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Subject: Japan’s Rush Hour of The Gods

All Follow-Up: Re: Japan’s Rush Hour of The Gods
Date: Sat, 03 Jan 1998 19:33:17 GMT

Japan’s Rush Hour of The Gods

THE AUSTRALIAN MAGAZINE
2, Holt Street, Surry Hills, Sydney 2010.
Tel: (02) 9288-2442  Fax: (02) 9288-3371

September 28-29, 1996.
Pg.30-35
By Robert Garran

Even before Aum Supreme Truth launched its deadly gas 
attack on the Tokyo subway last year, many in Japan 
were concerned about the power of the country's 
religious sects. Now with the largest claiming l0 
million adherents, there is growing alarm about 
Japan’s spiritual climate.

The Japanese sometimes say they are born Shinto, 
married Christian and die Buddhist. It is a sign of 
their practical approach to religion that there have 
long been Shinto rituals that go with birth, and 
Buddhist rituals for funerals. The Christian marriage 
ceremony, captivating and glamorous, is a more recent 
innovation.

Yet even as they often claim allegiance to several 
traditional religious and ardently join in the rites 
of passage and festivals like New Year, many Japanese 
complain that the old religions are stale and worn 
out. Buddhism is sometimes called the religion of 
death --- useful for funerals, but little else. The 
decline of the old religions has left a gap. To fill 
it, the so-called “new religions” are booming --- the 
myriad of religions that have sprung forth since the 
epochal Meiji Restoration of 1868, the revolution that 
sent Japan leaping into the modern world. From the 
viewpoint of the West, where religion is usually 
regarded as an exclusive set of doctrines about the 
deepest meanings of life, this is strange. But the 
recent behaviour of some of the new religions is 
stranger still. It is estimated there are 3000 new 
religions in Japan, population 125 million, ranging 
from the tiny to the politically potent to the 
murderous Aum Supreme Truth. These new religions are 
thought to claim the allegiance of up to one in five 
Japanese.

Last year’s subway gas attack in Tokyo shocked Japan. 
Before the March attack, there had been growing 
questions about Japan’s propensity to generate new 
religions. But the stream of news about the horrors 
perpetrated by Shoko Asahara’s cult, Aum Supreme 
Truth, suggested a more deeply-rooted problem.

What is it about Japan that led to the growth of the 
mad, sadistic Aum cult, with the brutal treatment of 
its members, its crazy plans for world domination? 
Was Aum just an aberration, the rotten fruit of a few 
social misfits? Or does it foretell a broader, deeper 
malaise in this most affluent of nations? And what 
does Aum, which had 10,000 members before the subway 
attack, have in common with any of the other of the 
abundance of new religions? 

The biggest is Soka Gakkai. It claims to have 10 
million members --- almost one in 12 Japanese --- who 
are active in seeking new recruits and doing good 
works. It operates numerous educational institutions 
and international cultural exchanges. It is also much 
maligned and feared by many Japanese.

To its members it is only path to true happiness, but 
Soka Gakkai’s efforts over the years to portray itself 
as a benign and benevolent institution have failed 
dismally: it is widely reviled for what many 
outsiders regard as its malevolent responses to its 
critics and deserters. Those who try to leave, 
especially the more senior members, are frequently 
harassed, and there are stories that opponents have 
been murdered.

Soka Gakkai was formed in 1930 as a lay arm of the 
Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist sect, one of the 30 groups 
following the teachings of Nichiren, a monk who lived 
from 1222 to 1282. Thousands of members left Soka 
Gakkai in 1991, complaining that the group was being 
taken over by its leader, Daisaku Ikeda, for his own 
political purposes. The split led to bitter 
recriminations between remaining and former members. 

One former member, Tomiichi Yamada, claimed he was 
harassed for two years after he left. “I was an 
executive responsible for looking after 4000 members,” 
he says. “After I quit, I received phone calls every 
day. They either hung up without speaking or said, 
‘You will be killed’. Early on the calls came every 
day, morning and night; later they became 
intermittent. It wasn’t just me, it happens to all 
former members. Sometimes they followed me home from 
work, or left frightening messages saying, ‘Watch out 
what happens to your kids’. I had Soka Gakkai members 
piss on me. Others have had dead cats, rats and dogs 
thrown over the fence into their gardens, or fires set 
against their houses.”

Soka Gakkai denies all this, saying such stories are 
the invention of irresponsible tabloid journalists. 
“I can categorically deny that any kind of pressure 
like that exists in our organisation, because people 
can come and go,” says Yoko Kaitani, 46, a member for 
40 years. “There is absolutely no pressure from the 
organisation.” 

