ABSTRACT
Ikeda’s vision emerged out of the trauma of World War II. The defeat of Japan, coupled with the first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was horrific enough (Bix 2000; Dower 1986, 1999; Hasegawa 2005; Totani 2008). But even prior to these events, a historical review of the pre-World War II period in Japan reveals that the institutional choices of Japan’s Buddhist leaders toward their country’s expansionist policies allowed for the emergence of what came to be known as the imperial way Buddhism (koda Bukkyo). It was a codification of previous positions-“[s]tated in Buddhist terms, imperial way Buddhism represented the total and unequivocal subjugation of the Law of the Buddha to the Law of the Sovereign. In political terms, it meant subjugation of institutional Buddhism to the state and its policies” (Victoria 2006, 79). It was in this environment that Josei Toda, a disciple of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, opposed the Japanese military government and was imprisoned with Makiguchi. Together they had formed an educational/religious organization known as Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Value-Creating Educational Society). It was beginning to become a social movement on the eve of the Second World War insofar as its teachings reflected a “new” school of thought and action. Whereas “the ‘old’ schools, already a part of the establishment, were supported mainly by the aristocrats and geared above all toward chingo kokka (protection of the state), the new Buddhism addressed itself to the individual or, in a sense, personal needs for salvation” (Tamaru 2000, 19). Together with
his own mentor, Toda refused to have the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai submit to the militaristic propaganda of Japan’s government and fought to keep Buddhism where it should be-at the service of the people. Both Makiguchi and Toda were jailed in 1943. Makiguchi died in jail in 1944 and Toda survived, rebuilding the organization in 1945 and renaming it Soka Gakkai.
