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Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a

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Levi McLaughlin

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Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution
Contemporary Buddhism
MARK M. ROWE, SERIES EDITOR

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Daniel Veidlinger

Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of

a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan
Levi McLaughlin
Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution

The Rise of a Mimetic Nation

in Modern Japan

Levi McLaughlin

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS

HONOLULU
© 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

 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 to R eligion :
A H istory of S oka G akkai

68 CHAPTER THREE

S oka G akkai ’ s D ramatic N arrative

88 CHAPTER FOUR

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

112 CHAPTER FIVE

C ultivating Y outh : D iscipleship through
S tandardized E ducation

137 CHAPTER SIX

G ood W ives , W ise M others , and F oot S oldiers
of C onversion

170 A fterword : V ocational P aths

179 Notes

199 Works Cited

209 Index
 Series Editor’s Preface

IN APPROACHING SOKA GAKKAI BOTH HISTORICALLY AND 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 hun-
dreds 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 mean-
ing 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 remark-
ably 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.

vii
 Preface

THIS BOOK PROVIDES A HISTORICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC 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 com-
prises 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. Conceiv-
ing 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 nation-
state-like appurtenances. The mimetic nation-state metaphor also does jus-
tice 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, com-
paratively little sustained work has been done on its local Japanese communi-
ties. 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 aggres-

ix
 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 nei-
ther to expose nor to celebrate Soka Gakkai. Instead, I use a twofold approach
that combines ethnographic methods with text-based investigations to pro-
vide an account that privileges a grassroots-level perspective. My study pro-
poses ways to understand why Soka Gakkai proved compelling to converts
and why a group that is labeled a Buddhist lay association reproduces state-
like enterprises within its constituent institutions.
The fieldwork episodes I present here should be viewed as core sam-
ples 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 inter-
viewed 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), accom-
panied 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 con-
siderable 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 ethno-
graphic 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
 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 con-
sistently 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 rea-
sons why it attracted millions of converts and what accounts for its institu-
tional 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-lan-
guage 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-
 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 Mon-
bushō 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 Ris-
sho 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 How-
ell, 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-
 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 disser-
tation 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 Univer-
sity 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 friend-
ships 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 Philos-
ophy and Religious Studies Department friends make my working life in
Raleigh a true pleasure. I also benefit immensely from working with my UNC-
Chapel Hill and Duke University colleagues Barbara Ambros, Richard Jaffe,
Hwansoo Kim, Kristina Troost, and numerous others. Life in Raleigh is incon-
ceivable 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 collab-
oration with political scientists. They have forced me to strive toward exper-
tise 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.
 xiv  Preface

Presentations at Harvard, Oxford, Copenhagen, Toronto, McMaster, Man-

chester, 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 Amer-
ican Academy of Religion, the Association for Asian Studies, and other con-
ferences. 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 devel-
oped 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 expe-
riences 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 every-
one 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 vet-
eran 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 jus-
tice 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.
Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution
 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 . . .”

MR. IIZUKA FIRST APPROACHED ME IN HIS capacity as a repre-

sentative 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 imme-
diate postwar years when Gakkai representatives were eager to overcome the
group’s image as a religion of the poor. At every encounter with fellow adher-
ents, Iizuka provides them with a behavioral and sartorial model that implic-
itly 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,

1
 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 devo-
tional 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 fel-
low 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 contin-
ued 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 sig-
nificance for the group’s devotees. Shinanomachi began as an administra-
tive hub but today functions as a sacred space. Every year, millions of Gakkai
adherents make pilgrimages from all over the globe to Shinanomachi to con-
nect directly with Ikeda by engaging in devotional activities at the site asso-
ciated 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 con-
verted 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 Presi-
dent 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 Gak-
kai’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
 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 sea-
sonal 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 ded-
icated 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 organiza-
tion’s employees with another opportunity for self-sacrifice through service,
another chance to demonstrate dedication to Ikeda Daisaku and the institu-
tions 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 Interna-
tional, 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 esti-
mates 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 humanis-
tic 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 Gak-
kai 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 phil-
osophical ideals aimed at the elevation of the individual, all inspired by Euro
American traditions generally associated with “culture.”
 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 Associ-
ation, 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 fish-
ing 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 vir-
tue 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 teach-
ings of Nichiren (1222–1282), a medieval Buddhist reformer. Trained primar-
ily in the Tendai Buddhist tradition, Nichiren abandoned established temples
early in his life to preach exclusive faith in the Lotus Sutra, understood com-
monly 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 exe-
cute 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.
 Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  5

