakkai headquarters several times a year on dates that corresponded to important events in Ikeda Daisaku’s life, such as his birthday on January 2 and the anniversary of his conversion on August 24. Each time, she brought gifts or flowers for the Ikeda family home, along with a significant monetary donation. For Mrs. Kumano, the institutional was personal. Her contributions demonstrate the extent to which Gakkai institutions exist because of these personal bonds. The Gakkai’s vocational demands are onerous, and they certainly factor into the organization’s financial calculus. But they also constitute unquantifiable human connections that define members’ lives. Institutional demands can also accrue significant personal costs. Demands from Gakkai institutions set in motion a process through which quotidian activities carried out by local-level practitioners, mostly in the pursuit of qualitative objectives inspired by the organization’s teachings, are seized by the Gakkai’s administration and transformed into quantitative goals that redirect attention back toward the organization’s collective aims. I witnessed this process unfold numerous times during my fieldwork, most obviously during time I spent playing violin with a Young Men’s Division symphony orchestra.2 From early 2002, inspired by the declared mission of the ensemble to bring culture to the world, my friend Mr. Andō and other orchestra members organized chamber groups to play at Gakkai gatherings. At these performances, they would introduce the Western classical music beloved by Ikeda Daisaku to largely uninitiated adherents. Andō’s small-scale performances quickly became popular, and he received numerous requests to perform across the greater Tokyo area. It was at this point that the Gakkai administration began to redirect Andō’s initiative away from a qualitative cultural pursuit toward a quantifiable goal. The orchestra’s Shinanomachi-­ appointed administrator announced a target of one hundred chamber concerts by the end of 2002. The one hundred concerts were to serve as a symbol of the group’s adherence to division ideals and were to be offered as a gift from the orchestra to Honorary President Ikeda for his seventy-fifth birthday on January 2, 2003. Andō responded to the extremely demanding goal without complaint. He participated in as many as three extra performances in a single day by traveling all over the greater Tokyo area on weekends and evenings after work at his full-time job, so that by the end of 2002 he had joined in the majority of the extra concerts. At orchestra meetings toward the end of 2002, Andō gave passionate testimonials in which he recounted his efforts to reach the one hundred performance objective. At times he collapsed in tears, overwrought and exhausted. Rather than appealing to the administration to change their plan, or seeking to reassign performance commitments to other

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Vocational Paths  175

musicians, Andō stoically adopted the numeric goal as a personal challenge. He did not criticize the Gakkai administration for diverting the pedagogical focus of his original initiative toward yet another points-scoring demonstration of loyalty to Ikeda. In cases I have observed where Soka Gakkai itself has been a cause of personal difficulties, members have mostly reacted by seeing failure to meet official expectations as a reflection of their own shortcomings. For many, the Gakkai only provides challenges; it does not make mistakes.3 The perpetuation of Gakkai institutions depends on its participants who are willing to have their qualitative initiatives co-opted into quantified, collective goals, which they in turn transform into individual challenges they regard as opportunities for meaningful self-sacrifice. Quantified goals clarify these duties and funnel them into systematized activities that adherents become familiar with through training within the organization’s educational systems. But some adherents cast doubt on these forms of discipleship. “Don’t trust stories with results” (kekka no aru hanashi), cautioned my friend Sonoda late one June 2015 night over beer at his apartment. “The administrators love those stories, but real life isn’t like that.” Sonoda, a fukushi (child of fortune) born to a devout Gakkai mother in Osaka, was one of the most dedicated members I knew when I began my fieldwork, but I saw him grow resentful of leaders’ obsession with framing every personal account in terms of dedication to Ikeda Daisaku. Months after our conversation, he began to identify himself as an ex-member. For Sonoda, complying with the institutional mandate to frame his practice in terms of Ikeda discipleship became untenable. Kekka no aru hanashi does seem like an apt description for the arc traced by Gakkai narratives, a repeated pattern of pushing past resistance to an inexorable victory gained through individual sacrifice to Soka Gakkai’s mission—confirmed, ever more frequently, by equating the Gakkai’s mission to devotion to Ikeda. This model does not in fact match up well with many members’ actual experience. Readers may have observed a drift away from heroism toward ambiguity as this book progressed from attention to canonical narratives into accounts from non-elite members. Sonoda is correct: real life does not tend to produce reliable results that confirm a heroic ideal. Paradox reigns as members’ dilemmas are simultaneously addressed and produced by Gakkai practices that structure their lives. These paradoxes may deepen as Soka Gakkai looks to a future beyond direct access to Ikeda Daisaku. Gakkai structures have come to depend on affective one-to-one connections between Ikeda and the adherents who perpetuate them. Each time a Young Men’s Division member sacrificed a Sunday with his children to attend division meetings, or every cash-strapped Married Women’s Division member dug deep to donate to a Gakkai finance campaign, whenever a nervous adherent swallowed certain foreknowledge of

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176  Afterword

humiliating rejection before she tried to shakubuku her friend—these decisions depended on the conviction that giving up time, resources, and dignity was worthwhile because this is what Sensei desired. Ikeda discipleship has perpetuated commitments that define life within Soka Gakkai. Because of this, the loss of Ikeda Daisaku is an event that must be understood in terms of personal grief. Millions of Gakkai adherents will feel his passing just as keenly as they would the loss of a beloved parent. In a post-Ikeda world, it may prove challenging for Gakkai administrators to continue to demand self-sacrifices from adherents by commanding them to do what Sensei would have desired. Invocation of a charismatic authority who is no longer physically accessible may present difficulties for the Gakkai’s bureaucrats, no matter their success in apotheosizing Ikeda Daisaku into an immanent presence in members’ lives. Because members have spent their lives forging a one-to-one relationship with Ikeda, attempts to presume upon this connection by numbers-oriented Gakkai bureaucrats are bound to trigger resentment.4 The experience gap is also continuing to widen between the idealized social order Soka Gakkai preserves in its mimetic reproduction of Japan’s twentieth-century nation-state and the Japan its members inhabit in the present. When Soka Gakkai reformulated after World War II, it took the lead in a postwar religious surge dubbed the “rush hour of the gods.” Freed from wartime oppression, Japanese citizens embraced the chance to engage religiously without fear of persecution. Religions generally, and New Religions in particular, suffered a public relations cataclysm in 1995, when a combination of poorly received religious mobilizations after the January 17 Kobe-area earthquake and the March 20 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subways by the apocalyptic sect Aum Shinrikyō rendered self-identifying as religious tantamount to aligning oneself with terrorism. Religious organizations regained a modicum of positive publicity following positive contributions in the wake of the March 2011 disasters, yet Japan remains a place where most people are uncomfortable with religion.5 In a 2008 survey of Japanese religious attitudes conducted by the newspaper Yomiuri shinbun, only 26.1 percent of respondents reported that they “believed in religion” and 71.9 percent asserted that they did not.6 People in Japan are particularly nervous about religious organizations: fewer than 10 percent of Japanese respondents to the 2010 World Values Survey claimed to trust religious groups, placing Japan at the lowest level of trust in religions—lower even than the officially atheist People’s Republic of China.7 There is reason to believe that willingness to self-describe as religious remains rare, even after the 2011 postdisaster religious aid campaigns.8 However, even as people in Japan overwhelmingly reject religion, many of them take part in activities and maintain dispositions that can be called religious. In the same Yomiuri shinbun survey in which more than seven out of ten respondents claimed to not believe in religion, almost three out of four

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Vocational Paths  177

visited a Shinto shrine or Buddhist temple at the New Year, and almost half affirmed that they did not believe that the Japanese people’s religious spirit was weak. People in Japan are increasingly liable to describe these sentiments not as religion but as forms of spirituality. This is a nebulous category that in fact includes what many would identify as religious elements, such as ritual, a concern for the transcendent, pilgrimage to sacred sites, and belief in life beyond death.9 Most notable about spirituality is its appeal to individuals rather than groups. This growing individual focus may challenge Soka Gakkai as it seeks to perpetuate its group-oriented institutional practices. Remaining mimetic of an idealized version of the Japan of past generations may prove challenging to Soka Gakkai if a preponderance of Japanese people express discomfort with the types of group activities that power its institutional expansion. However, Soka Gakkai has, since its inception, prevailed as an exception to the rule. The wartime Gakkai was one of very few organizations to willingly undergo persecution in defense of religious principles. In the immediate postwar decades, Soka Gakkai outstripped its religious competition as it grew into Japan’s largest-ever New Religion. It has remained a dominant presence even as popular Japanese acceptance of religion per se has waned. Nonetheless, the Gakkai’s membership in Japan has remained essentially stagnant for decades, and its claim of 8.27 million households appears ever more questionable as Japan’s population declines and popular aversion to religion remains strong. Once a religion of converts, Soka Gakkai is now predominantly a family-based faith that relies on generational transmission. Its texts and institutional practices preserve the social values of Soka Gakkai during its halcyon days of rapid growth. Its rigid hierarchies and standardized activities grow increasingly distant from the mores of a majority second- and third-generation membership. Members born into Soka Gakkai are driven by aspirations that are not necessarily accommodated by the collective focus of the centralized organization. Ultimately, Soka Gakkai will remain a defining influence on Japanese society. It is difficult to imagine that the group will ever completely lose its appeal as a forum for realizing aspirations for social legitimacy, or that an organization as skilled at replicating the legitimacy-granting avenues of the modern nation-state will fade from relevance. Soka Gakkai will remain a model for other organizations to emulate in the hopes of attracting millions of devotees.

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Notes

CHAPTER ONE: SOKA GAKKAI AS MIMETIC NATION

Epigraph. Balibar, The Nation Form, 345. 1 The most detailed sources for Soka Gakkai membership numbers are the group’s website (see http://www.sokanet.jp/info/gaiyo.html) and its own Seikatsu hōkoku (Annual Report) issued by the Soka Gakkai Public Relations Bureau. Assessing Gakkai membership figures is otherwise difficult, as Soka Gakkai does not report its membership to the national government and its membership statistics do not appear in the Shūkyō nenkan, the annual report on religious affiliation released by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT). Shimazono Susumu cites a survey of thirty-two thousand people in Japan on religious affiliation taken by a research institute within Japan’s national broadcast company NHK in 1978 in which a total of 3.3 percent of respondents claimed that they were Gakkai members. This figure appears to have been and to still be closely in line with a realistic assessment of the number of Gakkai adherents in Japan (see Shimazono, “Sōsetsu / shūkyō no sengo taisei,” 18–19). More recently, Michael Roemer reassessed quantitative accounts of religious membership in Japan to provide a more sophisticated view of individual religious belief in contemporary Japan (“Japanese Survey Data”; “Religious Affiliation”). He finds that 4.32 percent of respondents between 2000 and 2003 claimed to believe in Buddhism, and 3.19 percent were followers of a New Religion. This allows for a rough assessment of Soka Gakkai’s Japanese membership as something between 2 and 3 percent of the population. 2 For overviews of the extensive scholarship on New Religions in Japan, along with use of the terms shinshūkyō (New Religions) and the earlier, perjorative shinkō shūkyō (newly arisen religions), see Inoue et al., Shinshūkyō jiten, and Astley, “New Religions.” See also chapter 4 of this book. 3 For coverage of ways Nichiren Buddhists have valorized persecution as proof of their teachings and confirmation of their lineal connections to Nichiren, see Stone, “Atsuhara Affair.” 4 For analyses of the Gakkai’s changes to its gongyō practice after the 1991 schism, see Tamano, Sōka gakkai no kenkyū, 21–24. 5 East Asian Buddhist tradition places the Buddha’s birth approximately five hundred years earlier than modern dating schemes. See Nattier, Once Upon a Future Time. 6 For a comparative study that uses hōbōbarai to assess relative levels of Nichiren Buddhist orthodoxy, see Ōnishi, Honmon butsuryūkō. 7 Nichiren wrote this letter to reassure a woman lay follower, the wife of Yoshimoto, who was concerned about observing local-level purity taboos that 179

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180  Notes to Pages 10–26

proscribed ritual engagement during menstruation, traditions that would now fall under the rubric of Shinto. See Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1199–1203. 8 Zuihō bini has nonetheless served as a principal explanation within scholarship on Soka Gakkai (see Seager, Encountering the Dharma). 9 For ethnographic research on the Young Women’s Division, see Inose, Shinkō wa dono yō ni, and Fisker-Nielsen, Religion and Politics. 10 Masao Miyoshi notes the ubiquity of zadankai in imperial Japan in Off Center. 11 Analysis of Komeito and its relationship with Soka Gakkai appears in Ehrhardt et al., Kōmeitō. 12 Descriptions of Soka Gakkai vocational groups as kurabu as early as 1953 appear in Sōka Gakkai, Sōka gakkai yōnjūnenshi. 13 Ikeda is protected by the Daiichi Keibi (Number One Security), a unit selected from the Tokubetsu Keibi (Special Security), an elite corps within the Kinjōkai (Golden Fortress Association), the professional security organization that oversees defense of key Gakkai facilities. After assassination attempts on Ikeda by the apocalyptic sect Aum Shinrikyō, security surrounding Ikeda and his family was raised to very high levels. No one outside Soka Gakkai’s innermost circles now knows where Ikeda Daisaku and his wife Kaneko reside. See McLaughlin, “Did Aum Change Everything?” 14 Gentile, Politics as Religion. 15 McLaughlin, “Sōka Gakkai in Japan.” 16 I am grateful to Prasenjit Duara, who encouraged me to include mimesis in my analysis of Soka Gakkai. 17 Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, 176. 18 Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism. 19 Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, 8. 20 Duara, The Global and Regional, 4. 21 Balibar, “The Nation Form.” 22 Calhoun, Nations Matter, 27. 23 Mitchell, “Society, Economy, and the State Effect,” 89–90. 24 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 3. 25 Calhoun, Nationalism, 4–5. 26 For discussions of ways some Gakkai members have recently taken issue with what they perceive as Komeito’s departure from its founding ideals, including its roots in Nichiren Buddhism, see McLaughlin, “Komeito’s Soka Gakkai Protestors and Supporters.” 27 Asad, Formations of the Secular. 28 Calhoun, Nationalism, 6. 29 Tilly, “War Making and State Making,” 175. 30 Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, 77–128. 31 Geuss, History and Illusion, 21. 32 Russell, Power, 23, cited in Geuss, History and Illusion. 33 Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy. 34 Ibid., 155. 35 See McLaughlin, “Komeito’s Soka Gakkai Protestors and Supporters.” Testimonials by these Gakkai protestors appear in Noguchi, Takigawa, and Kodaira, Jitsu­mei kokuhatsu Sōka gakkai. 36 DiMaggio and Powell, “Iron Cage Revisited,” 152. 37 Ibid., 151. 38 Meyer et al., “World Society and the Nation-State,” 161. 39 Mark Ravina details ways Meiji ideologues actualized institutional isomorphism in an effort to ensure that Japan would “stand equal with the nations of the world” (“State-Making in Global Context”). 40 Gerges, ISIS.