“In this group we don’t want human relationship to be 
based on gains and interest. However, there may be 
members who are there because of self-interest, 
selfish motives, and they can’t keep up with the 
practice and the philosophy. They feel out of it, and 
they don’t want to stay. Those people, they are free 
to leave if they want to. But unfortunately some of 
them do not really understand what the group stands 
for, and in order to defend themselves will criticise 
Soka Gakkai.”

Michiko Watanabe (as did Yamada, she asked that her 
real names not be used), also left at the time of the 
split, after being a member since her birth 32 years 
before. “When I left, my family and I were harassed by 
members of the Soka Gakkai division,” she says. “They 
tried to chase us when my sisters went out. They came 
to our home to try to harass us. My former friends 
told lies to get my phone number. When they called, 
they said,‘You will go to hell, you will be unhappy’. 
Some were subjected to physical violence. There was an 
order by Ikeda to harass members who leave the cult.”

Neither the accusations nor the evidence suggest Soka 
Gakkai’s behaviour is as extreme as that of Aum 
Supreme Truth. What they do share is a propensity for 
self-righteousness and intolerance of their critics.

In the main courtroom at Tokyo District Court on April 
24, Shoko Asahara faced the world for the first time 
since his arrest a year before. Squinting, round- 
faced, with a dark ragged beard and long black hair, 
it was hard to imagine him as a guru.

Yet Asahara’s cult in recent years has been the 
fastest-growing in Japan. “No,” Asahara told the 
court, he would not plead one way or the other to the 
charges : the murder of 11 people and attempted murder 
of 3796 others in the March 1995 Tokyo subway nerve 
gas attack, the 1994 killing of a cult member, and the 
illegal production of thiopental, a “true scrim” 
(sic, "truth serum"). More charges are pending.

“Before and since my arrest, I have kept one important
purpose in mind. I have tried to help people grasp 
absolute truth, absolute freedom and absolute 
happiness,” Asahara told the court.

This from a man who routinely called on his followers 
to murder critics and deserters from the cult, who had 
built up an enormous cache of weapons of mass murder, 
including chemical and biological agents, and who with 
the subway gas attack showed he was well on the way to 
using them to try to fulfil his prophecies of 
Armageddon.

What Soka Gakkai and Aum Supreme Truth share is 
doctrines that make a sharp distinction between good 
and evil, between heaven and hell. By following 
Ikeda’s precepts, or Asahara’s, the followers will be 
led to enlightenment, and eventually to heaven. Where 
they differ is in how prescriptive their moral codes 
are, how strictly they are enforced, and how much 
freedom their members have to make their own 
judgements.

What makes Aum Supreme Truth especially reprehensible 
are the techniques it used to enforce its code. After 
enticing members through promise of salvation using 
“special techniques” --- for which they were charged 
vast sums --- their minds were numbed with drugs, 
sleeping-deprivation and poor diets, and they were 
kept isolated. Critics or malcontents were tortured 
and murdered.

Academic Kelvin Crawley of The University of Iowa 
lists some of the indoctrination techniques that mark 
cults from other groups: subjection to stress and 
fatigue; social disruption, isolation and pressure; 
self-criticism and humiliation; fear, anxiety and 
paranoia; control of information; escalating levels of 
commitment; and use of auto-hypnosis to induce “peak” 
experiences. Aum Supreme Truth probably qualifies 
under every one of those headings, Soka Gakkai under 
most of them, and another of the cults, Happiness 
Science (see box above), under a few.

Another theme common to Japan’s new religions is their 
polarised view of society, the division into good and 
evil. Others are evil, we are good. This polarisation, 
this strict division into good and bad, permeates Soka 
Gakkai’s view of politics and education. It gives its 
members a zeal that other political groups envy. It 
also makes them a potent weapon in what critics say is 
the personal quest for power by Soka Gakkai leader 
Ikeda.

“Soka Gakkai is always the key force in Japanese 
politics,” says one senior Japanese political 
journalist. “Once I heard a story from a 
parliamentarian who quit the LDP and switched to 
Shinshinto. When he was a member of the LDP he was a 
weak candidate who had a hard time raising money and 
gathering supporters ... ‘ But with the support of 
Soka Gakkai, I gathered thousands of people to a 
campaign rally. When I went onto the stage, it was 
exciting. But I am afraid. I am frightened that this 
party will dominate Japanese politics’.”

The journalist quotes figures showing that Soka 
Gakkai’s de facto political party Komeito, now a key 
faction in the main opposition party Shinshinto, has a 
consistently better record than any other at winning 
the seats it contests. “We have no hard evidence,” 
says the journalist, “but we have heard from many 
politicians that Soka Gakkai shifts members from one 
district to another so as to maximise the vote for a 
candidate who is in favour.”

Soka Gakkai’s influence reaches into the Japanese 
media. Late last year the Japan Times Weekly, an 
English-language newspaper, which had been running 
articles on the cult, stopped the stories. Its 
management says the change had nothing to do with 
Soka Gakkai.

