The Nichiren Shoshu of America

Abstract

The United States has become a mission territory for the Japan-based Nichiren Shoshu (the orthodox sect of Nichiren). Since 1960, a sizable number of Americans has been converted to this alien faith. As a Buddhist movement in the United States it represents a small portion of the energetic propagation eflorts of the gigantic Sokagakkai (the ValueCreating Society) of Japan, which believe that only its version of "True Buddhism" can assure salvation for all mankind because other world religions have become obsolete and irrelevant to most contemporary men. Although Nichiren Shoshu tenets, rituals, and commandments are relatively simple, this faith demands that it be urgently shared with others, a fact that drives each convert to become a zealous missionary. A series of random sample surveys conducted among these Buddhists in the Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York areas indicates, among other things, that relatively youthful, fairly well-educated Americans are eagerly embracing the Nichiren Shoshu for some striking reasons, and that it is a vital religious force that deserves scholarly attention. Probably for the first time in the his-, tory of East-West relations, a large number of Occidentals, including some 200, 000 families of various racial and social backgrounds in the United States, are enthusiastically embracing an Asiatic religion.' These believers of Nichiren Shoshu (the orthodox sect of Nichiren, a 13thcentury Buddhist saint of Japan) have rejected their Judeo-Christian heritage in order to follow a Japanese-based Buddhism which has spread during the past decade to some parts of Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Western hemisphere. Of all these areas, the Buddhist propagation has progressed most rapidly in the United States in the past five years. The loud, monotonous, and almost hypnotic chanting of "Nam-myoho-rengekyo" (Devotion to the Wondrous Law of Lotus Sutra) has been heard from California to New York, from Milwaukee to Dallas as the United States has become the foremost Japanese Buddhist mission territory. The command post of the Nichiren 169 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.55 on Tue, 23 Aug 2016 05:05:33 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 170 REVIEW OF RELIGIOUS ,RESEARCH Sholshu of America, located at the Ocean Front of Santa Monica, California, is headed by Joint-Headquarters-Chief Masayasu Sadanaga, who recently changed his legal name to George M. Williams. The life of this energetic man of 42 is totally dedicated to the task of "kosen rufu," or worldwide propagation of the true Buddhism. As the head disciple in the United States of President Daisaku Ikeda of the Nichiren Shoshu Sokagakkai (Value-Creating Society) of Japan," he represents the dynamic society, which in Japan claims a membership of over 7.5 million households, and the society's political arm, the Komeito (Clean Govern-