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Notes to Pages 26–34  181

41

Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Ideal Refugees. For an investigation of the ubiquity of aspiration toward nation-state formation in Muslim-majority settings and ways the modern nation inspires Islamic innovations, see Salomon, For Love of the Prophet. 42 Givens and Barlow, Oxford Handbook of Mormonism. 43 Urban, Church of Scientology. 44 Knight, Why I Am a Five Percenter. 45 Hoskins, Divine Eye and the Diaspora. 46 Chandler, Establishing a Pure Land. 47 Huang, Charisma and Compassion. 48 Nishiyama, Kingendai no hokke undō; Tsukada, Shūkyō to seiji no tentetsuten. 49 Garon, Molding Japanese Minds; Stalker, Prophet Motive. 50 Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity; Ownby, Falun Gong. 51 Reader, Religious Violence, 200–201. 52 McLaughlin, “Did Aum Change Everything?”; Lobreglio, “Revisions to the Religious Corporations Law.” 53 Girard, Girard Reader, 9. 54 Bhabha, “Mimicry and Man”; for an application of Bhabha’s mimicry discussions to modern Japan, see Brightwell, “Refracted Axis.” 55 The “uncanny valley” is a concept that derives from Sigmund Freud’s notion of “the uncanny” that roboticist Mori Masahiro employs to characterize a precipitous drop-off in comfort levels the closer a humanoid robot comes to resemble— but not perfectly replicate—a human being. Religious inspirations for Mori’s theory are discussed in Borody, “Japanese Roboticist.” 56 Josephson, Invention of Religion in Japan, 29. 57 Reproduced in Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki, 1:11. 58 For years, the weekly tabloid Shūkan shinchō maintained a dedicated Soka Gakkai desk that ran lurid exposés. More recently, the monthly Tēmis has published semiregular reports on what it refers to as the Ikeda kingdom (Ikeda ōkoku). 59 Tamura and Tamura, “Reflexive Self-Identification.” 60 Appadurai, Fear of Small Numbers. 61 In this regard, I disagree with Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen, who suggests that Soka Gakkai may function as a type of civil society unto itself (see Fisker-­Nielsen, Religion and Politics). For discussions of the ubiquity of the Japanese state and its circumscription of civil society, see Garon, “From Meiji to Heisei”; see also Habermas, Structural Transformation, especially 30–60. 62 Pekkanen, Japan’s Dual Civil Society; see also Garon, Molding Japanese Minds. 63 LeBlanc, Bicycle Citizens. 64 For coverage of Soka Gakkai’s responses to these disasters, see McLaughlin, “Hard Lessons Learned.” 65 Because I use the mimetic nation model, I am careful to describe Gakkai adherents as the mimetic equivalent of prewar subjects, rather than postwar citizens, in keeping with the subject-citizen distinction laid out in Avenell, Making Japanese Citizens. 66 Shimada, Minzokuka suru Sōka gakkai, 280–281. 67 Shimada and Yano, Sōka gakkai: Mō hitotsu no Nippon. 68 Nishiyama, Kingendai Nihon no hokke undō. 69 Tsukada, Shūkyō to seiji no tentetsuten. 70 Ibid., 17. 71 Asayama, Uchigawa kara miru Sōka gakkai. 72 Das and Poole, “State and Its Margins.” 73 Fassin et al., At the Heart of the State. 74 Berlant, Queen of America, 4. 75 Ikeda, Human Revolution, 1:viii.

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182  Notes to Pages 37–41

CHAPTER TWO: FROM INTELLECTUAL COLLECTIVE TO RELIGION

1

Nichiren discusses this phrase from the Lotus in the Ongi kuden (Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings) (Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 781). Ikeda quoted from this Gosho passage in his formal declaration of the Hall of the Great Vow on November 8, 2013 (reproduced in Seikyō shinbun, November 9, 2013). 2 Jambudvīpa (Rose Apple Island) is the Sanskrit name in Buddhist texts for the continent on which humanity dwells. Nichiren used the word ichienbudai, the Japanese rendering of Jambudvīpa, to refer to our world. 3 A paper object of worship with this phrase inscribed along its right side was reportedly enshrined at Soka Gakkai headquarters after Toda Jōsei became second president in 1951, and the Seikyō shinbun reported that an ita gohonzon (inscribed object of worship) bearing this label was enshrined at the Gakkai’s Shinanomachi headquarters in 1975 (Seikyō shinbun, October 24, 1975). 4 Risshō ankoku is a reference to the 1260 missive Risshō ankokuron (Treatise on Establishing the True [Dharma] and Bringing Peace to the Land) composed by Nichiren to admonish the government of his age (Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 17–33), extended here to a worldwide mission (see also Stone, “Nichiren’s Activist Heirs”). 5 The three obstructions and four demons (sanshō shima) that stand in the way of buddhahood comprise part of Soka Gakkai’s basic doctrinal training. See chapter 5, note 38. 6 Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 329. Nichiren composed this treatise in 1276 in a filial act as a memorial to his deceased master Dōzen-bō. 7 Jiyu no bosatsu (Bodhisattvas of the Earth) refers to a passage in chapter 15 of the Lotus, in which the innumerable disciples of the original Buddha pour from a fissure in the earth. Toda Jōsei employed this phrase as a metaphor for the Soka Gakkai membership. 8 Transcript of stele received at the Hall of the Great Vow for Kōsen Rufu, June 24, 2015. It is striking to observe Ikeda claim the title of third president in this 2013 statement, given that he relinquished the third presidency in 1979 when he became honorary president. 9 See “Constitution,” SOKAnet, http://www.sokanet.jp/info/kaisoku01.html. 10 Ibid. See also Nishiyama, “Sōka gakkai no kisō shikō 1.” 11 The following account of Makiguchi Tsunesaburō and the Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai draws from Bethel, Makiguchi; Kumagai, Makiguchi; Makiguchi, Makiguchi; Miyata, Makiguchi Tsunesaburō no shūkyō undō; Miyata, Makiguchi Tsune­ sa­burō: gokuchū no tatakai; Murata, Japan’s New Buddhism; Shimada, Sōka gakkai; Sōka Gakkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūgonenshi; Sōka Gakkai, Sōka Gakkai nenpyō; Tōkyō, Nichiren shōshū; Tōkyō, Sōka gakkai; and other sources cited. 12 Until the twentieth century, it was not unusual for people in Japan to change their given names throughout their adult lives, often to commemorate transitional moments. Tsunesaburō, for example, includes the character tsune 常 (regular, always, eternal), which is part of the word jinjō 尋常, the “normal” of Normal School. Makiguchi’s new name was perhaps inspired by his focus on educational institutions, a priority evident in his life as Tsunesaburō. 13 Murakami, Sōka gakkai=kōmeitō, 94. 14 Ibid., 95. 15 Intriguingly, Soka Gakkai’s chosen starting point begins with a nation-state connection. The first volume of Sōka kyōikugaku taikei was prefaced with an epigraph in classical Chinese penned by Inukai Tsuyoshi, a politician and cabinet minister who became prime minister in December 1931. On May 15, 1932, he was assassinated by young officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy, an event that essentially marked the end of civilian rule in Japan until the postwar era.

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Notes to Pages 42–49  183

16

Mitani authored the book Risshō ankokuron seishaku (A Pure Interpretation of Nichiren’s “Treatise on Establishing the Right [Teaching] and Bringing Peace to the Land”) in 1929, which sought to explain Nichiren’s core teachings to lay followers. 17 Shimada, Sōka gakkai, 28. Higuma Takenori also notes Yanagita’s conclusions regarding Makiguchi’s conversion to Nichiren Shōshū in a quote from the short essay “Makiguchi-kun nyūshin no dōki” (Makiguchi’s Reasons’ for Religious Conversion) in Yanagita’s collected writings. See Higuma, Toda Jōsei, 44. 18 Murakami, Sōka gakkai=kōmeitō, 92. 19 Makiguchi cited Nitobe’s Chijinron (Theory of Land and People) as an influence on his own Jinsei chirigaku. See the introduction to Jinsei chirigaku in Makiguchi Tsunesaburō zenshū, vol. 1. 20 For an analysis of the life of Tanaka Chigaku, his association with the Kenpon Hokkeshū priest and reformer Honda Nisshō, and his organizational initiatives, see Ōtani, Kindai nihon. 21 Kokuchūkai adopted many of these innovations from other modern Nichiren Buddhist lay organizations, in particular Honmon Butsuryūkō (see Nishiyama, Kingendai Nihon). 22 By that day, mergers had produced three Tendai, eight Shingon, three Jōdo, thirteen Rinzai, three Nichiren, three Hokkeshū, and two Honkeshū (Fujufuse) denominations. This resulted in a total of thirteen Japanese Buddhist denominations and twenty-eight sects, down from fifty-six sects in the prewar era. 23 Reported in Sōka Gakkai, Sōka gakkai nenpyō, 20; Sōka Gakkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūnenshi, 69–71. 24 The transcript of the police interrogation record in which Makiguchi refused to capitulate to the wartime authorities makes clear that he created a hierarchy in which the Lotus will always supersede the temporal law of the Japanese state (see Tokkō geppō, 152). A contextualization of his attitudes toward war and state power appears in Miyata, “Critical Comments on Brian Victoria’s ‘Engaged Buddhism: A Skeleton in the Closet?’ ” 25 The following account of Toda and Soka Gakkai in the early postwar years is taken from Asayama, Uchigawa kara miru Sōka gakkai; Higuma, Toda Jōsei; Murata, Japan’s New Buddhism; Nishino, Denki Toda Jōsei; Saeki, Toda Jōsei to sono jidai; Shimada, Sōka gakkai; Sōka Gakkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūnenshi; Sōka Gakkai, Sōka Gakkai nenpyō; Tamano, Sōka gakkai no kenkyū; Toda, Toda Jōsei zenshū; Tōkyō, Nichiren shōshū; Tōkyō, Sōka gakkai; and other sources cited. 26 For an exploration of the risshin shusse ideal in Makiguchi and Toda’s time, see Takeuchi, Risshin shusse. One of the best treatments in English of this topic remains Earl Kinmonth’s The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought. 27 Sōka Gakkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūnenshi, 20. 28 For an analysis of Toda’s seimeiron and its place in the postwar Gakkai ethos, see Shimazono, “Hotoke sunawachi seimei.” 29 The large print of the advertisement, in full, reads “ways of learning, thinking, and inquiring (manabikata, kangaekata, tokikata) [about] mathematics and physics for the first, second, and third years of middle school” (Asahi shinbun, August 23, 1945). 30 See Higuma, Toda Jōsei, 101. 31 Reproduced in Sōka Gakkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūnenshi, 158. 32 Nichiren Buddhist tradition holds that, on this date, the thirty-two-year-old Nichiren, while at the Tendai temple Seichōji, turned to the rising sun and first chanted the seven-syllable title of the Lotus, namu-myōhō-renge-kyō. Nichiren himself only wrote that he began to preach his doctrine at Seichōji on this day (see Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1189).

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184  Notes to Pages 49–54

33

For comprehensive studies of grassroots members during Soka Gakkai’s postwar growth period, see Suzuki, Toshiteki sekai; White, Sokagakkai and Mass Society. 34 One result of hōbōbarai was tremendous damage inflicted on Japan’s cultural heritage, as the practice essentially erased centuries of grassroots-level Buddhist history (conversations with Nakao Takashi, scholar of Nichiren Buddhism, summer 2008). 35 Murata, Japan’s New Buddhism, 97. 36 Described in Higuma, Toda Jōsei, 222–223; Murata, Japan’s New Buddhism, 100. See Nichiren’s “Sandai hihō bonjōji,” in Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1022; see also 37 Stone, “Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree,” 196. The term honmon (original teaching) prefacing each of the Three Great Secret Dharmas refers to the second half of the Lotus Sutra, which reveals Śākyamuni Buddha’s true identity as the primordially enlightened buddha. 38 These ideas regarding the ordination platform originate in Nichiren Shōshū interpretations of a passage in the Sandai hihō bonjōji: “When the ruler’s dharma (ōbō) becomes one with Buddha-Dharma (buppō) and the Buddha-Dharma is united with the ruler’s dharma, so that the ruler and his ministers all uphold the three great secret Dharmas of the original teaching . . . then surely an imperial edict and a shogunal decree will be handed down, to seek out the most superlative site, resembling the Pure Land of Sacred Vulture Peak, and there to erect the ordination platform” (translation from Stone, Original Enlightenment, 289–290). 39 In a 1901 essay titled “Shūmon no ishin” (Restoration of the Sect), Tanaka urged that all Nichiren Buddhists unite as one tradition to dominate the nation’s economy and infrastructure. The mandate for the ordination platform was to come from the Imperial Diet; by converting a majority of the Japanese population to Nichiren Buddhism, both Diet houses would be able to vote in a kokuritsu kaidan (national ordination platform) that would serve as the seat of power in a great dharma battle, after which the whole nation would embrace the Lotus and the establishment of the honmon no kaidan would be announced (see Tanaka, Shūmon no ishin). 40 Ikeda relays his mentor’s words in Ningen kakumei 3:156–157, and indicates that Toda had made similar comments as early as 1948 (White, Sokagakkai and Mass Society, 133). 41 Toda, Toda Jōsei zenshū 1:26–29. The term ōbutsu myōgō derives from the Sandai hihō honjōji (Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1062). See Stone, Original Enlightenment, 444–445 n213. 42 Seikyō shinbun, January 1, 1954. 43 Translation adopted from Murata, Japan’s New Buddhism, 112. 44 Shimada, Kōmeitō vs. Sōka gakkai, 36–38. 45 For further analysis of constitution-related matters that pertain to Soka Gakkai, see Ehrhardt et al., Kōmeitō. 46 Toda, Toda Jōsei-sensei kōenshū, 81. 47 Shimada, Sōka gakkai, 91. 48 Higuma, Toda Jōsei, 240–245. Ishida was marginalized from the Gakkai leadership after Ikeda became third president, and he left Soka Gakkai in 1980, siding with a group of Nichiren Shōshū priests who formed a new religious organization called Shōshinkai that was established in response to the first conflict between Ikeda and the Shōshū priesthood in 1978–1979. 49 The following account of Ikeda Daisaku and the development of Soka Gakkai from 1960 is taken from Aera, Sōka gakkai kaibō; Asano, Watashi no mita; Asayama, Uchigawa kara miru Sōka gakkai; Bessatsu, Tonari no Sōka gakkai; Bettsatsu, Ikeda Daisaku naki ato; Ikeda Daisaku no Kiseki Hensan Iinkai, Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki; Machacek and Wilson, Global Citizens; Murata, Japan’s New