Nichiren Buddhist commitments clashed with civic responsibil-

ities imposed in wartime Japan. During the Pacific War, government pol-
icy required all Japanese subjects to pay allegiance to the Grand Shrine at
Ise, but Makiguchi and Toda unrepentantly defended their exclusive com-
mitment 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 reform-
minded predecessor. Under Toda, Soka Gakkai attracted converts with a com-
bination of results-oriented pragmatism and the promise of contributing to
Nichiren Buddhism’s eschatological ideals. Beginning with a few dozen fam-
ilies 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 West-
ern 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, geog-
raphy, vocation, and other demographic data. The group’s organizational
structure was reshaped by the leadership’s decision to run candidates for elec-
tion from 1955, shifting to a vertical hierarchy that bonded members in local
areas and facilitated rapid mobilization. Success in electoral politics galva-
nized 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 Gak-
kai president on May 3, 1960. Armed with Gakkai publications filled with tech-
niques 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 pro-
moted 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
 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 num-
bers 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 govern-
ment. 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 lit-
erature, 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 news-
paper, Seikyō shinbun. And, from the late 1960s, Soka Gakkai began building
a private educational system that would eventually allow adherents to edu-
cate 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
 Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  7

direct challenges he leveled at Nichiren Shōshū’s claim on doctrinal author-

ity 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 increas-
ingly 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 organi-
zation (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 engag-
ing 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 thou-
sands 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 culture-
and education-oriented discipleship under Honorary President Ikeda.
Ikeda’s ever-intensifying role as Soka Gakkai’s absolute leader con-
tributed to a schism between Soka Gakkai and Nichiren Shōshū. On Novem-
ber 28, 1991, Nichiren Shōshū Chief Abbot Abe Nikken decreed that only
those who would affirm noninvolvement with Soka Gakkai would be per-
mitted 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 commu-
nities, 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
 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 mod-
ern 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 Mem-
bers 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 wor-
ship) 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 gohon-
zon, a replica of the daigohonzon, which is enshrined at Nichiren Shōshū’s
head temple Taisekiji, near Mount Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture. Because Gak-
kai 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 shaku-
buku 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 prop-
agation method for lands in which people slandered the Dharma, a violation
Nichiren regarded as most egregiously evident in Japan. Recent decades have
 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 argu-
ment.” Despite this official shift, members in Japan tend to speak of convert-
ing 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 his-
torical Buddha); the age of zōhō, or semblance dharma (the millennium after
shōbō); and the final age of mappō (the latter age of the dharma), under-
stood 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 Gak-
kai 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 car-
ried out as a gojukai ceremony, literally to “receive the precepts,” performed
by priests at Nichiren Shōshū temples. Today, conferral takes place at Gak-
kai 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 main-
tains three months of a subscription to the daily newspaper Seikyō shinbun,
 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 het-
erodox 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 Chap-
ters,” 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 cus-
toms and to adapt shakubuku conversion techniques to suit situational mores.
Yet zuihō bini does not explain why Soka Gakkai adopted its partic-
ular 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 Gak-
kai’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 Hon-
orary 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 pyra-
midal 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 administra-
tors 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 nation-
state. This structure creates a specific Soka Gakkai ­administrative culture,
FIG. 1  Soka Gakkai’s national administration (Soka Gakkai website, https://www.sokanet.jp, August 2017)
 12  Chapter 1

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, voca-
tion, 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-
 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 Mar-
ried 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). Vet-
eran 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 organiza-
tion’s formative decades. As they take on roles dictated by their gender and
marital status, members also shoulder responsibilities distributed by a Gak-
kai 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 pred-
icated 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 influ-
ence. Members also take up responsibilities in a wide range of other subdivi-
sions, 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 rein-
forcing 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
 14  Chapter 1

