Introduction - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 16

(Poggi 2001: 8) means focusing on the actual experience of discourses and not
simply on the discourses themselves: ' to have power is tantamount to being in

a position to do something (emphasis in original). Commitment to voluntar-

ism in religious groups, partly because it is so hard come by in many other
spheres, seems suspect quite easily as the

'

sought is presumed to
come mostly from an oppressive negative force. Something to do with

' di erence '

' reli-

gion ' very quickly gets framed as delusional, particularly in light of the

in uence of the Marxist sense of ideology and the secularisation thesis. This

places religious individuals with a sense of

juxtaposed against
secular rationalism, where political involvement is seen as outside rational
authority (what are seen as legitimate forms for power) and therefore hard to
trust. This topic explores how individuals not only resist this framing, but
also transform it to gain support for their cause.
While such practices as amakudari and the nature of the developmental
state (Johnson 1995) substantiate a largely negative image of the sources and
structures of authority in Japan, this is not dissimilar to Flybjerg

' illegitimacy '

s (1998)
story about decision-making in Denmark, a place often regarded as the epitome
of democracy. Where is the locus of power, the proper scope of governance,
and what is the meaning of citizenship (Lipson 1993)? Using a case study of
public consultation, we see how individual motivation plays a decisive role in
determining already decided political outcomes. Flybjerg illustrates the gap,
and the real problem for democracy as a system understood without a focus
on the individuals within it. This is the case regardless of whether political
culture originates in Confucian notions of elite rule or in ideals about political
equality.

'

Culture as habits

Because for Soka Gakkai members there is a focus on changing habits of
living, it is closely linked to theories about culture. Anthropology has been a
discipline concerned with culture, a concern that has taken di erent trajec-

tories. Here I would like brie 1937)

notion of culture because it comes, rather unexpectedly perhaps, close to the
way

y to discuss Antonio Gramsci ' s (1891 -

is perceived in Soka Gakkai. It is clear that
Soka Gakkai members are socialised on narratives that strongly advocate
engaging in a philosophical process where the individual becomes the turning
point of cultural practices. Gramsci

' culture ' ,or ' habits of living '

' s basic concern was above all with cul-

tural change; so was Nichiren s, according to Soka Gakkai (this reading of

him is discussed Chapter 1 ). Crehan (2002) argues that Gramsci

'

' is concept of

culture was radically di erent from most common concerns of anthropology;

he was essentially an activist whose main objective was to a ect cultural

change. The genius of this early twentieth-century political theorist is that
culture never represented an autonomous domain (only more recently dis-
covered by anthropology), neither was it opposed to some economic base as
argued by Marx, but it was something that is continually generated through