SGI Japan circa 1960

The following incidents have been reported in the news in
recent years:

Feb.10, 1962, Asahi Shinbun: Sixty-eight Soka Gakkal youth
with saws and pliers entered a Buddhist cemetery at midnight
on February 10, broke down barricades set up by the Buddhist
Association of the village, and routed the policemen in
order to conduct a burial for the father of one Wakameda
Kushiro (age 45) in Karasuyama, Tochigi Prefecture. Priest
Iso of the Jchijum Temple of the Shingon Denomination told
the police that Kushiro had been refused burial rights at
the oemetery since his lease on the family plot had expired
and since seven years before he had joined Soka Gakkai and
withdrawn from the denomination which owned the burial
ground.

April 23, 1962, Asahi Shinbun: Mrs. Sui Tamura (age 56) was
beaten over the head and bruised about the face by her son
in the latter's fanatic effort to destroy the family
Buddhist altar 'and convert his mother to faith in Soka
Gakkai. Fleeing her son and daughter-in-law the mother
sought asylum at the local police station at 11:00 pm., on
April 21. The incident took place in a village called Seiro
in Nligata Prefecture.

October 27, 1964, Asahi Shinbun: Tadashi Fujiwara (age 33)
was arrested on a murder charge after being apprehended at
an inn in Okayama where he had been staying for several
days. Himself a Soka Gakkai member, it is reported that he
became angry at the incessant noise created by two Soka
Gakkai men in an adjoining room and attacked them with a
butcher knife. Another Soka Gakkai man entered the fight,
and Fujiwara injured all three of them seriously, one of
them dying later in the hospital.

December 11, 1964, Nagasaki Shinbun: Momosuke Maeda, of
Sasebo, registered a complaint against Soka Gakkai members
of the 99th District for their excessive intimidation of his
daugter (age 19) who had just got o'it of the sickbed. It
appears that first she had been persuaded by two school
friends to attend a meeting where she was the target of
browbeating by eleven members at once and told that if she
did not convert she would never find happiness, but if she
converted she was certain to pass the examination at the
beautician school for a national license. When she refused,
her signature stamp was aifixed to an application for
membership against her will.

March 19, 1965, Osaka Shin Yukan: In Tottori an injunction
was issued against a nurse in the local hospital on the
charge that in her fanatical attempt to convert a patient
she had neglected to report his physical condition to the
doctor in time to save him from dying.

March 30, 1965, Hokkaido Shinbun: A youth, Teruo Suzuki (age
23), who was employed in a factory for the manufacture of
automobile interiors, in Obihiro, was arrested by the police
on the charge of arson. Upon his own confession it appears
that he had set fire to the house of a party whom he had
tried to convert to Soka Gakkai but had failed. In his
effort to convert the proslcct he is said to have
threatened, "If you don't convert your house will catch
fire."

It is interesting to see that effort is being made to
mitigate the effect of such publicity on would-be converts.
For foreign readers of Soka Gakkai English publications, the
term shakubuku itself is redefined to help the image:

Shakubuku means to introrluce the teachings of Nichiren
Daishonin to non-believers by relating the divine benefits
of faith. It aims at achieving people's happiness, a
prosperous society and world peace. . . . Disregarding its
different shades of meaning, people have interpreted
Shakubuku as something like "break and subdue." Thus, they
have misjudged the Sokagakkai's propagation activities as
coercive or even violent. Such a misunderstanding is quite
ridiculous.

However, conversion through these high-pressure methods
oftentimes is extremely superficial. Though an individual
sometimes joins to put a stop to the nagging of a friend, he
may try to withdraw the commitment when the pressure is off.
But superstition and fear of divine punishment are employed
to keep a new member from falling away.

Hobobarai means, literally, "sweeping out all the slanderers
of the Dharma." To "slander the Dharma" is to commit the
unpardonable sin of Buddhism. Specffically hobobarai means
to remove, forcibly or otherwise, the talisman and amulets
connected with the worship of Shinto kami and to destroy
statues and icons of any alien faith.

In Fukushima Prefecture, Ishikami Mura, a group of seven
Soka Gakkai men tore down a Kannon temple building and
burned the image. Several men entered a Christian church in
Aomori Prefecture, and, when the minister would not convert,
took his Bible and beat it on the floor. A man came home one
day to his house on the island of Mukaishirna to discover
that his wife had thrown into the ocean a Buddhist altar
which had been in his family for several generations. He
left her immediately and instituted divorce proeedings. In
November, 1964, three young men approached a housewife in
her home when her husband was away on a business trip. The
woman responded that she might perhaps be interested but
that she wanted to talk it over with her husband. This
encouraged the young men to press their advantage, and they
made their way into the interior of the home, seized the
Shinto and Buddhist worship objects which they found in the
altar, and burned them.

In Nemuro, Hokkaido, on Christmas day, 1964, a man and his
wife and two other adults, all members of Soka Gakkai,
called on a friend whose husband was in the hospital.
According to the report the wife, after four hours of
browbeating, finally signed her name to the roll. No sooner
had she registered than the four callers began to rip out
all the paraphernalia from the altar and god shelf,
and bumed it in the stove. The wife protested, saying that
these things belonged to her mother, but her visitors
insisted that the burning of the icons of false religions
was her flrst act in her new faith.

Such is the fervor of Soka Gakkai's iconoclasm.

The truth of the matter is that Soka Gakkai leaders have
never been happy about the public image that fanatical
members especially young member have created, and they have
consciously sought to change this image and gain as much
respectability as possible for their organization. One way
to achieve this, of oourse, is to persuade the press not to
publish unfavorable reports, and it is understood that this
has been done. The general director of a leading literary
joumal told this author in an interview that Soka Gakkai was
"quite noisy" about unsolicited news coverage in the secular
press. It is easy to understand how a newspaper with a
national circulation would be wary of offending a potential
reading public of several million! Perhaps this may aocount
for the "silent press . . . created during the last eight
years," about which Kiyoaki Murata wrote in the Japan Times
(June 11, 1964).

However, in spite of recent indications of a more
oonciliatory attitude, Soka Gakkai continues to be
intolerant of all other religions. On this point there is no
evidence of any change of heart.

The Shakubuku Kyoten (Manual on Forced Conversions) is Saka
Gakkai's indispensable guide for conversion activity. In
this one volume the member is given all that is considered
necessary concerning the teachings of his own faith, as well
as the essential characteristics of all other religions (in
the area of interest of the Japanese). The points most
vulnerable to attack in other religions are listed, and the
faithful member has them all on the tip of his tongue. It is
interesting for members of other faiths to talk to a number
of members in entirely different situations and listen to
them voicing the same criticisms. If the conversation
advances one step beyond what they have been taught from the
manual they are lost. It is a most sobering experience for a
Christian, such as the writer, to discover that apparently
the sum total of all that these people know about
christianity is what is presented in their Shakubuku Kyoten.
Probahiy the followers of other religious faiths feel the
same way.