usually describes an academic gathering. Under Makiguchi’s leadership, Sōka

Kyōiku Gakkai convened jissen shōmei zadankai (study roundtables for prac-
tical 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) ded-
icated 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 Gak-
kai mobilize votes for Komeito. Gakkai members have also electioneered on
behalf of candidates for Komeito’s government coalition partner, the Lib-
eral 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 regu-
larly 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
 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 tre-
mendous results: Seikyō shinbun claims a daily circulation of 5.5 million cop-
ies, the third-highest newspaper subscription rate in Japan.
A media empire. Soka Gakkai’s publishing and audiovisual compa-
nies 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 newspa-
pers, 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 compara-
tively 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
 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 influ-
ence on government through electioneering and its affiliated political party
Komeito. However, we must look beyond Komeito to understand the compre-
hensive 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 repro-
duce the first three vertical stripes of the five-color 1885 International Bud-
dhist Flag, extracted to isolate a three-bar pattern reminiscent of European
national flags. Members refer to the Gakkai symbol as the sanshoku or san-
shokki (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
 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 cen-
ters, 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 expen-
sive real estate in the world. Gakkai buildings are patrolled by trained spe-
cial 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 gov-
ernments 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 promul-
gation 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). Febru-
ary 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 govern-
ment that encourages members to plan their lives around annual commemo-
rations 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
 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 Gak-
kai 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 encour-
ages 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 equiv-
alent of contact relics to be displayed to fellow members. The zaimu prac-
tice 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 equiv-
alent of a currency called chiketto (tickets). Chiketto were vouchers issued by
the headquarters that were honored by shops and restaurants in the Shinano-
machi area in lieu of Japanese yen, to be used in businesses that displayed
a tricolor-emblazoned sign that declared membership in the Shinanoma-
chi Shop Owner’s Promotion Society (Shinanomachi Shōten Shinkōkai).
Although chiketto were not the precise equivalent of money in the main-
stream 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 numer-
ous shūkyō hōjin. Soka Gakkai’s finances remain an object of endless specula-
tion 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 thou-
sands 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.
 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 identi-
cal 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 oeu-
vre 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 equiv-
alent 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 insti-
tutions, 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 com-
pelling 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
 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 ide-
alized 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 broad-
based network of institutions under Ikeda, school-based pedagogy contin-
ued 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 educa-
tional 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 legiti-
mate forms that make up modern Japan.15 Positing Soka Gakkai as mimetic of
rather than adjunct to the modern nation-state avoids the mistaken impres-
sion 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 lib-
erates 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 mis-
sion 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 con-
cept of the nation, given that it persists as a social entity in flux, a fluid phe-
nomenon that manifests at the intersection of politics, technology, and social
transformation that may be constructed from above but cannot be understood
 Soka Gakkai as Mimetic Nation  21

unless it is also analyzed from below.18 The nation’s ambiguity can be pro-
ductive: 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 main-
stream 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 Cal-
houn explains, nationalism is “a discursive formation that gives shape to the
modern world.”22 Before nations exist as objective entities they exist discur-
sively, 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 con-
struct, as they seem both real and illusory. Mitchell draws on (and simultane-
ously 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 “nation-
ness” 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 reli-
gions may be expressions of nationalism. One can regard Soka Gakkai as a
particularly successful exponent of nation-ness, a producer of mimetic equiv-
alents to national structures that project authority and inspire loyalty.
 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 equal-
ity 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 Japa-
nese 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 oper-
ation 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 insti-
tutions. 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 con-
firmed 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 indivisibil-
ity, observable in the Gakkai emphasis on shitei funi (indivisible bond of men-
tor 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 con-
nect with Ikeda Daisaku.28
It must also be pointed out that Soka Gakkai, like a state, exerts
 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 central-
ized, differentiated organization that successfully claims control over legiti-
mate 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 dis-
tinguished 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 post-
war 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, communica-
tion, 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, indi-
viduals 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 pedagog-
ical practices, maintained within a bureaucratic structure that stresses insti-
tutional 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 ideol-
ogy through their participation or outright refusal to answer Soka Gakkai’s
 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 pro-
cesses 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 school-
and 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 Gak-
kai 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 author-
ity 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 Shinano-
machi 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
 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 radia-
tion 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.” Aka-
bashi’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 insti-
tutions 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 DiMag-
gio 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 ambigu-
ity.37 Religious groups contribute disproportionately to this isomorphic ten-
dency: 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 interna-
tional stage for its capacity to conform to the rules for international conduct.39
A detailed comparison between Soka Gakkai and similar organiza-
tions 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 pub-
licized 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 doc-
trine. 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-
 26  Chapter 1