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Notes to Pages 54–61  185

Buddhism; Shichiri, Ikeda Daisaku gensō; Shimada, Sōka gakkai and Kōmeitō; Sōka Gakkai Mondai Kenkyūkai, Sōka gakkai fujinbu; Sōka Gakkai Yonjū Nenshi Hensan Iinkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūnenshi; Sōka Gakkai Yonjūgonenshi Hensan Iinkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūgonenshi; Sōka Gakkai Nenpyō Hensan Iinkai, Sōka Gakkai nenpyō; Sugimori, Kenkyū / sōka gakkai; Tamano, Sōka gakkai no kenkyū; and Tōkyō Daigaku Hokekyō Kenkyūkai, Nichiren shōshū sōka gakkai and Sōka gakkai no rinen to jissen. 50 Ikeda received a diploma from the Tōyō Shōgyō trade school in March 1948. He enrolled in the night school extension of the college Taisei Gakuin (now Tokyo Fuji University) that April but devoted himself to discipleship under Toda over schoolwork. 51 Reproduced in Sōka Gakkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūnenshi, 365. 52 Murata, Japan’s New Buddhism, 133. 53 This incident is covered in Sugimori, Kenkyū / sōka gakkai, Ehrhardt et al., Kōmeitō, and most other sources from the 1970s onward that deal with Soka Gakkai and Japanese politics. 54 See Asano, Watashi no mita Sōka gakkai, 2. 55 Reproduced in Nishiyama, “Seitōka no kiki to kyōgaku kakushin,” 266. 56 Toynbee also wrote a preface for The Human Revolution that commends Ikeda and defends the Gakkai’s faith-driven mission as a historically and religiously legitimate reform movement. 57 Tamano, Sōka gakkai no kenkyū, 152–161. 58 Nichiren Shōshū’s interpretation of the sanbō (three jewels or three treasures) is a sect-specific elaboration on the classic Buddhist doctrine of the three treasures: the Buddha, the dharma, and the saṅgha. 59 Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 736. 60 Seikyō shinbun, January 17, 1977. 61 The term ketsumyaku 血脈—lineage—is generally read kechimyaku in Nichiren Shōshū and in most other Japanese Buddhist traditions. Soka Gakkai originally read the term as kechimyaku but since 1991 has rendered it ketsumyaku. This represents a change since the Gakkai’s split with Nichiren Shōshū and reflects a broader Japanese Buddhist practice wherein specialized readings signal lineage affiliation. 62 “Shōji ichidai kechimyakushō” appears in Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1336–1338. In this letter, which dates from the eleventh day of the second month of 1273, Nichiren states that when many bodies become one in mind (itai dōshin), the sole great matter of life and death is transmitted (shōji ichidaiji no kechimyaku). 63 In closed sessions, Hosoi Nittatsu expressed his concerns about the relationship between the two groups. As early as January 17, 1977, the day after Ikeda’s speech on his views of Buddhist history, Nittatsu reportedly said that “This is a problem. In the future, [we, Nichiren Shōshū] will probably break with Soka Gakkai” (cited in Nishiyama, “Seitōka no kiki,” 272). 64 Myōshinkō, a Nichiren Shōshū lay association founded in 1942 at the temple Hōdōin in Tokyo, protested Nichiren Shōshū’s renunciation in May 1970 of the goal of constructing a national ordination platform (kokuritsu kaidan). Myōshinkō adhered to a radically nationalist interpretation in keeping with ideas espoused by Tanaka Chigaku. They vilified the Shōhondō as a sacrilege, as the hall was not a product of the collective will of the Japanese government and people constructed following the nation’s conversion to Nichiren Shōshū. Nittatsu excommunicated Myōshinkō in 1974 after the group organized a large anti–Soka Gakkai rally in Tokyo’s Meiji Park. A group of Myōshinkō Young Men’s Division members responded by invading Soka Gakkai headquarters in October 1974 and demanding to meet with President Ikeda; they were driven off by Tokyo riot police after they smashed a car through the headquarters’ gates and occupied

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186  Notes to Pages 62–71

the main building. Myōshinkō incorporated as the religion Nichiren Shōshū Taisekiji Kenshōkai, more commonly Kenshōkai, in 1982 and thereafter grew rapidly. 65 The former member who caused the largest amount of trouble for Soka Gakkai and became its greatest object of derision was Yamazaki Masatomo (1936– 2008). Yamazaki was a lawyer and was originally a close follower of Ikeda’s who sat on the Gakkai’s board of directors and served as its chief legal counsel. After he left Soka Gakkai in 1980, Yamazaki confessed to tapping the telephones of the Japanese Communist Party chairman and Myōshinkō headquarters, following orders from Gakkai administrators. Soka Gakkai admitted that it had paid Yamazaki more than ¥300 million to secure his silence about the organization’s internal affairs. When Yamazaki demanded a further ¥500 million, Soka Gakkai went to the police, and Yamazaki was sentenced to three years in prison for extortion. Since 1980, Soka Gakkai media has consistently vilified Yamazaki as the chief representative of corrupt worldly powers that threaten the organization. Yamazaki, in turn, published numerous exposés of Soka Gakkai, and until his death he was the most prolific anti-Gakkai media personality. See Harashima, Dare mo kakanakatta. 66 67 It was around this time that Soka Gakkai got access to a document leaked from Nichiren Shōshū that described a plan devised by Abe Nikken called Operation C (“C” for cut). Soka Gakkai charged that the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood had been planning to undermine the Gakkai leadership and split with the organization following a secret meeting held in July 1990, long before the sect’s letters of complaint. 68 Soka Gakkai has persisted in calling Nichiren Shōshū “Nikken-shū” even though Abe Nikken retired as sixty-seventh chief abbot on December 15, 2005, when he appointed his successor Hayase Nichinyo. 69 The largest Gakkai memorial park is Fujizakura Nature Memorial Park in Shizuoka Prefecture, near Mount Fuji, which went into operation in the late 1970s. 70 See Bessatsu, Ikeda Daisaku naki ato, 88. Kaimyō (posthumous Buddhist ordination titles) were another point of contention leading to the 1991 split; Soka Gakkai accused Nichiren Shōshū temples of profiting from bereaved families by charging outrageous fees for a ranked series of posthumous titles. Although now the official Gakkai policy is to not confer kaimyō, tonsured clerics affiliated with the Association of Youthful Priests continued to bestow posthumous titles for free if requested (interview with an Association priest, Tokyo, December 22, 2007). 71 Nichiren invokes the expression shishin guhō (sacrifice one’s body in death to spread the dharma) in a 1265 treatise called Shōgu mondōshō (see Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 496). 72 Soka Gakkai institutional regulations (kaiki) dated April 1, 2002 (“Constitution,” SOKA.net). 73 Ibid. 74 Asahi shinbun, June 22, 2016. 75 Seikyō shinbun, June 26 and 27, 2016. CHAPTER THREE: SOKA GAKKAI’S DRAMATIC NARRATIVE

1

2

Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1393. Ikeda’s writings are filled with references to the lion (shishi) and the lion’s roar (shishiku), and lion statues appear at Soka Gakkai facilities, including a bronze Lion of Heaven (ama no shishi) on the Soka University grounds. The original Ningen kakumei appeared in 120 segments between April 1951 and August 1954 before being issued in book form in a run of 150,000 copies on July 3, 1957 (Ikeda, Zuihitsu ningen kakumei, 32). Ikeda explains Toda’s choice of

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Notes to Pages 72–74  187

Myō Gokū as his nom de plume. Toda modified the name of the protagonist Sun Wukong 孫悟空 (Son Gokū) in Xuanzang’s Journey to the West. Ikeda explains the name Son Gokū as “the insignificant one (son) who is enlightened ( go) to the extinction of existence and non-existence (kū).” Toda, inspired by his prison awakening to the wondrous law of the Lotus, the myōhō, substituted son 孫 with myō 妙, and thus represented himself as one enlightened to the lack of inherent nature in all things by realization of the wondrous Dharma (Ikeda, Zuihitsu ningen kakumei, 32). 3 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 1:1–4. The quote in English is from the first translation (Ikeda, Human Revolution, 1:iii). Hereafter, I refer to the 1965 Japanese edition of volume 1 to access Ikeda’s initial comments on his authorship and then to later volumes in the Japanese-language 1992 pocket paperback (bunko) edition, a national best-seller that is the most widely distributed of the novel’s editions. 4 Clark Chilson provides a penetrating analysis of Ikeda’s charismatic leadership and personal development through a close reading of his published diary—a revealing document that is read infrequently by Gakkai members today (see Chilson, “Cultivating Charisma”). 5 Brennan, “National Longing for Form,” 49. 6 Renan, “What Is a Nation?” For an elaboration on necessary forgetting that enables the narrative of national founding, particularly in East Asian contexts, see Feuchtwang, “Memorials to Injustice.” 7 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 40. See also Allen Carey-Webb’s Making Subject(s) for helpful applications of Anderson’s observations. 8 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 35. 9 For discussions of how collected editions played a crucial role in constructing modern literature and authorship, see Nash, Culture of Collected Editions. 10 Brennan, “Longing for Form,” 51. 11 Publication of Ningen kakumei switched from Ushio Bunko to Seikyō Shinbunsha in 1970, following the public relations fiasco that surrounded Soka Gakkai’s attempt to block publication of I Denounce Soka Gakkai. 12 When the complete twelve-volume series was published in a paperback edition in 1992, Ningen kakumei became the top-selling series and top-selling book overall in Japan for 1992 and 1993 (see Za besutoserā). 13 Broadcast at the Sōka Gakkai Chūbu Ikeda Kinen Kōdō, Nagoya, November 9, 2007. 14 Ikeda wrote a short essay on the provenance of his pseudonym. In 1949, he worked as an editor for a publishing company Toda established immediately after the war, writing for a children’s magazine called Shin’ichi shōnen 伸一少 年 (the Boy Shin’ichi). Inspired by the writer Yamanaka Minetarō 山中峯太郎, whose writings appeared in the popular wartime boys’ magazine Shōnen kurabu, Ikeda concocted the name Yamamoto Shin’ichirō 山本伸一郎, later shortened to Yamamoto Shin’ichi 山本伸一. Toda approved of the name and noted that it could be read as a single tree (ippon 一本) growing straight out of a mountain (nobiru 伸びる) pointing directly to the heavens (Ikeda, Zuihitsu ningen kakumei, 157). 15 As an ironic extension of this lineage, a disgruntled apostate senior administrator published a critical book titled Henshitsu shita Sōka gakkai (Rotten Soka Gakkai) in July 1972 under the pseudonym Ren Gokū, claiming the next character in namu myōhō renge kyō. The book consists of a complaint that the group was turning away from Nichiren Buddhism into Ikeda-kyō (the Ikeda sect), and leveled the specific charge that Soka Gakkai had secured Nichiren Shōshū’s cooperation in preventing members who left Soka Gakkai from entering any other lay confraternities under the Shōshū sect’s auspices (see Yanatori, Sōka gakkai, 35–36).

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188  Notes to Pages 74–80

16 Shichiri, Ikeda Daisaku gensō, 23–24. 17 Author’s observation at the Sōka Bunka Sentā, Shinanomachi, June 24, 2015. 18 Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein, in their survey of canon creation within New Religions, make observations of Scientology text creation that compare meaningfully with Gakkai practices. By their calculations, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard would have had to produce as many as seventy pages per day to account for the vast corpus attributed to him. The constant posthumous publication of texts that bear Hubbard’s name maintains “not only the legacy, but also the presence of the founder in his organization and among individual Scientologists” (see Hammer and Rothstein, “Canonical and Extracanonical Texts,” 122). A helpful overview of these critiques is compiled in Shimada, Ningen kakumei no 19 yomikata. 20 Accounts of Shinohara’s life within Soka Gakkai appear in Yamazaki, Zange no kokuhatsu. See also Shimada, Ningen kakumei no yomikata, 180–183. 21 Shichiri, Ikeda Daisaku gensō, 89–90. 22 Ian Reader and George Tanabe apply this cognitive-affective paradox to understandings of Japanese religion in Practically Religious. For discussions of paradoxes that prevail between cognitive, affective, and moral apprehensions, see Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System.” 23 Ningen kakumei was first published in ten volumes, with subsequent volumes (concluding in 1978) appearing after a two-year gap in the Gakkai’s newspaper (see Shichiri, Ikeda Daisaku gensō, 87–88). 24 Butsui (Sanskrit buddhāśaya) is what the Buddha intended to teach (the meaning of the scriptures), and bucchoku (Sanskrit śāsana) are the teachings themselves. 25 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 1:3–4. 26 In this chapter, I cite the 1992 bunko (pocket softcover) edition. In the 2013 reissue, the Osaka chapter of volume 11 has been reproduced largely unchanged. The editors have added some explanatory detail, mostly in the form of reminders about places and characters, possibly as a means of making the story accessible to readers born long after the events in question. 27 Sōka Gakkai Mondai Kenkyūkai, Sōka gakkai fujinbu, 35–37. 28 Mizoguchi, Ikeda Daisaku, 158. 29 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:209. 30 The elderly woman in this episode is clearly the member known to Gakkai adherents at Yaoi no Okāsan (Mother Yaoi), the powerful matriarch of one of the first families to join the organization in western Japan in the early 1950s and a central force in early conversion efforts. In conversations about Gakkai history, members in Osaka commonly refer to her as the mother of Kansai (Kansai no Okāsan). 31 This is Soka Gakkai’s official translation of shitei no hi. A more accurate translation would be Day of Master and Disciple. 32 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:215. 33 The term yuta onshitsu (“even now, resentment and envy are great”) appears in the tenth chapter of the Lotus Sutra, “The Teacher of the Law.” Nichiren uses this expression in the Kaimokushō (Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 201) and in Nyosetsu shugyōshō (501). Yuta onshitsu appears several times in this chapter in the context of Toda calling attention to the pernicious threats of government attacks on Soka Gakkai. 34 Myō in a Buddhist context is rule, principle, or destiny. 35 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:257. 36 These three great enemies are described in chapter 13 of the Lotus, “Admonition to Embrace the Sutra.” Nichiren pays special attention to the senshō zōjōman in the second part of his Kaimokushō (Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 210–237).

