Soka Gakkai Research Articles

Understanding Faith-Based Ecological Citizenship: A Case Study of Korea Soka Gakkai International (KSGI)

This paper tries to examine how ecological aspects of religiosity are associated with the ecological citizenship necessary for coping with a global ecological crisis. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, the notion of ecological citizenship has been paid serious attention to by numerous scholars from different research fields. Here, we measure how religiosity can work on the sustainability of ecological citizenship, focusing on Korea Soka Gakkai International (KSGI) which has been actively engaged in the environmental–ecological movement since the 1980s. First, they show a distinct tendency to religiously reinterpret the COVID-19 pandemic, an understanding of the pandemic as an ecological issue, and worldly optimism that human efforts can prevent the current or upcoming ecological crisis. Second, KSGI members with a high level of ecological religiosity tend to support ecological citizenship, independent of secular ecologism such as ecological politicization or deep ecology. In conclusion, this study is the first empirical research exploring how people of faith belonging to a minority religious tradition such as KSGI develop their ecological religiosity into ecological citizenship, namely a faith-based ecological citizenship.

“Many in Body, One in Mind”: The Journey of Soka Gakkai in America, by AKIRA KAWABATA, KEISHIN INABA

“Many in Body, One in Mind”: The Journey of Soka Gakkai in America, by AKIRA KAWABATA, KEISHIN INABA

Hickman, Buddhism, and Algorithmic Technology

Abstract This paper is a further reflection on my dialogue with Larry Hickman, director emeritus of the Center for Dewey Studies, and Daisaku Ikeda, president of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (sgi). One surprising outcome of this dialogue is how similar Deweyan pragmatism is to many forms of Mahayana Buddhism such as sgi. Here I survey some similarities between Hickman’s philosophy of technology and Buddhism by emphasizing value creation and criticism. (Soka Gakkai means value creating society.) I then explore Peter D. Herschock’s, Buddhism and Intelligent Technology relying on Hickman to rectify Herschock’s philosophy of technology before discussing how Herschock’s insightful application of Buddhist ethics to ai and the internet accord with Hickman.

SGI Canada Educators' Perspectives on Creating Value in the Teaching and Learning Environment

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the perspectives and experiences of educators who practice Soka (value-creating) pedagogy in their teaching and learning environment. Methodology: The participants were educators who were teaching, or had taught, in a formal public or private education system in Canada and were also affiliated with the Soka Gakkai International Association of Canada Educators Group. An online survey was distributed to the educators describing the study and requesting their participation in a semi-structured interview. Fourteen survey respondents were chosen for an interview. Results: The study’s findings revealed important themes concerning how Soka education positively influenced the educators’ relationships with their students, how teachers structured their teaching and learning environment, how teachers perceived their role as educators, and how the teachers’ Buddhist spiritual practice inspired and guided their application of Soka education. Limitations: The findings are best interpreted within the study’s limitation of selecting participants from a teacher population that would likely perceive Soka education in a largely favorable light. Contribution: Our research poses potential inquiries for further study, given the novelty of the finding that identified how teachers used their Buddhist practice to inspire and advance their teaching. This aspect of teaching practice is not widely represented to date in the Soka education discourse and may have implications for future investigation.

Refocusing Body, Mind and Community Interconnections

Abstract This paper explores responses to COVID-19 by the Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai in Japan. Sōka means ‘value-creation’, but what kind of ‘value’ was created amidst a global pandemic? So-called ‘new religions’ in the context of Japan are typically presumed to embody a ‘flight from the human world’ into the exotic and remote. SG’s response, however, encouraged people to stay very much within a ‘human-bound world’. How did SG differ compared to other popular responses in Japan that drew on yōkai (or ‘spirits’) for comfort in defeating the soon objectified virus ‘monster’? SG may be well-built for responding to disaster in its extensive grassroots networks and its daily newspaper to provide information. Responding with a renewed focus on study, chanting and outreach also highlights, however, how the meaning of ‘hope’ and ‘well-being’ were generated by internal change while structurally working to realise the SDG s as part of more long-term solutions.

