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with supporting Komeito. Kishi felt that questioning Komeito
s decision was
being perceived as if he were criticising without there being a point to it, as by then
they could not change things anyway. While he wanted to support Komeito
and was deeply committed to the objectives of Soka Gakkai, he thought that it
would bene
'
t everyone to engage in more discussion about the dilemmas
some people were facing over the Iraq issue. To Kishi, exploring contentious issues
more openly about Komeito policies meant self-re
ection, which to him was a
big part of
'
the way of protecting Soka Gakkai
'
from going astray. However, in
the fervour of Komeito
s objective of achieving 10 million votes (the target of
the July 2004 election), taking the time to discuss thorny issues, Kishi felt, was
seen as an unnecessary distraction. Moreover, it made him feel uncomfortable
to voice too much disagreement:
'
.
Kishi felt social pressure to comply with what he felt as the socially
expected behaviour of Soka Gakkai, or seken, the signi
'
It makes you feel urusai (a nuisance)
'
cant others in his life
whose opinions were regarded as important (Lebra 1984), and perhaps he felt
like his compliance was
(Mouer and Sugimoto 1986). What
brought this about was his strong desire to do the right thing. Tobi, on the
other hand, had a similar problem, but compared to Kishi, who was rather
shy, Tobi was outspoken and apparently never felt the social pressure that
Kishi did. Tobi simply voiced his opinion and as a result was admired by
other students. Kishi on the other hand found he engaged in an internal battle
between saying what he felt was right, and listening to the reasoning of others
telling him to get on with things. The moral dilemma arose because Kishi felt
that he was not doing the right thing as a disciple of Ikeda. For Kishi this was
a crucial issue and related to how he perceived his role as such a disciple.
Ikeda always tells them in his speeches to speak up about any wrongdoing.
Kishi was asking himself if that was not what he should be doing now.
Kazu was another student who was less satis
'
being watched
'
ed with what he described as
being too accepting of Komeito
s policies. Kazu had studied social sciences at
Soka University before going to a European university to undertake a mas-
ter
'
s degree in political science. When he returned to Japan he began to feel
that compared to the Soka Gakkai meetings he had attended overseas, meet-
ings in Japan had too little discussion. I happened to have met Kazu once
before when I was a Japanese-language student at SU in 2001. At that time,
having just graduated, he was on his way to Europe. By chance, I bumped
into him again in October 2003 at the SU campus. When we met up for lunch
a few days later, I inquired about his possible involvement with the election
campaign. Kazu was not happy about the way Soka Gakkai members, the
young men in his district, were, as he saw it, supporting Komeito without
asking themselves why they were in support. He believed that there should be
more discussion and more freedom to choose what party to support. At the
same time he said:
'
Of course, on the one hand, there is freedom, you can do whatever you
like, but on the other, everyone expects you to vote for Komeito. If you
 
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