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Notes to Pages 80–85  189

37 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:264. 38 This was Toda’s favored method of engagement. It reflected his continued practice of pedagogical techniques he developed in his discipleship under Makiguchi. Question and answer sessions with Toda were even recorded and issued on LP, such as the 1959 Victor phonograph Sōka gakkai kaichō Toda Jōsei sensei no oshie. The New Human Revolution records some instances of members engaging with Ikeda in a similar manner, especially in the first years of his presidency, yet Ikeda rarely entertained impromptu questions at meetings in the final decades of his public appearances. In recent years, even lower-level Gakkai leaders have come to screen written questions submitted in advance at large study sessions held at culture centers. 39 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:279. 40 Young Men’s Division head and graduate of the Soka school system Yumitani Teruhiko was expelled personally by Ikeda in 2005 for sexual impropriety with female Gakkai staff at the Shinanomachi headquarters, and in 2006 Ikeda’s trusted English translator Ōmura Kyōko and her husband, former guitarist with the popular band Southern Allstars, were arrested for possession of amphetamines and subsequently expelled from Soka Gakkai. One member in her late twenties whom I interviewed told me she majored in English at Soka Women’s Junior College because she was inspired by Ōmura. She was devastated at the scandal, she told me, but did not reflect on the relationship between Ōmura’s expulsion and broader doctrinal implications (interview Narashino, Chiba Prefecture, December 18, 2007). 41 See Durkheim, Elementary Forms, especially 321–325 of “The Negative Cult and its Functions.” In the context of modern Japan, Sheldon Garon notes that “orthodoxy is best defined by what it chooses to exclude” (Molding Japanese Minds, 70). 42 See Stone, “Rebuking the Enemies,” 237–238. 43 Examples of these publications include Yoshimura, Ningen no naka e, vol. 5, a rambling series of letters and poems by Ikeda written to Osaka-based members laced together with members’ reminiscences, and the multivolume Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki, which comprises episodes that first appeared in the magazine Ushio. Ningen no naka e quotes Kansai members’ reminiscences in lauding the region’s devotion to the honorary president. These texts would be all but incomprehensible to anyone not immersed in the Gakkai’s Kansai history. 44 As an indication of the importance with which the organization views this exhibition, my request to visit the Onshi Kinenshitsu was reportedly reviewed by the office of Soka Gakkai’s president, Harada Minoru. 45 A member I interviewed in Uehonmachi, Osaka, on November 23, 2007, was careful to point out that the Gakkai members who worked at the court and jail did not loot the building but scrupulously paid for the items themselves, and through this provided an example of proper conduct. 46 See McLaughlin, “Faith and Practice.” 47 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:296. 48 Jiai is used in a Buddhist context to describe parental affection. 49 See also Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki Henshū Iinkai, Ikeda Daisaku no kiseki, 1:87. 50 One of the most widely read of Nichiren’s writings, this verse appears frequently in Gakkai publications as inspiration for members to persevere in the face of criticism (Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1300). 51 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:300. 52 Ibid., 302. 53 Ibid. 54 See, for example, descriptions throughout Higuma, Toda Jōsei. 55 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei, 11:311.

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190  Notes to Pages 86–92

56

Quotes from the 1965–1966 issues of Daibyaku renge appear in Shichiri, Ikeda Daisaku gensō no yabō, 85–88. 57 Discussions of the use of the novel in doctrinal instruction appear in Harashima, Ningen kakumei. 58 Shichiri, Ikeda Daisaku gensō, 88. 59 Ibid., 82–84. CHAPTER FOUR: PARTICIPATING IN CANON

1

The novel, literally Tale of the Water Margin, was translated into English by Pearl S. Buck as All Men Are Brothers and by Sidney Shapiro as Outlaws of the Marsh. The Shuihu zhuan is considered one of the great classic novels of Chinese literature and remains popular in Japan. It is an epic tale of 108 outlaws battling authorities in the Song dynasty. 2 The group name recalls Huayang guozhi, or the Chronicles of Huayang (Kayō kokushi), a long gazetteer compiled during the Jin Dynasty (265–420) that recounts heroic exploits. For discussions of the cultivation of young Gakkai women in the Toda era, see Usui, “Josei to shūkyō to soshiki,” and Inose, Shinkō wa dono yō ni. 3 Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine (1853–1931) was a British novelist and playwright whose works were bestsellers in his day but are now all but forgotten outside Soka Gakkai in Japan. Ushio Shuppansha publishes paperback versions of Eien no miyako and the company’s manga wing, Kibō Komikkusu (Hope Comics) issues a comic-book edition. Hall Caine was popular but not respected by his contemporaries. G. K. Chesterton singles out Hall Caine in “A Defense of Penny Dreadfuls”: “Bad story writing is not a crime. Mr. Hall Caine walks the streets openly, and cannot be put in prison for an anticlimax” (Chesterton, On Lying in Bed, 78). 4 The history of the Suikokai is outlined briefly in Sōka gakkai yonjū nenshi, 189, and is critiqued in detail in Yamazaki, Sōka gakkai to “Suikokai kiroku,” which paints the Suikokai as Toda and Ikeda’s conspiracy to launch Soka Gakkai as a ploy to seize political and economic power. 5 See McDonald and Sanders, The Canon Debate, 11. 6 For discussions of canon as a legitimacy-bestowing format, see Guillory, Cultural Capital. 7 There are notable exceptions to this perception within religious practice. In contemporary Japan, for example, Kōfuku no Kagaku (Happy Science) describes people in the present as manifestations of famous figures from the past (see Winter, Hermes und Buddha). 8 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 36. 9 An exact quote (“Seikyō shinbun ni keisai shitai gurai subarashii taiken”) from a local leader lauding a member who had delivered a particularly searing personal account of difficulties with illness and divorce (from a meeting in Nara­ shino City, Chiba Prefecture, September 14, 2007). I have heard this sentiment expressed repeatedly by Gakkai members. 10 For instance, a member in his early eighties, learning that I had come from America to study Soka Gakkai, brought a copy of the first volume of Shin ningen kakumei to show me the episode of his conversion in 1960 (meeting in Miyakojima, Osaka, November 12, 2007). 11 For a lucid overview of New Religions methodology and research available in English, see Urban, New Age. 12 Barker, “Perspective: What Are We Studying?” and The Making of a Moonie. 13 Zeller, Heaven’s Gate. 14 Reader, Religion in Contemporary Japan, and “Perspective”; Shimazono, Gen-

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Notes to Pages 92–103  191

dai kyūsai shūkyōron, Shin shin shūkyō to shūkyō būmu, and From Salvation to Spirituality. Lay centrality is a concept outlined by Helen Hardacre in Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan. 15 Tsushima et al., “Vitalistic Conception of Salvation.” Leading examples of a rapidly growing subfield of spirituality research in Japan include Itō, Kashio, and Yumiyama, Supirituariti no shakaigaku, and Horie, Wakamono no kibun. 16 See Hardacre, Kurozumikyō, chapter 1. 17 Tsukada, Shūkyō to seiji. Sōka Gakkai Kyōgakubu, Shakubuku kyōten. 18 19 See Hammer and Rothstein, “Canonical and Extracanonical Texts.” 20 Further analysis of Gakkai reliance on literature could be made by developing Markus Davidsen’s discussions of what he terms fiction-based religions, groups that draw inspiration from sources such as Star Wars and The Da Vinci Code. Soka Gakkai complicates Davidsen’s distinctions between fiction-based and history-based religions by producing fiction from religion. Soka Gakkai also challenges his Jean Baudrillard-derived reduction of religions to “hyperreal” simulacra, as Gakkai institutions and practices comprise not merely symbolic but material reality. Davidsen confirms that nations are poor examples of simulacra, “for the people who make up a nation do tend to share some very real things, including practices, memories and perhaps genes.” The same could certainly be said about Soka Gakkai, and also about other religious communities (see Davidsen, “Fiction-Based Religion”). 21 Video broadcast at the Sōka Gakkai Chūbu Ikeda Kinen Kōdō in Nagoya, November 4, 2007. 22 Accounts of this nature also appear in Ushio, Higashi Nihon daishinsai, and in Seikyō, Magedetamakka! 23 For an exploration of the earliest canon copying practices in Japan, see Lowe, “Contingent and Contested.” 24 Kansai Sōka Gakuen, http://www.kansai.soka.ed.jp/main.html (accessed January 18, 2008). The report disappeared from the school’s site soon after it was posted. 25 Seikyō shinbun, September 15, 2007. 26 The Sōkahan (Value Creation Team) is a reformed version of the Yūsōhan (Transport Team), the Young Men’s Division elite guard charged with overseeing the transport of millions of Gakkai pilgrims to the head Nichiren Shōshū temple Taisekiji from the 1950s until Soka Gakkai’s expulsion in 1991. 27 Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy; see also Geertz, “Centers, Kings, and Charisma.” 28 Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy, 25. 29 Ikeda frequently employed the term banjaku to declare the durability of Gakkai institutions. Banjaku derives from the Buddhist concept of the rock kalpa (banjakugō, Sanskrit parvatopama-kalpa), or the time it would take to wear away a rock forty li thick if it were brushed once every one hundred years by a deva garment. 30 Gurafu SGI, November 2007, 24–25. 31 Taki no gotoku. 32 Interpreted literally, one of the students will receive the Nobel Prize because Ikeda is chanting for it. 33 Literally “sends his daimoku.” The act of chanting namu-myōhō-renge-kyō is often focused on a specific goal, and daimoku is not infrequently conceived as a discrete unit, often in the form of a gift that travels over time and distance. 34 Collins, “On the Very Idea,” 89. 35 Blackburn, “Looking for the Vinaya.” 36 Similarly, initiatives to scrutinize texts within the Christian canon emerge as extensions of post-Enlightenment western European and American enthusiasm

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192  Notes to Pages 103–116

for applying principles of modern historical rigor. For discussions of shifts in the Christian tradition from revelation toward modern scientific rationalism, see Thomassen, Canon and Canonicity. 37 Takakusu promoted the publication of the Taishō Canon after training in philology with Max Müller as part of a broader effort to position Buddhology at the pinnacle of Japan’s efforts to formulate a modern educational system equal to— yet distinct from—the church-affiliated universities founded by European and American imperial powers (see Klautau, Kindai Nihon shisō). For more on the history of Japanese Buddhist canon collections as consistently open-ended and subject to the vagaries of politics and patronage since their first appearances in Japan, see Lowe, Ritualized Writing. Klautau, “Nationalizing the Dharma.” 38 39 Shimada Hiromi supplies more detailed comparisons than appear here between early and revised versions of the Gakkai founders’ writings to demonstrate ways Soka Gakkai administrators have routinely updated Makiguchi’s, Toda’s, and Ikeda’s texts to conform with changing doctrinal and political exigencies. His analyses provide valuable insight into the Gakkai’s editorial processes. See Shimada, Ningen kakumei no yomikata. 40 Murata, Japan’s New Buddhism, 79; see also Dator, Sōka Gakkai. 41 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei (1965), 182–187; (1992), 189–195. The 1965 and 1992 editions are largely identical, differing, when they do, in format and in the 1992 edition’s tendency to tighten descriptive prose in a few particularly flowery passages. 42 Ikeda, Ningen kakumei (1965), 183; (1992), 191. 43 Ningen kakumei (2013), 219. 44 See McLaughlin, “Komeito’s Soka Gakkai.” 45 Correspondence with Nishino, September 24, 2015. Nichiren set out the five comparisons in his Kaimokushō that later Nichiren followers codified as the gojū no sōtai (fivefold comparison) to reinforce Nichiren’s argument for the superiority of exclusive embrace of the Lotus over all other teachings. In her analysis of Nichiren’s categories, Jacqueline Stone observes that Nichiren was carrying out his own version of kyōhan (doctrinal classification), effectively elaborating on the Tendai Buddhist tradition in which he was trained (Original Enlightenment, 265–266). 46 Shishi shinchū no mushi (worms within the lion’s body) is an analogy from the Brahmā Net Sutra that refers to evil monks who destroy the dharma from within the Buddhist community. CHAPTER FIVE: CULTIVATING YOUTH

Epigraphs. Cutts, An Empire of Schools, 3; Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 34. 1 I alternate between using given name and family name pseudonyms for the Young Men’s Division members who appear in this account to replicate the manner in which I engaged them. Ryōsuke, Shinya, Keitarō, and Yō are all young men whom I got to know on a given name and affectionate nickname basis; I befriended Shimada, Ōmura, and other more senior members by their family names. 2 Seikyō shinbun, November 25, 2007. 3 SGI-USA members even set up a Jeopardy-style online quiz to help members test themselves on questions in such categories as Buddhist Concepts, the Life of Nichiren Daishōnin, Ikeda’s Lecture Series, and Soka Spirit (see https://­ jeopardylabs​.com/play/sgi-usa-buddhist-learning-review). 4 This passage is from Nichiren’s Shohō jissōshō (Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1361). 5 Reproduced in Seikyō shinbun, November 26, 2007.