“We Alone Can Save Japan”: Soka Gakkai’s Wartime Antecedents and Its Postwar Conversion Campaign

Between 1945 and 1951, the Nichiren Buddhist lay organization Soka Gakkai, which had disbanded during the Pacific War, regrouped and burgeoned in a massive proselytizing campaign led by its second president, Toda Jōsei. This effort intertwined three aims: to spread faith in the Lotus Sūtra as the basis for Japan’s postwar reconstruction; to establish an ideal government based on Buddhist principles; and to build a national ordination platform as Japan’s sacred center. Driving it was Toda’s conviction, inherited from his teacher, Makiguchi Tsunesaburō, that Japan was suffering a profound malaise and could only be saved by embracing Nichiren’s teaching. That message formed a powerful link between wartime and postwar Soka Gakkai organizations. It drew Makiguchi into conflict with wartime ideology, leading to his arrest; amid postwar hardships, it found eager reception and shaped what would become Japan’s largest religious movement.

Trajectories of East Asian Buddhism in South Africa: a comparative perspective

ABSTRACT In this article I take my cue from Michel Clasquin-Johnson’s reflections on six main themes (lay practice, gender equality, adhesion to democratic principles, impact of Western psychology, social engagement, creation of a non-sectarian tradition) underlying the development of mainstream South African Buddhism to explore three forms of East Asian Buddhism operating in the country: the Dharma Centre (Korean Sŏn)—a representative of mainstream South African Buddhism—and the local branches of two large new religious movements—the Japan-based Soka Gakkai International (Nichiren Buddhism) and the Taiwan-based Foguangshan (Chinese Pure Land/Chan Buddhism)—which include a more diverse section of the South African population. Besides providing a detailed analysis of these forms of East Asian Buddhism in the country, I test the applicability of Clasquin-Johnson’s themes to the case studies and explore four further topics for the comparative study of South African Buddhism: interactions with local religions, proselytization, hybridization, the promise of worldly benefits.

‘Genderism vs. Humanism’: The Generational Shift and Push for Implementing Gender Equality within Soka Gakkai-Japan

This paper investigates how young Japanese women in contemporary Soka Gakkai (SG) navigate Japan’s continuous gender stratified society that remains culturally rooted in the ‘salaryman-housewife’ ideology. How are young SG members reproducing or contesting these hegemonic gender norms that few seek to emulate? While SG has long proclaimed that it stands for gender equality, its employment structure and organization in Japan until recently reflected the typical male breadwinner ideology that came to underpin the post-war Japanese nation-state and systemic gender division of labor. As shown here, this did not mean that SG women were without power; in fact, in many ways they drove organizational developments in the Japanese context. The recent imposition of the global framework for Sustainable Development Goals of 2015 has enabled SG to more substantially challenge its own patriarchal public front. Based on long-term fieldwork, in-depth interviews and multiple group discussions with SG members in their 20s, this article explores how SG-Japan is being challenged to follow its own discourse of ‘globalism’ and ‘Buddhist humanism’, promoted by Daisaku Ikeda since the 1990s. Using Bourdieu’s analysis of symbolic power, the research shows how Japan’s powerful doxa of ‘genderism’ that held sway over earlier generations is currently being challenged by a glocalized Buddhist discourse that identifies Nichiren Buddhism as ‘humanism’ rather than Japanese ‘genderism’.

