The Dialectical of Life and Death in Contemporary Sōka Gakkai

Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen

doi:10.3390/rel11050247

Abstract

Doctrinal reasoning, the practice of chanting nam-myōho-renge-kyō and its vision for kōsen-rufu has been how Sōka Gakkai (SG) promulgated Nichiren Buddhism. This paper explores, in an in-depth anthropological manner, how doctrinal issues matter significantly in the meaning of funeral practices in contemporary SG. So-called Friend Funerals have become widely common and demonstrate how SG members’ understanding of death and mortuary rites differ in some significant ways from common practices in Japan. To understand why specific funeral rituals are not in and of themselves considered of primary importance when a person dies in SG, this paper discusses its reading of key tenants of Nichiren Buddhism. What hotoke or buddha means is commonly seen in Japan as something achieved upon death facilitated by specific funeral rites. How such views fundamentally differ in SG is explored here based on long-term fieldwork and participant observation, as well as interviews and review of its doctrine. The research suggests that SG members engage in a cross-generational endeavour for kōsen-rufu where personal actions—what could be described as the ‘political’ existence of this life—matters but in a non-dualistic way as this simultaneously becomes the sphere that ‘transcends’ that contemporary existence. How one views death is not only seen as something relevant at the end of life, nor only to those remaining, but is taken as a reality that becomes the impetus for giving deeper meaning to how one acts in daily life as part of a cross-generational movement.

Highlights

Sōka Gakkai as a Collective Movement for Kōsen-rufuSōka Kyōiku Gakkai 創価教育学会 (SKG; Value Creation Education Society), the forerunner to
Doctrinal reasoning, the practice of chanting nam-myōho-renge-kyō and its vision for kōsen-rufu has been how Sōka Gakkai (SG) promulgated Nichiren Buddhism
Unlike groups that became constituted as superstitious cults and ‘pseudo-religions’ which made them fair game for state persecution, Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai 創価教育学会 (SKG) was constituted in a somewhat different light

Summary

Sōka Gakkai as a Collective Movement for Kōsen-rufu

Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai 創価教育学会 (SKG; Value Creation Education Society), the forerunner to. Unlike groups that became constituted as superstitious cults and ‘pseudo-religions’ which made them fair game for state persecution (see Josephson 2012; Thomas 2019), SKG was constituted in a somewhat different light Groups such as Omotokyō 大本教, that were later labelled under the same category of ‘new religion’ in the postwar period attracted in the late 1920s possibly up to a million newly independent peasants, labourers, and most alarming for the state, urbanised women (Garon 1997). Kōsen-rufu was seen as a movement of propagation to spread consciousness and practice of this law seen as operating in life phenomena This emphasis on the individual locus of power and the emphasis on chanting and Buddhist study saw the organisation develop into a significant presence in Japanese society in the postwar period with as many as ten million members in Japan, usually counted in households as around. We shall see how individual practice and the idea of kōsen-rufu become central to specific ideas about death and funerals

The Mystic Law of Life and Death

Japanese graveyard with with Toba

Life-Death

Conclusions