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Notes to Pages 117–125  193

6

The complete test with answer key was printed in Seikyō shinbun, November 26, 2007. 7 Takoku shinpitsunan (“the calamity of invasion from foreign lands”) and jikai hongyakunan (“the calamity of revolt within one’s own domains”) were disasters predicted by Nichiren in his 1260 Risshō ankokuron. 8 Murakami, Sōka gakkai=kōmeitō, 106. 9 Sōka Gakkai Nenpyō Hensan Iinkai, Sōka gakkai nenpyō, 54. 10 Inose, Shinkō wa dono yō ni, 178. Ibid., 66–77. 11 12 Durkheim, “Social Bases of Education,” 203. 13 Inose, Shinkō wa dono yō ni, 78. 14 Sōkahan members wear blue jackets over white shirts and ties, Gajōkai members wear red jackets, and Byakuren Gurūpu members wear matching skirt suits that are a light pastel blue-green shade known as young grass (wakagusa), a color associated in Japanese aesthetic tradition with young women. The Married Women’s Division also maintains subgroups with responsibilities that pertain to protecting the Gakkai, such as the Kajōkai (Fragrance Fortress Association), which operates as a corollary to the Gajōkai, and the Shirakabakai (Silver Birch Association), which is made up of professional nurses who volunteer to be on hand during large Gakkai gatherings in case of medical emergencies. 15 Conversation, November 24, 2007. 16 Seikyō shinbun, December 6, 2007. Myōji no gen (literally “words from the family name,” perhaps better translated as “words from eminent teachers”) is a daily supply of quotations from Gakkai favorites (Ikeda, Nichiren, and European Renaissance figures dominate) and inspiring stories about persevering ­members. 17 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 29. Weber bemoaned the rise of “special examinations” as the calculated machinations of bureaucrats seeking to monopolize power within rationalized administrations. Following this example, Ronald Dore laments the rise of what he calls “the Diploma Disease” in modern Japan. See Weber’s “ ‘Rationalization’ of Education and Training”; Dore, Diploma ­Disease. 18 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, 32. 19 Ibid. 20 For discussions of the development of examination cultures in Japan and in other modern industrialized societies, see Cave, Schooling Selves; Eades, Goodman, and Hada, “Big Bang”; and Zeng, Dragon Gate. 21 Interview with Mrs. Kanabe, November 29, 2007. 22 Kodaira was one of the earliest Gakkai converts in Tokyo and was an architect of the 1950s Great March of Shakubuku. He is also credited as one of the members who converted Ikeda Daisaku in 1947. Kodaira ran for office in the Lower House unsuccessfully in July 1956 but was elected in June 1959 as an independent. He became a founding member of the Kōmei Seiji Renmei in November 1961 and from 1967 served for eighteen years as head of Komeito. 23 Outlined in Sōka Gakkai Nenpyō Hensan Iinkai, Sōka gakkai nenpyō, 72. 24 Nichiren’s “four dictums” against rival Buddhist teachings: “Nenbutsu leads to the Avīci hell, Zen is a devil, Shingon will destroy the nation, and Ritsu is a traitor” (see Stone, “Rebuking the Enemies of the Lotus”). 25 The three categories of sanwaku are incorrect views and thoughts, delusions as numerous as the grains of sand on the banks of the river Ganges, and delusions that hinder knowledge of reality, or seeing things as they really are. The gogyaku or gogyakuzai are killing one’s father, killing one’s mother, killing an Arhat, drawing the blood of a Buddha, and causing disunity in the saṇgha. The shitai are the truth of suffering, the truth of the arising of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path to the cessation of suffering.

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194  Notes to Pages 126–132

The jūni innen are ignorance, volition, consciousness, form, the six sense bases, contact, sensation, desire, appropriation, existence, birth, and death. 26 Toda, Toda Jōsei-sensei kōenshū, 204. 27 For more detailed socioeconomic analyses of Gakkai members in these years, see McLaughlin, “Electioneering as Religious Practice”; Nakano, “Minshū shūkyō”; and White, Sokagakkai and Mass Society. 28 This novel is still available in Seikyō Press trade paperback (bunko) editions. 29 Toda, Toda Jōsei-sensei no kōenshū, 178. In the 1950s, when Kanabe joined the Doctrine Division, women occupied Gak30 kai administrative posts up to the rank of district leader (shibuchō) that they have been barred from since (see Inose, Shinkō wa dono yō ni, 179). 31 Seikyō shinbun, November 24, 2015. 32 See “The Merit of Challenge: Why Does Prayer Come True?” 33 Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 957. Nichiren composed the letter on the twentieth day of the third month, 1272, five months into his exile on Sado Island. It is addressed to Toki Jōnin, one of his staunchest lay followers, with instructions that it be shared with followers awaiting Nichiren’s return. This letter is considered a basic gosho by Gakkai members, and local leaders will quote from it when urging members to greater efforts in shakubuku. 34 Chikushō (animals or beasts) is the third of the Ten Worlds ( jukkai or jikkai). In the Nichiren Buddhist tradition, denizens of the first three worlds Hell ( jigoku), Hungry Ghosts ( gaki), and Beasts (chikushō), also known as the Three Evil Paths (san’akudō), are incapable of realizing Buddhahood by themselves because they are incapable of chanting the daimoku. 35 The study materials cite no reference for this quotation from Nichiren. 36 Daibyaku renge Henshūbu, Jissen no tame, 68–69. The opening sentences are printed in bold in the original. 37 Screening at Nagoya Culture Center, November 4, 2007. 38 The Three Hindrances are the hindrance of worldly passions (bonnōshō), the hindrance of past actions ( gōshō), and the hindrance of retribution (hōshō). The Four Demons are onma, the demon that afflicts the Five Aggregates (form, perceptions, conceptions, volitions, and consciousness); bonnōma, the demon of worldly affliction; shima, the demon of death who cuts off the possibility of Buddhahood in this lifetime; and tenshima, or takejizaitenjima, the demon named Para-nirmita-vaśa-vartinodevāḥ, otherwise known as the Demon King of the Sixth Heaven (dairokuten no maō) in the world of desire who is the greatest obstacle to the practitioner of Nichiren’s Buddhism. Test-takers were told in study sessions that these demons inhabit the bodies of people in this world, often taking the form of kenryokusha, or powerholders, who seek to oppress Gakkai practitioners. 39 Nichiren adopted this Ten Worlds concept from Zhiyi’s thought as it is preserved in the Tendai tradition. The Ten Worlds ( jukkai or jikkai) are as follows: Hell ( jigokukai); Hungry Ghosts ( gakikai); Beasts (chikushōkai); Asuras, or Demons (shurakai); Humanity (ningenkai); Heaven (tenkai), Śrāvakas, or Voice-Hearers (shōmonkai); Pratyekabuddhas, or Condition-Perceivers (enkakukai); Bodhisattvas (bosatsukai); and Buddhas (bukkai). The ten realms are further grouped into the san’akudō, or Three Evil Paths (Hell, Hungry Ghosts, and Beasts); the rokudō, or Six Paths (Hell up to Heaven); and the shishō, or Four Sages (Śrāvakas to Buddhas). The appointment exam called for memorization of the terms with accompanying descriptive phrases from Nichiren’s writings summarizing each World’s character. For example, ikaru wa jigoku (anger is hell) is a statement from the “Niike gosho,” in Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1439. The Five-Fold Comparison includes five successive levels of comparison Nichiren set out in his Kaimokushō to demonstrate the superiority of the

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Notes to Pages 132–147  195

40

41

42 43 44 45

daimoku. They are as follows: naige sōtai (comparison of inside and outside), which established Buddhism as superior to non-Buddhist teachings; daishō sōtai (comparison of great and small), which places Mahāyāna above Hinayana Buddhism; gonjitsu sōtai (comparison of provisional and true), which places the Lotus above other Mahāyāna sutras; honjaku sōtai (comparison of essential and trace), which places the honmon, the essential teaching or final fourteen chapters of the Lotus above the shakumon, the trace teaching or first fourteen chapters; and shudatsu sōtai (comparison of seed and harvest), which is interpreted as the superiority of upholding Nichiren and his teachings over Śākyamuni. The exam only required replicating the names of each comparison without analysis. For an example of how members are adding to this five-level comparison to incorporate Ikeda’s teachings, see chapter 4. A Gakkai formulation that echoes bonnō soku bodai (“worldly passions are, as they are, enlightenment”), a popular formula in East Asian Buddhism. Gakkai members are encouraged to take up Nichiren’s entreaty to pledge oneself in service (onmiyazukai) to the Lotus by rendering faith-driven activities for the organization and daily life indivisible (see Daibyaku renge Henshūbu, Jissen no tame, 105–106). For explanations of the Three Powerful Enemies as they are invoked in The Human Revolution, see chapter 3. The genshō are monshō (documentary proof), doctrine in accord with the sutras; rishō (theoretical proof), doctrine compatible with reason and logic; and genshō (actual proof), or content of doctrine borne out by results. Nichiren stressed the importance of genshō over the first two proofs (see “San sanzō kiu no koto” in Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 1468). Seikyō shinbun, November 30, 2007. Interview with senior Gakkai administrator, Osaka, November 29, 2007. See Eades, Goodman, and Hada, “Big Bang.” See Goodman, “Rapid Redrawing of Boundaries”; Cave, “Education after the ‘Lost Decade(s)’.” CHAPTER SIX: GOOD WIVES, WISE MOTHERS, AND FOOT SOLDIERS OF CONVERSION

1 2

See Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan. For more on ryōsai kenbo, see Garon, Molding Japanese Minds; and Sekiguchi, “Confucian Morals.” 3 For discussions of ryōsai kenbo as it manifested in the postwar era, see ­Goldstein-Gidoni, Housewives of Japan, and Kondo, Crafting Selves. 4 For discussions of how the state in the Meiji and Taishō (1912–1926) eras instilled these ideals, see Sand, House and Home. 5 See Mahmood, Politics of Piety, especially chapter 1. 6 Griffith, God’s Daughters, 200–202. 7 For a historical survey of women in Japanese religions who have exercised agency within unequal power structures, see Ambros, Women in Japanese ­Religions. 8 For discussions of twentieth-century Japanese women who challenge a common presupposition that work, and worth, should be indexed to income, see Borovoy, “Not ‘A Doll’s House’.” 9 Hardacre, Lay Buddhism, 216. 10 Scott, Weapons of the Weak, xvi. 11 Starling, Guardians of the Buddha’s Home. 12 The following account is taken from Gakkai-published sources (Sōka Gakkai Fujinbu, Shirayuri no uta; Sōka Gakkai Yonjūshūnen Hensan Iinkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūnenshi; Sōka Gakkai Nenpyō Hensan Iinkai, Sōka Gakkai nenpyō), secondary scholarship (Inose, Shinkō wa dono yō ni; Sōka Gakkai Mondai

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196  Notes to Pages 148–167

Kenkyūkai, Sōka gakkai fujinbu; Usui, “Josei to shūkyō to soshiki”), and other sources cited. 13 Toda, Toda Jōsei-sensei, 51. 14 Considerable debate swirls around interpretations of this episode. Critics point out that the Lotus states that the dragon king’s daughter transformed into a male in the instant before enlightenment, and thereby emphasizes the karmic gap between the sexes. For an analysis that places this episode in historical and doctrinal context, see Nattier, “Gender and Hierarchy.” Sōka Gakkai, Gosho, 798. 15 16 Ibid., 1134. 17 Daibyaku renge 78 (November 1957), reproduced in Usui, “Josei to shūkyō to soshiki,” 152. The attributes Toda applied to women correspond to the Three Basic Afflictions or the Three Roots (sandoku or sankon, Sanskrit tri-viṣa), the sources of all delusions. 18 Sōka Gakkai Fujinbu, Shirayuri no uta. 19 The verse reads Shirayuri no kaori mo takaki tsudoi kana kokoro no kiyoki tomodachi nareba. A possible translation is “The fragrance of white lilies, ah how it gathers in strength / Just like pure-hearted companions.” 20 Sōka Gakkai Yonjūshūnen Hensan Iinkai, Sōka gakkai yonjūnenshi, 318. 21 Ikeda Daisaku set out the parameters for chūdō shugi in his book Seiji to shūkyō. 22 See Ehrhardt et al., Kōmeitō. 23 See Garon, Molding Japanese Minds, 185. 24 For an analysis of how Japanese mothers’ identities are conceived in terms of their connection to their children by the food they produce and ways this practice enacts the state’s “hail” identified by Althusser that I introduced in chapter 1, see Allison, “Japanese Mothers and Obentos.” 25 For discussions of contemporary Buddhist altar culture in Japan, see Nelson, “Household Altars.” 26 Several companies produce butsudan (Buddhist altars) and butsugu (Buddhist ritual implements) for Soka Gakkai. The largest is the Osaka-based Kongōdō, which has branch shops all over Japan and sells online. Kongōdō offers altar models of many different types, including the European Series from which Mrs. Watanabe made her selection. 27 Entreaties for Nikken bokumetsu are commonly seen on home altars. This term is used as part of Soka Gakkai’s dakkō undō (movement for leaving the confraternity), a campaign that developed after 1991 to draw former Gakkai members back into the Gakkai fold. Local Gakkai chapters routinely pass out lists of Nichiren Shōshū temples in their areas for members to focus on in their daily chants, beseeching the object of worship for aid in wiping out (datō) Soka Gakkai’s enemy. Dakkō undō mostly takes the form exhibited by the Watanabes, that of seeking this erasure not by direct confrontation but an inward-looking process of regular chanting to the object of worship. 28 Komeito lost three of its twelve Upper House seats in the July 29, 2007, election and earned 7,762,324 proportional votes, or 13.18 percent, down from 15.4 percent in the 2004 election (Asahi shinbun, July 30, 2007). In the summer of 2007, the figure of ten million votes was declared as an objective at Gakkai meetings that I attended across Japan, promoted specifically as a goal that Ikeda Daisaku himself held dear. Subsequent Komeito campaigns have aimed at more modest objectives. 29 For discussions of home-based meetings as sites for Komeito electioneering, see McLaughlin, “Komeito’s Soka Gakkai.” 30 Members earn one point for each month of each subscription. One year’s subscription for one copy of the Seikyō shinbun thus equals twelve points. 31 Inose, Shinkō wa dono yō ni, 103–104.