Daesoon Thought as the Source of Daesoon Jinrihoe’s Social Work

Both in Korea and internationally, many know and appreciate Daesoon Jinrihoe for its social work in the three main areas of education, social welfare and health care, and charity aid. The article surveys Daesoon Jinrihoe’s activities in these three areas and proposes a comparison with the charitable and ecological work performed by the Taiwanese Buddhist charity (and new religious movement) Tzu Chi, the peace activities of Soka Gakkai, and the projects developed in Bhutan to implement the policy of Gross National Happiness. Tzu Chi is mostly known for its massive recycling activities, but in fact its view of charity and ecology is based on a specific Buddhist theology. Soka Gakkai’s vision of peace relates to its interpretation of Nichiren Buddhism. Gross National Happiness in Bhutan is a project promoted by the government, but scholars who have studied it have concluded that it is deeply rooted in Drukpa Kagyu, the dominant school in Bhutanese Buddhism. Similarities are noted, as well as differences with the Western Christian and post-Christian approach to charity, which is largely based on an affirmation of the self. Daesoon Jinrihoe’s social work shares with the Buddhist cases studied in the article the idea that the self may deceive (self-deception) but appears to be inspired by the unique principle of Sangsaeng, and by the idea that the root causes of social problems are grievances accumulated through thousands of years and in need of being resolved.

The Soka Gakkai Practice of Buppō and the Discourse on Religion in Japan

This paper investigates the Japanese Nichiren Buddhist organization, Soka Gakkai (SG), whose members have supported the political party known as Kōmeitō, or Clean Government Party, in Japan for over half a century. SG members have often been criticized as ‘impure’ political actors, undergoing frequent public questioning of their motivations for engaging in electoral politics in light of their ‘religious’ status. The paper shows how the SG members’ support for Kōmeitō at a qualitative level indeed transcends the typical demarcations of the ‘secular-religious’ binary system. However, they also simultaneously challenge the term ‘religion’ that has functioned as an ideology in the creation of statecraft and in their competition for legitimacy. The current paper is based on long-term fieldwork, extensive interviews, and doctrinal analyses that highlight how socially productive this discourse on religion has been. It also shows how a counter-episteme, rooted in Nichiren’s theory of the Risshō Ankoku Ron and the idea of kōsen-rufu, sought to bring a ‘Buddha’ consciousness to bear on individual and collective action as a model for alternative ‘politics’. Contrary to many claims, this did not entail contesting the modern institutional separation of ‘church’ and ‘state’, but is rather an attempt to find legitimacy for participating in ‘Japan-making’ in ways that cannot easily be understood or confined to explanations framed within the ‘religious-secular’ binary system.

Beethoven and Buddhism in a Japanese Religion: Culture as Cultivation in Soka Gakkai

Abstract Why is the museum at the headquarters of the lay Japanese Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai full of pianos? How did Gakkai members in Japan come to revere the compositions and ethos of Ludwig van Beethoven as means of defending Buddhist orthodoxy? And how did this Buddhist organization come to rely on classical music as a key form of self-cultivation and institution building? This article draws on ethnographic engagements with musicians in Soka Gakkai, along with study of the Gakkai’s development in 20th-century Japan, to detail how practitioners’ Buddho-cultural pursuits demonstrate ways cultural practices can create religion. Attention to Soka Gakkai’s fusions of European high culture with lay Buddhist teachings and practices troubles static definitions of “Buddhism” and signals the need for broader inquiry into the nature of religious belonging through investigations of aesthetic forms.

Duše předmětu a tělo modlitby aneb zkoumání sociologických nejistot na případu Sóka Gakkai International

This case study presents the results of long-term original ethnographic research on the international Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI). It focuses on the relationship between the material and immaterial and deals with the question of how to study them in the sociology of religion. The analysis builds upon the critique of the modernist paradigm and related research of religion in the social sciences as presented by Harman, Law and Latour. The methodology draws on the approach of Actor-Network Theory as presented by Bruno Latour, and pursues object-oriented ethnography, for the sake of which the concept of iconoclash is borrowed. This approach is applied to the research which focused on the key counterparts in the Buddhist praxis of SGI ‒ the phrase daimoku and the scroll called Gohonzon. The analysis deals mainly with the sources of sociological uncertainties related to the agency of the scroll. It looks at the processes concerning the establishing and dissolving of connections among involved elements, it opens up the black-boxes and proposes answers to the question of new conceptions of the physical as seen through Gohonzon.

