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Sōka-gakkai (also known as Soka Gakkai International or SGI) is a new religious movement that originated in Japan in 1930. For more than a half century, the religion was led by its president Daisaku Ikeda, who played a significant role in its growth from 1960 until his death in 2023. Although SGI is one of the largest new religions in the world—it claims to have over 12 million members in 192 countries—there has to date been very limited scholarly attention paid to the religion and Ikeda’s religious thoughts. The latter is particularly important given the fact that Ikeda has written extensively on the applicability and implications of the doctrines of the SGI in many global issues of the day, including peace, education, environment, and interreligious dialogue. Among a wide variety of issues which can be examined, the paper focuses on the following question: What are Ikeda’s religious thoughts, particularly his stance on religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue? In view of this question, this paper examines how his religious ideas are not immersed in any specific religion, but emphasizes the importance of pursuing interreligious dialogue while acknowledging other religions and cultural traditions. This paper also critically assesses whether Ikeda’s call for interfaith dialogue and collaborations with various religious groups is indeed taking place in the SGI’s commitment to fostering a culture of peace and understanding. It is hoped that the examination of Ikeda’s stance on religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue indirectly allows for the exploration of a religion that is largely unknown and misunderstood. Full article

In the post-World War II era, Sōka Gakkai has deployed the terminology and concept of “religion” (shūkyō 宗教) in a variety of contexts and to a variety of ends. Do these positions simply reflect a post-war strategic stance? Do they have deeper historical and philosophical roots? A careful reading of key texts by founding president Makiguchi Tsunesaburō 牧口常三郎 (1871–1944) suggests that, from its inception as the Value-Creating Education Society (Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai 創価教育学会) in the 1930s, the movement has occupied an ambiguous space, relative to the conceptualization and practice of “religion”, as these were imported at the start of the Meiji Era (1868–1912), adopted and indigenized to respond to the cultural, social and political exigencies of modernizing Japan. Examples of Makiguchi’s heterodoxy, relative to the established understanding of “religion” and its role, include: the rejection of specific ideas of “religion”, in relation to education and science, as represented in the writings of such intellectuals as Inoue Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 and Ishiwara Atsushi 石原純; refusal to accept the official definition of Shintō as non-religion; positing an essential continuity between faith/trust among human subjects and faith directed at ideas and objects typically considered “religious”; promoting the idea of worldly benefit, as a result of faith in and practice of “religion”. A careful reading of Makiguchi’s complex, and often heterodox, discourse, relative to the conceptual category of “religion”, can frame a more nuanced interpretation of his ultimate heterodoxy—his rejection of the Ise Shrine amulet, an act for which he was arrested and confined to prison in July 1943. It can also clarify the basis for the Sōka Gakkai’s post-war deployments of the concept of religion, and create a more flexible and expansive interpretative space for considering the organization’s discourse and praxis in the post-war era. Full article

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