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Notes to Pages 167–177  197

32 33

Ibid., 55–56. National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, Fifteenth National Fertility Survey. 34 The Japanese government observed a slight upward trend when the fertility rate rose to 1.32 in 2006 and 1.41 in 2014, but these numbers remain well below the 2.1 required to maintain the population (see Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Statistical Handbook). 35 Ibid. AFTERWORD

1

2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9

Max Weber, who famously analyzed vocation (Beruf ) as an ethical duty to perform one’s work as a fulfillment of a religious obligation, himself expanded beyond Christian examples to identify a “calling” in professions more generally (see Weber, The Protestant Ethic; Gerth and Mills, From Max Weber, 129–156). For discussions of my research on the Music Corps (Ongakutai) within Soka Gakkai’s Young Men’s Division, see McLaughlin, “Faith and Practice.” This mechanism is common throughout modern Japanese religion, and has been extensively documented. Prominent examples include Hardacre, Lay Buddhism and Kurozumikyō; and Shimazono, From Salvation to Spirituality. Predictions about how Soka Gakkai may transform after Ikeda’s death have developed into a subgenre in Japan’s popular press (for examples, see Bessatsu, Ikeda Daisaku naki ato; Shimada et al., Sōka gakkai X dē; Shūkan daiyamondo, June 25, 2016). For analyses of post-1995 and post-2011 Japanese religious attitudes, see McLaughlin, “Hard Lessons Learned.” The results of this survey (in Japanese) are reproduced at http://www.rikkyo​.ne​ .jp/web/msato/ReligAnth/Religion%20of%20the%20Japanese2008.pdf. Summaries of these data extrapolated by Honkawa Yutaka at Alpha Social Science Inc. from the 2010 World Values Survey are available (in Japanese) at http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/honkawa/5215.html. See Horie, “Shinsai to shūkyō.” See Shimazono, Seishin sekai no yukue; Shimazono and Graf, “Rise of the New Spirituality.”

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Index

Abe Nikken, 7, 62–63, 76, 114, 157, 186nn. 67–68. See also Nikken-shū administration. See bureaucracy; kanbu affective belief, in Ikeda as author, 73–75; in one-to-one relationship with Ikeda Daisaku, 7, 18, 34, 39, 107, 155, 175, 188n. 22 Akiya Einosuke, 62, 63, 112–113 altar, in Gakkai facilities, 16, 64, 80, 100, 106; in Gakkai homes, 8, 50, 64, 87, 102, 114, 141, 146, 158–160, 171; Gakkai types of, 156–157, 196nn. 25–26; at the Hall of the Great Vow, 38–39; at memorials for Gakkai leaders, 50, 66 Althusser, Louis, 23–24, 180n. 33, 196n. 24 Anderson, Benedict, 21, 72–73, 91, 180n. 24, 187nn. 7–8, 190n. 8 anthems. See songs Appadurai, Arjun, 30, 181n. 60 art, 6, 16, 28, 59, 68–69; Artists’ Group, 13, 55, 159; Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, 16 Asad, Talal, 22, 180n. 27 Asayama Taichi, 32–33, 181n. 71 Association of Youthful Priests Dedicated to the Reformation of Nichiren Shōshū (Seinen Sōryo Kaikaku Dōmei), 63–64, 186n. 70 Aum Shinrikyō, 28, 176, 180n. 13 Balibar, Étienne, 1, 21, 180n. 21 banjaku (rock kalpa), 191n. 29 Barker, Eileen, 92, 190n. 12 belief. See faith

Bergson, Henri, 5, 54 Berlant, Lauren, 34, 181n. 74 Blackburn, Anne M., 103, 191n. 35 block (burokku), 13, 64, 132, 158, 172; block system (burokku soshiki), 12, 59. See also bureaucracy bodhisattva, Bodhisattvas of the Earth ( jiyu no bosatsu), 38, 46, 182n. 7; Jōgyō (Nichiren as), 46; Mañjuśrī, 148; virtue of, 81 bonnō soku bodai, 195n. 40 Brennan, Timothy, 72–73, 187n. 5 bunkasai (culture festivals), 7, 15, 60, 157. See also culture bunshin (transformational body, nirmāṇakāya), 80, 109 bureaucracy, as category, ix, 1–3, 10–13, 15, 20; historical development of, 55, 90, 122; horizontal line (yoko-sen) and vertical line (tate-sen), 52; information sharing within, 141–147; role of women within, 150, 155. See also kanbu butsudan. See altar calendar, xi; annual cycle of events (nenchū gyōji), 17, 133; division into quarters, 17, 18 Calhoun, Craig, 21–22, 180n. 22, 25, 28 canon, creation and editing of Gakkai canon, 19, 88–90, 103–105, 109–111, 192n. 39; “de facto canon,” 6, 70–71, 86–87; definitions of, 90–92, 191n. 23, 191–192n. 36; member engagement with, 19, 88, 93–95, 192n. 45; in New Religions, 188n. 18; “participatory canon,” 34, 91; Taishō Canon, 103, 192n. 37 209

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210  Index

Caodai, 26–27 cemeteries. See funerals; memorial parks chanting, components of, 6, 8; daimoku (namu-myōhō-renge-kyō), 4, 61, 69, 183n. 32, 194n. 34; at funerals, 64; by Gakkai leaders, 38–39, 46, 102, 106, 109, 191n. 32; at Gakkai meetings, 35, 38–39, 50, 66, 94, 113–114, 121, 157–161, 171; gongyō, 2, 8–9, 35, 160–161, 162–163, 179n. 4; in personal practice, 9–10, 14, 19, 67, 145–146, 163 charismatic leadership, x, 6, 7, 65–67, 105–107, 176, 187n. 4 Chilson, Clark, 187n. 4 Christianity, 29, 124, 126, 192n. 37 civil society, 30–31, 181n. 61 chūdō shugi (middle path-ism), 151, 196n. 21 Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), 26 coercion, 22–25, 50, 81–82 Collins, Steven, 103, 191n. 34 Le comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo), 71, 85, 89 Constitution, Article 9, 110; Articles 20 and 89, 6, 52, 56, 58, 184n. 45; and women’s suffrage, 138 conversion ritual, 9–10. See also shakubuku culture (bunka), as category, 3, 6–7, 36, 37, 150; Culture Bureau (Bunka Kyoku) and Culture Division (Bunkabu), 55, 56, 151; culture movement, 59–60, 174–175; folk culture, 40. See also culture center culture center (bunka kaikan), 9, 61, 64, 120; during the 2011 disasters, 95; examinations at, 112–113; exhibitions at, 74, 108; Kansai Culture Center, 107–108, 109; meetings at, 100, 105–106, 131, 165, 170, 189n. 38; Value Creation Culture Center (Sōka Bunka Sentā), 35–36, 39, 66. See also culture culture festivals. See bunkasai currency (chiketto), 18 Daibyaku renge (Great White Lotus), 15, 51–52, 61, 86; as study

guide, 112–114, 126, 128–129, 131–133 daigohonzon (great object of worship), definition of, 8, 61; during and after the 1991 schism, 39, 63, 76, 155; at the Shōhondō, 56, 58–59; at Taisekiji, 117; as one of the Three Great Secret Dharmas, 51 Daikyakuden, 55 daimoku. See chanting dakkō undō (movement for leaving the confraternity), 64, 196n. 27. See also Nikken bokumetsu Das, Veena, 33 Davidsen, Markus, 191n. 20 demographic change, 7–8, 167–169, 177, 197n. 33–35. See also generation gap dialogue (taiwa), by members, 9, 59; in Gakkai doctrinal instruction, 101, 129, 158–159; with Ikeda Daisaku, 7, 36, 59, 66, 74, 101 disaster, 27, 36, 193n. 7; Great East Japan Earthquake Disasters (3.11), 24–26, 31, 94–95, 176 discipleship, under Ikeda Daisaku, 7–8, 36, 39, 82–83, 99–103, 111, 131, 175–176; under Makiguchi Tsunesaburō, 37–38, 46, 69, 71, 189n. 38; under Nichiren, 126, 130–131; shitei funi (indivisible bond of mentor and disciple), 22, 65, 70, 78–79, 98, 133–134, 188n. 31; under Toda Jōsei, 37–38, 74–86, 89–90, 185n. 50 Doctrine Division (Kyōgakubu), 66, 86, 118, 123–127, 130–134 domestic abuse. See violence donations. See fundraising dragon king’s daughter, 148–149, 196n. 14. See also Lotus Sutra; women Duara, Prasenjit, 21, 28, 180n. 16 Durkheim, Émile, 119, 189n. 41 economy, Japanese, 29, 33, 47–48, 184n. 33; Soka Gakkai’s internal, 17–18. See also currency; fundraising; zaimu elections, in 1955, 5, 52; in 1956, 29, 52; in 1957, 52–53, 80, 108; in 1967, 56; in 2007, 157, 159, 196n. 28; electioneering by Gakkai

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Index  211

members, 6, 14, 133, 151, 163, 172, 196n. 29; f-tori, 14. See also Komeito emperor, pageantry of, 50–51, 97–98; wartime reverence for, 28, 32, 42–44 Eternal Buddha. See Nichiren ethnography, x–xi, 31, 170–175, 192n. 1 examination hell (shiken jigoku), 122; in Soka Gakkai examinations, 118, 122–125 examinations. See nin’yō shiken “exclusive similarity,” 29 excommunication, by Nichiren Shōshū, 7, 63–64, 155, 185n. 64; by Soka Gakkai, 24, 81–82, 189n. 40 faith, exclusive faith in the Lotus Sutra, 4, 50, 71, 103, 123–124; generational transmission of, 167–169; religious faith in Japan, 29, 176– 177; in Soka Gakkai (shinjin), 84, 86, 118–120, 132, 142–147, 166, 197n. 6–7 Falun Gong, 28 Fassin, Didier, 33–34 “fiction-based religions,” 191n. 20 filial piety, 96, 101–103, 182n. 6. See also shitei funi finances, 17–19. See also fundraising; zaimu Fisker-Nielsen, Anne Mette, 181n. 61 flag, Gakkai corps flags, 49, 118; Gakkai flag symbols and usage, 16, 38, 100, 110–111; Gakkai flag origins, 154–155 Fo Guang Shan, 27 Foucault, Michel, 21, 97, 139, 141 Fujinbu. See Married Women’s Division Fuji Taisekiji Kenshōkai. See Kenshōkai Fujitani, Takashi, 97 Fujiwara Hirotatsu, 57–58, 152 Fukushima, 2–3, 24–25, 95 fundraising, 18, 55–56, 152, 173–174. See also finances; zaimu funerals, concerns about after 1991 schism, 76; at Gakkai facilities after 1991, 63–64, 186n. 70; for Toda Jōsei, 48, 53; yūjinsō (friend funerals), 64. See also memorial parks fushaku shinmyō (not begrudging one’s life for the spread of the Dharma), 37, 81

Future Division (Miraibu), 12, 118–119, 129, 167 Gajōkai (Fortress Protection Association), 17, 120, 193n. 14 Gakuseibu. See Student Division Geertz, Clifford, 97, 188n. 22 Gellner, Ernest, 112, 122 gender, divisions in Japan, xi, 26, 167– 169; divisions in Soka Gakkai, 5, 12–13, 42, 138–139; gendered labor in Soka Gakkai, 13, 120 generation gap, 65; first generation, 54–55; shift to second generation, 7–8, 66–67, 119, 151, 162– 165; third generation, 37, 38, 67, 73–74, 134–136, 167–169. See also demographic change genron shuppan bōgai mondai (problem over obstructing freedom of expression and the press). See scandal Gentile, Emilio, 19–20 Geuss, Raymond, 23 Girard, René, 28–29 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 71, 74, 86 gogyaku (gogyakuzai, Five Delusions), 125, 193n. 25 gohonzon (object of worship), conflicts over, 8, 42, 61, 67, 182n. 3; in conversion rituals, 9, 50, 54, 63–64, 99, 118, 171; definition of, 8, 137, 171; at Gakkai facilities, 16, 35, 39, 80–81; kōsen rufu no gohonzon, 8, 37–39; in member homes, 102, 141, 157–158, 163; member relationship with, 94–95, 108, 119, 149, 155; Nichikan gohonzon, 8, 64; prohibitions regarding, 66, 83. See also chanting; daigohonzon gojukai (ritual conferral of an object of worship), 9, 50. See also shakubuku gojū no sōtai (Five-Fold Comparison), 110–111, 132, 192n. 45, 194– 195n. 39 gongyō. See chanting “good wife, wise mother” (ryōsai kenbo), 138, 154, 169 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 59, 66, 101 Gosho (Nichiren Daishōnin gosho zenshū, Nichiren’s collected