Praktik Keamanan Manusia Soka Gakkai International di Indonesia, Filipina, Dan Singapura ketika Pandemi COVID-19

Indonesia, Filipina, dan Singapura mempunyai jumlah kasus COVID-19 terkonfirmasi terbesar di Asia Tenggara. Soka Gakkai International adalah Non-Governmental Organization umat Buddha Nichiren dengan 2 juta anggota yang tersebar di 192 negara, termasuk tiga negara tersebut. Mereka terlibat dalam isu-isu global seperti hak asasi manusia dan pembangunan berkelanjutan. Lalu, bagaimana aktivitas yang dilakukan organisasi ini untuk mendukung keamanan manusia di Indonesia, Filipina, dan Singapura ketika pandemi COVID-19? Artikel ini berupaya untuk menjawab pertanyaan tersebut dengan menggunakan konsep Non-Governmental Organization dan keamanan manusia. Hasil menunjukan berbagai aktivitas Soka Gakkai International di Indonesia, Filipina, dan Singapura dari bulan Maret hingga Juli 2020 yang mendukung upaya perlindungan manusia dari ancaman COVID-19. Kemudian, ada pro dan kontra di antara pakar mengenai praktik keamanan manusia dari SGI ketika pandemi. Ini dapat menjadi pembelajaran mengenai praktik keamanan manusia ketika pandemi berlangsung.

Soka Gakkai International in Post-Apartheid South Africa

This paper analyzes the activities of Soka Gakkai International (SGI) in South Africa, a largely Christian country with the presence of very strong African Independent and Pentecostal churches, where Buddhism has mostly attracted the attention of a small minority of white middle-class people interested in meditational practices. By focusing on SGI South Africa, which has been able to reach out to a significant number of black, and, to a lesser extent, Coloured and Indian/Asian members, this ethnographic study aims to contribute to the understanding of Buddhism’s interplay with a broader cross-section of post-apartheid South African society, and, secondarily, to add to the existing literature on this Japanese new religious movement overseas. After a brief overview of the historical development of SGI in South Africa, my analysis focuses on SGI South Africa’s main ritual, social, and missionary activities; its interplay with local religions; its attempts to establish a meaningful link with South African culture; and, finally, on the religious experiences and narratives of SGI’s South African members.

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

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

The Dialectical of Life and Death in Contemporary Sōka Gakkai

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.

SOKA GAKKAI’S HUMAN REVOLUTION: THE RISE OF A MIMETIC NATION IN MODERN JAPAN. By LeviMcLaughlin. Contemporary Buddhism. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+220. Hardback, $68.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 46, Issue 1 p. 113-113 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: New and Alternative Religious Movements SOKA GAKKAI’S HUMAN REVOLUTION: THE RISE OF A MIMETIC NATION IN MODERN JAPAN. By McLaughlin, Levi. Contemporary Buddhism. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+220. Hardback, $68.00. First published: 25 April 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.14503Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onEmailFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume46, Issue1March 2020Pages 113-113 RelatedInformation

Daisaku Ikeda and the Soka movement for global citizenship

ABSTRACT This article examines contributions to the ethic and practice of cosmopolitanism by Japanese educators Makiguchi Tsunesaburo, Toda Josei and, most significantly, Ikeda Daisaku. Collectively, they are “the philosophers of the Soka movement” that Rizvi and Choo refer to in their call for a special issue on “Asian cosmopolitanism.” The article advances understanding about the Soka movement for cosmopolitanism in two ways. First, it traces the genealogy and thought informing the Soka movement and then examines the substance of each progenitor’s contributions to cosmopolitanism from historical and linguistic perspectives. The author pays particular attention to the inclusion of courage and faith in Ikeda’s framework and also addresses important translational insights invisible to those not fluent in Japanese. Second, the author analyzes today’s Soka movement for cosmopolitanism in education and in the Soka Gakkai International. This section draws on Sato Masaru’s views of the Soka movement and presents concrete examples of how Ikeda’s perspective of global citizenship is understood and actualized curricularly in the U.S. context.