cial functions, policing, tax collection, and even garbage disposal. Providing
millions of people with government services, even in a rudimentary and vio-
lently 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 Mus-
lim 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 wom-
an-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 recogni-
tion. 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 presi-
dent who oversees a complex bureaucracy that divides adherents by age, sex,
geographical location (broken into wards, stakes, districts, and other divi-
sions), and other demographic data, and relies to a large extent on nonsal-
aried 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. Scientol-
ogy 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 main-
tains a male-only uniformed paramilitary division called the Fruit of Islam
that guards mosque territories in marked patrol cars—institutions that con-
firm 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
 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, com-
plete 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 promi-
nent 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 nation-
state-like dimensions. Soka Gakkai falls into a lineage of Nichiren-type New
Religions that have, to greater and lesser degrees, taken shape around a mod-
ern bureaucratic core. This lineage begins with Honmon Butsuryūshū (orig-
inally 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, mobi-
lized 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 Reli-
gions. In the prewar decades, the Shinto-affiliated Ōmotokyō was among the
most successful of these to model itself on the Japanese state. It attracted con-
verts through skillful use of modern media—including its own newspaper and
 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 gov-
ernment suppression in 1921, and in 1935 it was devastated when its head-
quarters 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 headquar-
ters 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 Man-
chukuo state authorities of redemptive societies, and the ongoing governmen-
tal 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 pro-
moted by a wide consortium of Soka Gakkai’s political and religious oppo-
nents 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 acquir-
ing 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 hege-
monic state power to be combated with maximum intensity.
 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 sus-
pended 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 con-
ventions 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 perpetu-
ally 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 reli-
gious 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 threat-
eningly 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 con-
ceptual category, newly arrived Christianity was labeled a deviant heresy by
defensive Japanese nativists who regarded the oddly recognizable yet undeni-
ably foreign faith as a twisted version of Buddhism, one that called for a uni-
fied Japanese effort for expulsion.56
A comparable process of exclusive similarity unfolded as Soka Gak-
kai grew ever more reminiscent of the nation-state during its rapid postwar
growth. This negativity is evident in public reactions to Soka Gakkai’s per-
ceived 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 pro-
nounced tendency has persisted in Japanese reportage to describe Soka Gak-
kai 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 charac-
terizations 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 maga-
zine Shūkan daiyamondō in 2004 and 2016, and Ikeda kingdom appears as
an epithet for Soka Gakkai in other popular periodicals.58 Sneering descrip-
 30  Chapter 1

tions of Ikeda as Japan’s would-be monarch also dominate internet commen-

tary, 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 mod-
ern 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 major-
ity. Following Appadurai’s analysis, a convoluted irony is evident in Soka Gak-
kai’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 fundamen-
tal 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 omnipres-
ence.61 Overall, Soka Gakkai emulates the “dual civil society” model Robert Pek-
kanen proposes to explain the Japanese case: a plethora of small, local groups,
such as neighborhood associations (chōnaikai), and few large, professional-
ized independent organizations.62 Pekkanen points to ways the modern Japa-
nese state fostered civic attention to small-scale enterprises and hindered the
development of large independent organizations that could sway policymak-
ing. This resulted in many neighborhood associations and other small-scale,
nonprofessional voluntary associations and comparatively few large-scale Jap-
anese NGOs. After the immediate postwar era, Japanese civil society experi-
 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 develop-
ment. 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 ethnog-
raphy 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 Jan-
uary 1995 earthquake that devastated Kobe and again after the March 2011
disasters in northeast Japan.64 Concern for the local that life within Soka Gak-
kai 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 Gak-
kai, 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 optimis-
tic 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 cele-
brated 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 loy-
alty, as representatives of the Gakkai administration maintain a presence in
every Gakkai activity.65
Soka Gakkai’s founders seized the repressive system that martyred
 32  Chapter 1

their mentor Makiguchi Tsunesaburō. They claimed the expansionist Japa-

nese 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 capac-
ities 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 hagiog-
raphies 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 gak-
kai: 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 Gak-
kai: 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 usher-
ing 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 Gak-
kai’s utopian qualities as part of an extensive inquiry into how religions active
in postwar Japan manifest a national consciousness (kokka ishiki) that moti-
vates political activity.69 Tsukada suggests that consciousness of nation, soci-
ety, 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 enor-
mous numbers of converts between the end of World War II and the begin-
 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 com-
pany (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 adopt-
ing 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 stag-
nated 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 edu-
cation 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 nation-
state 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 oper-
ates. 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 real-
ization 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 inter-
actions, by letting accounts of the people who make up an organization tell the
 34  Chapter 1

story of the organization.73 Following Lauren Berlant’s emphasis on the “inti-

mate 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 neces-
sity 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 struc-
ture, 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,” inves-
tigates 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 nar-
rative as it suggests one response to a perennial question—what is new about
a New Religion?—by describing distinctive features of Soka Gakkai’s equiva-
lent 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 Moth-
ers, and Foot Soldiers of Conversion,” investigates ways Soka Gakkai repli-
cates 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 partic-
ipation focus and suggests ways Soka Gakkai may develop in the future.
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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.”