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writings) definition of, xi–xii, 9; Gakkai publication of, 49, 118, 125; interpretations of women through, 148–149; specific writings of Nichiren, 123, 126, 129–130, 179–180n. 7, 182n. 1, 189n. 50, 192n. 4, 194n. 33; in study materials, 86, 93–94, 99, 104, 116, 128, 131; uses by members, 120, 126, 128, 164. See also Kaimokushō; Nichiren; Risshō ankokuron government, constitutional separation from religion, 6, 52; Makiguchi Tsunesaburō conflicts with, 5, 37, 43–44, 79; Soka Gakkai mimesis of, 10–32, 57; Soka Gakkai relationship with, 81–82; Toda Jōsei characterization of, 78, 105, 188n. 33; Nichiren remonstration of, 4, 43–44, 182n. 4. See also kaidan; Komeito; mimesis; ōbutsu myōgō Grand Shrine at Ise, 5, 43, 79 Griffith, Marie, 139 Hall of the Great Vow of Kōsen Rufu (Kōsen Rufu Daiseidō), 8, 35–39, 93, 182n.1 Hall Caine, Sir Thomas Henry, 89, 190n. 3 Hammer, Olav, and Mikael Rothstein, 93, 188n. 18 Hancock, Herbie, 165 Harada Minoru, 10, 62, 65, 75, 189n. 44 Harashima Takashi, 62, 86 Hardacre, Helen, 92, 139–140, 190– 191n. 14, 197n. 3 Hayase Nichinyo, 186n. 68 Headquarters. See Shinanomachi Higuma Takenori, 47, 53, 183n. 17, 184n. 48, 189n. 54 hōbōbarai (ritual cleansing of heterodox items), 10, 50, 108, 179n. 6, 184n. 34 Hobsbawm, Eric, 20 Hokkekō Rengōkai, 62, 64 Honmon Butsuryūshū, 27, 179n. 6, 183n. 21 Hori Nichikō, 49 Hosoi Nittatsu, 45, 56, 58, 61–62, 76, 185n. 63 household (setai), 13, 138 humanism, ix, 8, 35, 38, 57

human resources ( jinzai), 13, 59, 80; fostering the next generation of, 89–90, 118–120 Human Revolution, The. See Ningen kakumei Ikeda Daisaku, apotheosis of, 7, 38–39, 60, 65–67; ascension to third Gakkai president, 5, 53–54, 84n. 48; as author, 15, 19, 57, 71–75, 128, 163; awards, 59–60; broadcasts, 14, 65, 73–74, 99–100, 105–107, 166; becoming honorary president, 7, 10; canonization of, 85–89, 192n. 39; conflation with the gohonzon, 108, 119, 155; conflicts with Nichiren Shōshū priesthood, 7, 61–64, 185n. 63; conversion to Soka Gakkai, 54, 146; dialogues, 59–60, 185n. 56; early life, 17, 50, 54–55, 77, 123, 185n. 50, 187n. 4; guidance to members, 24–25, 95, 100–103, 116, 150, 165; as Hō Gokū, 74; international engagements, 6, 60, 153; interpreted as doctrine, 104, 109–111, 130–131; name change, 77–78; during Osaka incident, 53, 77–85, 108–109; peace promotion, 7, 57; as photographer, 16; Soka Gakkai after, 7, 65–67, 175–176; presentation at Shinanomachi, 35–39. See also Yamamoto Shin’ichi Ikeda Hiromasa, 78, 153 Ikeda Kaneko, biography, 77–78, 125; rising profile of, 60, 138, 153– 154; as wife and mother, 2, 65, 74, 125, 141, 153–154; as Yamamoto Mineko in The Human Revolution, 77–78 Ikeda-kyō, 63, 187n. 15 illness, in ethnography, 170–171; of Gakkai leaders, 42, 53, 54; in member testimonials, 159, 162–165, 190n. 9 Inose Yuri, 118–119, 167, 180n. 9, 190n. 2, 195n. 12 Inukai Tsuyoshi, 182n. 15 ISIS, 25–26 Jambudvīpa (Rose Apple Island), 37, 182n. 2

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jinzai. See human resources Jishū Gakkan, 45 Josephson–Storm, Jason Ānanda, 29 Judaism, 32 Kachiron (On Value Creation), 41, 104, 125 Kachi sōzō (Value Creation, magazine), 43, 46 kaidan (ordination platform), as doctrinal and political objective, 51, 52, 56, 189n. 39; kokuritsu kaidan (national ordination platform), 51, 56, 185n. 64; Shōhondō as virtual, 56 Kaimokushō (Opening of the Eyes), 188n. 33, 36, 192n. 45, 194– 195n. 39 kaimyō (posthumous Buddhist ordination titles), 64, 186n. 70 Kajōkai (Flower Fortress Association), 193n. 14 kamifuda (deity talismans), 5, 43, 79 kanbu (administration), functions, 1–3, 118, 149; kanbu culture, 10–12, 24–25. See also bureaucracy Kansai (region of western Japan), Ikeda Daisaku bond with, 54, 82, 107– 109; spread of Soka Gakkai to, 54, 82–83, 88, 122–125, 188n. 30; jōshō kansai (ever-victorious Kansai), 82, 100, 189n. 43 karma (shukumei), 100, 146, 148 Kashiwabara Yasu, 147–151 katei (home), 138, 150, 153 kechimyaku (ketsumyaku, Dharma lineage), 61, 128, 185n. 61 kenryoku (power), kenryokusha (powerholder), 68, 80, 109, 194n. 38 Kenshōkai, 27, 61, 64, 186n. 64. See also Myōshinkō Ketsumyaku. See kechimyaku kingdom (Ikeda or Soka), 29, 181n. 58 Kinmonth, Earl, 183n. 26 Kishi Nobusuke, 53 Klautau, Orion, 103, 192n. 37 Kodaira Yoshihei, 123, 125–126, 193n. 22 Kōfuku no Kagaku (Happy Science), 190n. 7 Koizumi Takashi, 53, 77 kokka kangyō (remonstrating the government for slandering the Dharma), by Ikeda Daisaku (in

Ningen kakumei), 82; by Makiguchi Tsunesaburō, 43–44; by Nichiren, 43 Kokuchūkai, 27, 42, 183n. 21. See also Tanaka Chigaku Komeito (Clean Government Party), electioneering for, ix–x, 14; founding, 6, 56, 104, 149; Gakkai member protests against, 24, 110; Kōmei shinbun (newspaper), 172; official separation from Soka Gakkai, 6, 58, 153; relationship with the Liberal Democratic Party, 58, 110; relationship with Soka Gakkai, 15, 16, 22, 32, 86, 107–108, 125. See also elections kōsen rufu (to declare [the Lotus Sutra] far and wide), in critiques of Soka Gakkai, 29; definitions in Soka Gakkai, 6, 9, 17, 36, 49, 65; employed by Ikeda Daisaku, 37–39, 56, 154, 182n. 8; employed by Toda Jōsei, 37, 51, 124, 148; in Gakkai liturgy, 61; in Gakkai publications, 101; in Gakkai regulations, 65; in member testimonials, 144–145, 164; in Nichiren Buddhist tradition, 5–6, 51; in Ningen kakumei (The Human Revolution), 80–81, 84–86; in politics, 52; and the Shōhondō, 56, 58–59. See also gohonzon; Hall of the Great Vow of Kōsen Rufu Kōsen Rufu Daiseidō. See Hall of the Great Vow of Kōsen Rufu kyōhan (doctrinal classification), 111, 192n. 45 lay centrality, 27, 62, 64, 183n. 21, 190–191n. 14 LeBlanc, Robin, 31 Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), 14, 58 life force philosophy. See seimeiron lineage. See kechimyaku Lotus Sutra, in Gakkai liturgy, 2, 8, 86–87, 93–94, 110–111, 126– 129, 137; at the Hall of the Great Vow of Kōsen Rufu, 36–38; in Ikeda Daisaku’s teachings, 71, 74, 104–105; in Makiguchi Tsunesaburō’s teachings, 103–104, 183n. 24; in Nichiren

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Buddhism, 4, 51, 124, 182nn. 1, 7, 184n. 37, 188n. 33, 195n. 40, 196n. 14; in Toda Jōsei’s teachings, 5, 46, 55, 79, 104, 117, 124, 148–149, 186–187n. 2 Lowe, Bryan, 191n. 23 Mahmood, Saba, 139 Makiguchi Memorial Hall (Makiguchi Kinen Kaikan), 68–70 Makiguchi Tsunesaburō, arrest and imprisonment; biography, 40–44, 4, 182n. 12; conflict with the Japanese state, 5, 43–44, 147, 183n. 24; conflict with Nichiren Shōshū, 44; conversion to Nichiren Shōshū, 41–42, 183n. 17; founding of Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai, 4, 42–44, 46, 147, 149; imprisonment and death, 5, 19, 37, 44, 46, 48, 50; in member testimonials, 145; presentation in Gakkai facilities, 66, 68–70, 108; presentation in Gakkai texts, 61, 65, 71, 76, 79, 81, 104, 126, 192n. 39; teachings, 39–41, 45, 48, 117, 125, 183n. 19, 189n. 38. See also Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai; Sōka kyōikugaku taikei mappō (latter days of the Buddha’s Dharma), 4, 9, 38, 130 Married Women’s Division, ethnographic engagement with, xi, 88, 94, 120, 137, 141–161, 170–172; in Gakkai texts, 79; historical development, 147–155, 167–169; leadership activities, 13, 106, 108, 115–116, 138, 155, 166; in member testimonials, 66–67, 95, 170–173; subdivisions (Kajōkai, Shirakabakai, Yangu Misesu), 13, 161, 193n. 14. See also gender; women martyrdom, of Makiguchi Tsunesaburō, 31–32, 37, 47, 65; martyrdom drive of members, 25, 34; in Ningen kakumei, 48, 77–84 media, Gakkai media companies and products, ix, 6, 15, 25, 60, 99, 101; Gakkai media uses, 70, 87, 95, 107, 128, 186n. 65; media portrayals of Soka Gakkai, 50, 61–62, 110–111. See also scan-

dal; Seikyō shinbun; Shinano Kikaku Men’s Division (Sōnenbu), 13, 66–67, 94, 106, 110, 153, 155, 170–171; and examinations, 115–116. See also Young Men’s Division mimesis, of annual cycles (nenchū gyōji), 135; of educational systems, 33, 116, 119–120, 135, 167; mimetic rivalry, 28–32; of the nation-state, ix, 19–25, 28–32, 39, 47, 57, 81–82, 176–177, 181n. 65; of national literature, 69–73, 86, 90; in other religions, 25–28; and the scapegoat mechanism, 29, 89–90; of women’s roles in society, 140, 150, 167–168. See also Girard, René minshū (common people), 38, 68 Miraibu. See Future Division Mitani Sōkei, 41–42, 46, 183n. 16 Mitchell, Timothy, 21 Miyamoto Teru, 165 Mizoguchi Atsushi, 29 money. See currency; finances; fundraising; zaimu music, importance within Soka Gakkai, 6, 28; Min-on (Minshū Ongaku Kyōkai), 15–16; music divisions in Soka Gakkai (Kotekitai and Ongakutai), 16, 83, 157, 174; musical performances at Gakkai events, 60, 83–85, 159, 174–175. See also bunkasa; songs Myōshinkō, 61, 185–186n. 64. See also Kenshōkai Nakao Takashi, 184n. 34 Nakao Tatsuyoshi, 53, 77 namu-myōhō-renge-kyō. See chanting; daimoku nation. See nation-state nationalism, as category, 21, 25, 30, 32; in other religions, 26, 42, 92, 185n. 64; in Soka Gakkai, 32, 92; “world nationalism” (wārudo nashonarizumu), 57 Nation of Islam, 26 national ordination platform. See kaidan nation-state, components, 13–19; definitions, ix, 19–25, 28–32, 72, 177; of Japan, 40, 47, 97, 182n.

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15; and other religions, 25–28, 181n. 41. See also mimesis New Human Revolution, The. See ningen kakumei New Religion, as category, 4, 32, 90–93, 139, 177, 179n. 1–2, 190n. 11; shinkō shūkyō (newly arisen religion) and shinshūkyō (New Religion), 4, 93; other than Soka Gakkai, 26–28, 61, 126, 176, 184n. 48, 188n. 18 NGO status, 7 Nichiren, as biographical model, 4, 7, 9, 37–38, 43–44, 73, 77–79, 85, 88–89, 179n. 3; biography, ix, 4, 8, 17, 43–44, 49–50, 69, 91, 116, 126, 131, 183n. 32, 194n. 33; as Eternal Buddha, 9, 46, 61, 93, 185n. 58; exclusive embrace of Lotus Sutra, 5, 8–9, 69. See also Gosho; Lotus Sutra; Nichiren Shōshū Nichiren Shōshū, in Nichiren Buddhism, ix, 4; in Ningen kakumei, 104–105; temples, 41–42, 48, 50, 64, 162–163; sect organization, 60–61, 62; in wartime Japan, 43–44, 79. See also Abe Nikken; Nikken, Ikeda Daisaku; kechimyaku; Makiguchi Tsunesaburō; Shōhondō; Taisekiji; Toda Jōsei; Nichiren; schism Nichiren Shōshū of America, 58 Nichirenshū, 42, 43, 46, 50 Nikken bokumetsu, 64, 157, 196n. 27. See also dakkō undō Nikken-shū, 63–64, 114–116, 131–133, 135, 186n. 68. See also Abe Nikken ningen kakumei (human revolution), as concept, 34, 38, 65, 71–72, 100, 114, 116, 131 Ningen kakumei (The Human Revolution), authorship, 74–75, 188n. 20; canonization of, 34, 35–36, 90–95, 104–105, 110–112; as doctrine, 19, 70, 83–86, 94–95; drawings in, 69; editions of, 105, 110, 185n. 56, 187nn. 11–13, 188nn. 19, 23, 192n. 41; as history, 6, 86–87, 190n. 10; as literature, 88–89; in member testimonials, 162, 163, 165–166;

novel by Toda Jōsei, 46, 71; Osaka incident in, 76–85; serialization of, 73–76, 186n. 2; Shin ningen kakumei (The New Human Revolution), 19, 76, 107, 189n. 38; as study material, 86 nin’yō shiken (appointment examination), definition, 14; history, 117–120, 122–127; training for, 98–99, 112–117, 132–134; study materials, 86, 120–131 Nishiyama Shigeru, 32 Nitobe Inazō, 40, 42, 183n. 19 novel, as form, 21, 71–73; in Gakkai literature, 75–76, 88–90, 93–94, 126, 165, 194n. 28; in Gakkai training, 54–55, 88–90, 190n. 57, 190n. 1, 3 object of worship. See gohonzon ōbutsu myōgō, 51–52, 57, 58, 184n. 41 Ogasawara incident, 50, 79 Ōmotokyō, 27–28 Ongi kuden (Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings), 61, 110, 148, 182n. 1 Onshi Kinenshitsu (Revered Teacher’s Commemoration Room), 82–83, 108, 189n. 44. See also culture center ordination platform. See kaidan orthodoxy, in the 1991 schism, 63, 86; as concept, 29, 189n. 41; in Nichiren Shōshū teachings, 46, 56, 135, 179n. 6; within Soka Gakkai, 82, 93, 111 Osaka incident (Ōsaka jiken), 53–55, 76–85, 108. See also Ningen kakumei Ōtani Ei’ichi, 183n. 20 peace, as Gakkai ideal, 6–7, 37–38, 55, 59–60, 116; in member testimonials, 143; peace, culture and education (three pillars), 37–39, 62, 65; Women’s Peace and Culture Committee, 62, 154 Peace Preservation Law of 1925, 43–44 Pekkanen, Robert, 30–31 Phase Two (dainishō), 59–60 proselytizing. See shakubuku protests by Soka Gakkai members, 24, 57, 110–111, 180n. 26 Pure Land (Buddhism), 69, 140