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

Reviewed by: Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan by Levi McLaughlin Mitsutoshi Horii (bio) Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan. By Levi McLaughlin. University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2019. xiv, 219 pages. $68.00, cloth; $28.00, paper. Levi McLaughlin's Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan is a brilliant introduction to Soka Gakkai as an organization and as a social movement. Soka Gakkai's organizational history, its basic teaching, and the main characteristics of its campaigns are clearly explained in the first half of the book. The second half contains a beautifully written ethnography, in which readers can get a real sense of the ordinary people who participate in Soka Gakkai's movement. Readers will gain most from this book, however, if it is read with Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen's Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan: Soka Gakkai Youth and Komeito (Routledge, 2012). McLaughlin is a male nonmember of Soka Gakkai, while Fisker-Nielsen is a female self-identified Gakkai member. In my view, these two books complement each other as two sides of the same coin. For more advanced readers, I would like to point out some possible shortcomings in McLaughlin's argument. What follows is my critical review of the book. Some may find my criticism pedantic, and if so, this is because McLaughlin's book is overall extremely well written. For those who know my own works, my first criticism will be predictable—rather than assuming Soka Gakkai is a religion, the category of "religion" should be an object of analysis in the context of Soka Gakkai's history. Soka Gakkai was originally founded in 1930 as Soka Kyōiku Gakkai, which was a self-identified "educational" organization. McLaughlin observes that its founder, Makiguchi Tsunesaburo, "hardly deals with religion" in his academic publications, and Makiguchi's works were "concerned primarily with philosophical inquiry, not with religion" (p. 41). What was described as "religious" about Makiguchi's life by his contemporaries was his conversion to Nichiren Shōshū (p. 42). At that time, Nichiren Shōshū was an officially recognized "religious" organization. This is because the category of "religion" in the prewar Japanese constitutional regime was reserved specifically for Temple Buddhism (which Nichiren Shōshū was part [End Page 527] of), sectarian Shintō, and Christianity. Thus, the arrest of Makiguchi by the police in 1943 and the subsequent dismantling of Soka Kyōiku Gakkai by the Japanese authorities should not be perceived as "clamping down on religious organizations" (p. 43, emphasis added). Instead, the organization was more likely to be clamped down on because it had not been a "religious" organization, which would have been constitutionally protected. It belonged to the category of "pseudo-religion" or "heretic teaching."1 Renamed Soka Gakkai after World War II, in 1952 it became a "religion" "under the 1951 Religious Corporation Law" (p. 118). This meant Soka Gakkai became a legal entity independent from Nichiren Shōshū. The book, however, does not highlight the significance of this event. And interestingly, this might be a beginning of Soka Gakkai's preparation for its future battle against the Nichiren Shōshū priesthood. In my view, this part of Soka Gakkai's history is too important to ignore. Now I would like to turn to McLaughlin's conceptualization of Soka Gakkai as "a mimetic nation-state" (p. ix). He observes: "Soka Gakkai's appurtenances resemble, most of all, features of a modern nation-state" (p. 16). McLaughlin uses the concept of nation-state as "a guiding metaphor" (p. 20). In my view, however, when he regards Soka Gakkai as "a religion that models itself on an idealized vision of the nation-state" (p. 20), he could have pushed his argument even further to regard Soka Gakkai as a "vestigial state." Vestigial states are "the institutional and cultural remainders of former sovereignties surviving within the jurisdictions of contemporary government."2 They could also be states "in waiting" or "in hibernation."3 Soka Gakkai can be one of the latter type. What are classified as "religions" by the government in...

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

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