Nichiren, Soka Gakkai and Komeito - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 57

the Nichiren Sh - sh - priesthood. They forbade Makiguchi and Toda to visit the
head temple Taiseki-ji. Still, as a response to prevent the priesthood from
turning Taiseki-ji into a tourist site for its survival after the war, it was the
increasing number of lay followers, converted by Soka Gakkai, who rebuilt
and expanded Nichiren Sh - sh - . Donations from these new adherents brought
an unprecedented prosperity to the priesthood in the post-war era. Yet, there
was con s teaching

that remained a source of insecurity for many priests (cf. Bocking 1994). It was
clear that there was a con

ict between Soka Gakkai ' s interpretations of Nichiren '

ict between the pragmatic, goal-oriented, this-
worldly focus of the Soka Gakkai members, which clashed with aspects of the
priestlier, mystical, otherworldly focus of many within the Nichiren Sh - sh -
priesthood. Within a largely conservative priesthood built on notions of the
importance of hierarchy, rituals and traditional customs, Soka Gakkai was a
challenge to its sense of entitlement and superiority, something that became a cen-
tral point of tension over the years (cf. Wilson and Dobbelaere 1994; Hurst
2000). The challenge to priesthood authority finally erupted in public when

Nichiren Sh - sh - excommunicated Soka Gakkai in 1991. While this may not
be wholly comparable to the process of the Protestant Reformation (Bocking 1994)
to which Ikeda compares it, after all the initial confusion it became a sense of
liberation for Soka Gakkai. Since the split, Soka Gakkai has more freely
promoted its form of Buddhism that di ers considerably from that of Nichiren

Sh - sh - . Given such fundamental tensions, present from the very beginning, it
would appear that a split was inevitable (Wilson and Dobbelaere 1994).
Soka Gakkai going into politics and establishing its own political party
was, not surprisingly, part of that internal tension just as it was part of the
external tension with Japanese society. Its own persecution during the war
may have underpinned for Soka Gakkai the seriousness of a whole nation
being enforced and following a nationalist belief system, and its own mission
in that regard, but for wider society this was di cult to grasp. After the war,

Toda would tell young people that it was their responsibility, in particular, to
keep a vigilant eye on the behaviour of those in power. This was probably a
somewhat prominent view after the war as people came to terms with their
own role in the atrocities committed under the direction of the Japanese
government. For Toda, of course, this call was not only an afterthought in the
wake of realising that something had gone awfully wrong, but was the con-
viction that had sustained him in his own remonstrations with this very state
power. That he had been a person of this calibre inspired a deep sense of trust
in him by his followers, including the young Ikeda, whom he met in 1947 and
who was later to take the helm of Soka Gakkai and lead it in new directions.
These factors underpinned the con dence with which Toda began his drive

for promoting Soka Gakkai as an organisation that upheld the ' true ' reading

of Nichiren s Buddhism. With his personal mandate for social justice as a

protector of human rights, emphasising the importance of upholding freedom
of belief, the organisation grew, and it was only a small step to get involved
with politics.

'