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Ravina, Mark, 180n. 39 Reader, Ian, 75, 92, 188n. 22 Reiyūkai, 27, 126, 139–140 Renan, Ernest, 72 risshin shusse, 45, 183n. 26 Risshō ankokuron (On Bringing Peace to the Land [By Establishing the True Dharma]), 17, 43, 182n. 4, 183n. 16, 193n. 7 Risshō Kōseikai, 27, 126 risshū sengen (declaration of the sect), 50, 132 Roemer, Michael, 179n. 1 Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Sanguozi), 89 Romanticism, 19, 34, 70–71, 89 Russell, Bertrand, 23 Śākyamuni (historical Buddha), 4, 9, 46, 91, 184n. 37, 195n. 39; in sutras, 104, 130, 148 sandai kaichō (Three Great Presidents). See sandai shishō sandai shishō (Three Great Mentors), 65, 132 sankon (Three Basic Afflictions), 196n. 17 sanrui no gōteki (Three Powerful Enemies), 80, 132, 195n. 41 sanshō (three proofs), 137 sanshokki (tricolor flag). See flag sanshoku (tricolor). See flag sanshō shima (three obstructions and four demons), 132, 182n. 5, 194n. 38 sanwaku (Three Delusions), 125, 193n. 25 scandal, genron shuppan bōgai mondai (problem over obstructing freedom of expression and the press), 6, 57–58, 152; involving Gakkai members, 81–82, 189n. 40. See also Sōka gakkai o kiru schism with Nichiren Shōshū, 7–9, 60–64, 179n. 4 Scientology, 26, 188n. 18 Scott, James C., 139–140 Second World War, ix, 3, 19, 176, and conversions, 32–33. See also Ikeda Daisaku; Makiguchi Tsunesaburō; Ningen kakumei; Toda Jōsei security, at Gakkai facilities, 17, 23, 66,

120; around Ikeda Daisaku, 101–102, 180n. 13 security legislation, 24, 57, 110–111, 151 seikyō bunri (separation of politics and religion), 58, 152 Seikyō shinbun (Soka Gakkai newspaper), as canon, 91, 96, 98–102, 106; as center of Gakkai media empire, 6, 15; at Gakkai facilities, 82–83; in member testimonials, 91–92, 95, 98–102, 190n. 9; delivery, 172; as outlet for Gakkai leadership, 51–52, 60–63, 65, 75, 152; shinbun keimō (newspaper enlightenment or solicitation) 9–10, 14–15, 94, 157–160, 163, 170, 196n. 30; as study resource, 120, 126, 193n. 6, 16. See also Ningen kakumei seimeiron (life force philosophy), 46, 104, 183n. 28 Seinenbu. See Youth Division Seinen Danshibu. See Young Men’s Division Seinen Joshibu. See Young Women’s Division sengyō shufu (professional housewife), 34, 138 senshō zōjōman, 80, 84, 188n. 36 setai. See household shakubuku (conversion), definitions, 8–10; in Gakkai texts, 132, 194n. 33; Great March of Shakubuku (shakubuku daikōshin), 48–51, 118, 193n. 22; in member testimonials, 133, 138, 158, 162; in practice, 43, 51–54, 59, 170–172, 176 Shakubuku kyōten (Handbook of Conversion), 48, 93, 104, 123–126, 129 shakyō (scripture copying), 95 Shichiri Wajō, 75, 188n. 23 Shihan Kaigi (Doctrine Teachers’ Council), 11, 115, 134 shika no kakugen (Four Dictums), 125, 135, 193n. 24 Shimada Hiromi, 32, 42, 188n. 19, 192n. 39 Shimazono Susumu, 92, 179n. 1, 183n. 28, 197n. 3, 9 Shinano Kikaku (Soka Gakkai media company), 15, 101, 156. See also media

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Shinanomachi, as administrative headquarters, 2, 22, 24, 147, 172; facilities at, 16–18, 35–39, 61, 65–66, 74, 129, 182n. 3; pilgrimages to, 1–2, 16–17, 35–39, 98–103, 137, 155, 173. See also bureaucracy; zaimu shinbun keimō (newspaper enlightenment or solicitation). See Seikyō shinbun shinkō shūkyō. See New Religion Shinohara Zentarō, 75, 188n. 20 shinshūkyō. See New Religion Shirakabakai (White Birch Association), 193n. 14 shitai (Four Noble Truths), 125, 193– 194n. 25 shitei funi (indivisible bond of mentor and disciple). See discipleship Shōhondō (True Main Hall), campaign for, 55–56, 152; characterization as the honmon no kaidan, 56, 58, 61–62, 185n. 64; opening ceremonies, 58–60, 157. See also schism; kaidan; Taisekiji Shōji ichidaiji ketsumyakushō kōgi (Lecture on the Heritage of the Ultimate Law of Life), 61, 128 Shōshinkai, 62, 184n. 48 Soka Gakkai International (SGI), activities, ix, xi, 3, 38, 93; and Gakkai publications, 73, 115; in Soka Gakkai history, 6, 7, 36, 55, 62, 154 Sōka gakkai o kiru (I Denounce Soka Gakkai). See scandal Sōka Gakuen (Gakkai schools), 15, 24, 95–100, 156, 191n. 24 Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai (Value Creation Education Study Association), activities, 14, 42–44; disbandment, 5, 147; founding, 4; publications, 41, 43, 46; transition to Soka Gakkai, 46–47, 69; women within, 147–149. See also Makiguchi Tsunesaburō; Toda Jōsei Sōka kyōikugaku taikei (System of Value Creation Educational Study), 4, 41, 44, 46, 69, 103, 182n. 15 Soka University (Japan), as Gakkai administrator training facility, 2–3, 15, 32; founding, 119; facilities, 66, 186n. 1; in member

experiences, 32, 103, 144–145, 156 Soka University of America, 15, 173 Sōkahan (Value Creation Team), activities, 116, 120; history, 191n. 26; training, 94, 97, 99; as security force, 17 songs, 16–17, 20, 74, 94, 100; at Gakkai events, 50, 60, 83, 85. See also music Special Higher Police, 43 spirituality (category), 92, 177, 191n. 15, 197n. 3 Starling, Jessica, 140 state. See nation-state Stone, Jacqueline I., xii, 179n. 3, 182n. 4, 184nn. 37–38, 41, 192n. 45, 193n. 24 Student Division, 108, 115 study meeting. See zadankai succession (within Soka Gakkai), 7–8, 53, 65–67, 176 Suikokai (Water Margin Association), 89–90, 190n. 4. See also Tale of the Water Margin Taisekiji, and the 1991 schism, 7, 63, 68, 76; Gakkai member pilgrimages to, 43, 47, 49–51, 61, 86, 117, 155, 191n. 26; as Nichiren Shōshū headquarters, 43–44, 79; and the Shōhondō, 49–51, 152; as site of the daigohonzon, 7, 8, 39, 51, 76, 155. See also gohonzon, Nichiren Shōshū, Shōhondō Takakusu Junjirō, 103, 197n. 37 Takeiri Yoshikatsu, 58 Tale of the Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan, Suikoden), 89, 190n. 1 Tamano Kazushi, 179n. 4 Tanaka Chigaku, 42, 51, 183n. 20, 184n. 39, 185–186n. 64. See also Kokuchūkai Tanaka Kakuei, 58 Tendai (Buddhism), 4, 111, 183n. 22, 183n. 32, 192n. 45, 194n. 39 Ten Worlds ( jikkai or jukkai), 116, 132, 145, 194n. 34, 194n. 39 territory, claimed by groups other than Soka Gakkai, 25–26; as component of the mimetic nationstate, ix, 17, 22–24, 72, 97; Gakkai claim on, 17, 158 testimonials (taikendan), at Gakkai

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facilities, 36; at Gakkai meetings, 98, 158–159, 166, 172, 174; by Gakkai protestors, 180n. 35; in Gakkai publications, 82, 91–92, 96, 149, 167; by members, 142, 147, 165–166 Thomassen, Einar, 191–192n. 36 Three Great Secret Dharmas (sandai no hihō), 51, 56, 184n. 37, 38 Tilly, Charles, 23 Toda Jōsei, businesses, 45–48, 54, 187n. 14; characterizations of women, 147–150, 190n. 2, 196n. 17; construction of postwar Soka Gakkai, 5, 6, 39, 47–53, 88, 109; conversion to Nichiren Shōshū, 4, 20, 45; death and funeral, 5, 19, 53, 55; declaration against hydrogen bombs (gensuibaku kinshi sengen), 154; early life, 44–46; Gakkai administration under, 15, 49–55, 89–90, 117–119, 182n. 3, 189n. 38; in Gakkai liturgy, 61, 65; imprisonment and revelation, 5, 46, 65, 66, 69; in member testimonials, 114, 123–125, 133; presentation at Gakkai facilities, 35, 37–39, 69, 108; publications, 49, 93, 94, 104, 125–126, 192n. 39; succession of Ikeda Daisaku after, 53, 55, 86, 184n. 48. See also discipleship; elections; Ikeda Daisaku; kaidan; kōsen rufu; Ningen kakumei; ōbutsu myōgō; seimeiron; shakubuku; Shakubuku kyōten Toynbee, Arnold J., 36, 59, 66, 185n. 56 Tsukada Hotaka, 32, 92 Tzu Chi, 27 Uchimura Kanzō, 42 “uncanny valley,” 29, 181n. 55 United Nations, 7, 26, 38, 83 value creation education, 45 vice presidents, 10, 11, 68, 82, 106, 155 violence, as category, 23, 26, 28, 30, 153; domestic abuse, 161–166; by Gakkai members; 23–24, 112; in member testimonials, 162–165. See also coercion; Ogasawara incident vocation, as category, 10, 23, 25, 26,

172–173, 197n. 1; in Gakkai administration, 5, 12, 13, 15, 139, 155, 174; in member testimonials, 25, 172; vocational training, 115, 119. See also Weber, Max Watanabe Kaikyoku, 103 Weber, Max, 20, 23, 121, 193n. 17, 197n. 1 Winter, Franz, 190n. 7 women, characterizations by Ikeda Daisaku, 150; characterizations by Toda Jōsei, 147–150, 196n. 17; electioneering by, 151–152; flower imagery, 150–151; in Gakkai administration, 11, 31, 42, 127, 148–155, 167, 193n. 14, 194n. 30; and Gakkai facilities, 65, 120; in Gakkai meetings, 155–161; in Gakkai publications, 15, 138, 141, 152–154; in Nichiren Buddhism, 91, 179n. 7; in Ningen kakumei, 85; in other religions, 26, 139–140, 195n. 7; paradoxical place of within Soka Gakkai, 140, 155; in postwar construction of Soka Gakkai, 47, 56, 89, 107, 109, 122–124, 148– 155, 167–174, 188n. 30, 190n. 2; training of, 113, 190n. 2; in wartime Japan, 147–148; See also gender; home; Ikeda Kaneko; Married Women’s Division; peace; ryōsai kenbo; violence; Young Women’s Division World peace. See peace Xuanzang, 186–187n. 2 yakushoku (official duties), 13, 172 Yamamoto Shin’ichi. See Ikeda Daisaku Yamanaka Minetarō, 77–78, 187n. 14 Yamazaki Masatomo, 62, 75, 186n. 65 Yanagita Kunio, 40, 42, 183n. 17 Young Men’s Division, activities, 1, 24, 98–99, 159, 174–175, 192n. 1; in Gakkai administration, 11–13, 118, 120, 189n. 40; in postwar Gakkai development, 50, 108, 118, 123; subdivisions, 16–17, 192n. 2; training, 53–54, 106, 113–117, 127–134. See also bureaucracy; Gajōkai; gender;

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Index  219

kanbu; Ningen kakumei; Osaka incident; Sōkahan Young Women’s Division, activities, 163, 180n. 9; in Gakkai administration, xi, 11–13, 159; in postwar Gakkai development, 49, 89, 108, 123–124; subdivisions, 16, 97, 120; training, 89, 97, 115 Youth Division, activities, 62, 97–99, 118–120, 154; in postwar Soka Gakkai development, 49–50, 53, 118–120, 151; ranks, 53, 77, 113, 115. See also Young Men’s Division; Young Women’s Division yuta onshitsu (even now, resentment and envy are great), 79–80, 188n. 33

zadankai (study meetings), activities, 15, 16, 122–123, 170; definition, 13–14, 180n. 10; in postwar Gakkai development, 48–49, 83, 108, 117; taizen seikatsu jikken shōmei zadankai (study meetings for practical proof of a life of great benefit), 14, 117 zaimu (finances), 17–18, 133. See also fundraising Zeller, Benjamin, 92 Zen (Buddhism), 42, 193n. 24 Zhou Enlai, 36, 66 zuihō bini (adapting the Dharma to the locale), 10, 180n. 8

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About the Author

Levi McLaughlin is associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University. He is co-author and co-­ editor of Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan and co-editor of the Asian Ethnology special issue “Salvage and Salvation: Religion and Disaster Relief in Asia.”

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