Hirohisa Kitano, Professor of Law at Nihon University, 
Tokyo, claims Soka Gakkai leader Ikeda wants to take 
over Japanese politics: “This could lead to a kind 
of Nazism; he could be another Hitler.”

Soka Gakkai members are furious at this kind of talk. 
Spokeswoman Rie Tsumura uses another analogy. Soka 
Gakkai, she says, suffers the same sort of persecution 
and intolerance as the Jews in pre-war Germany.

Says member Hirokazu Shimizu, 34, an accountant, “I 
know there are many negative criticisms about Soka 
Gakkai and Ikeda in the media. But my question is, how 
much evidence is there in those stories?  It’s very 
true that the reason that Soka Gakkai is heavily 
criticised in society is because of our involvement in 
politics, which is understandable because Soka Gakkai 
has grown to become a very large organisation with 
many members, and we do endorse political parties.

“But I really would like to clarify any 
misunderstanding. This kind of participation in 
politics is not coerced or enforced upon the members. 
Only those who feel motivated to participate will 
participate. My view is that established parties fear 
ordinary people becoming empowered. Ordinary people 
are becoming wiser because of Soka Gakkai’s teachings, 
and because Soka Gakkai stands for common people and 
their happiness it will make it more and more 
difficult for authority to keep control of the masses. 
In other words, empowered individuals will start to 
question the politicians.”

“Soka Gakkai is just a gathering of ordinary people,”
says long-term member Yoko Kaitani. “And we believe 
that to be responsible citizens we have to keep an eye 
on politics. I can say with pride that as an 
individual I am proud to be involved in politics, 
because I want politics to improve. However, there are 
people who can’t understand and grasp these kind of 
ideals. It’s is too lofty for some people.”

Kaitani joined Soka Gakkai with her parents at age 
seven, amid the strains of building a new Japan after 
the end of World War II. “Those were the pioneering 
days of Soka Gakkai. Japan was going through turmoil. 
There were many poor people and a lot of confusion in 
society. This was also reflected in Soka Gakkai, which 
had many poor people and sick people. My parents were 
not well-off, but as a child I would match them in 
running around, encouraging other members and caring 
for them. I thought to myself, maybe Soka Gakkai is a 
great organisation. Its principle is contributing to 
other people’s happiness, to society, then I thought 
that the way my parents are living their lives was a 
truly noble way of life.”

Soka Gakkai says its goal is to save mankind in an age 
when the true Buddhist Dharma, or teaching, has been 
forgotten. It campaigns aggressively to eradicate all 
vestiges of false religions --- and for Soka Gakkai, 
all other religions are false religions.

“The extermination of false beliefs --- which 
misguided the people, plunged the nation into despair, 
and ultimately brought about the country’s defeat in 
World War II --- is the battle cry of Soka Gakkai 
members as it was of Nichiren himself,” Noah Brannen, 
formerly associate Professor of Linguistics at the 
International Christian University in Tokyo, wrote in 
his book on Soka Gakkai published in 1968.

Tomiichi Yamada says nothing has changed since Brannen 
wrote his book. “The strength of Soka Gakkai comes 
from its organisation into many local branches. Its 
ethos of shakubuku means to tell people to abandon 
bad, wrong messages and accept Nichiren’s correct 
message,” he days.

Shintoism gained a distinct doctrine when the leaders 
of the Meiji Restoration remoulded it to provide an 
ideology for the developmental nationalism they needed 
to transform Japan into a modern society. It did  not 
win universal appeal. Dissatisfied with the ossified 
traditional religions, new religions sprang up, most 
of them based on the officially sanctioned Shinto 
practices and on Buddhism. With the growth of 
militarism in the thirties the new religions were 
increasingly persecuted and Shintoism was again 
promoted as a tool of the State, this time to support 
the military effort by elevating the emperor as the 
symbol of Japan’s nationhood and to help demand 
unquestioned loyalty.

After World War II the American occupying forces were 
determined to suppress the ultra-nationalism they 
regarded as a key factor behind the growth of 
militarism. They dissolved State-sponsored Shintoism 
and imposed freedom of religion.

Shintoism declined, but did not disappear. For many 
Japanese it was replaced by the philosophy of 
developmentalism, a pre-occupation with economic 
growth above all else. Yet development was not a 
universal panacea either. Those left behind or 
alienated by the Japanese miracle formed the first 
wave of post-war new religions amid the social and 
cultural tumult of post-war reconstruction, a time 
called the “rush hour of the gods”. This was the 
period of Soka Gakkai’s fastest growth.

Japan’s rapid industrialisation brought the collapse 
of the traditional extended family --- large families 
and their relatives all working together in the highly 
cooperative business of rice growing. It was replaced 
with small nuclear families of the cities. With the 
loss of extended family worship at Buddhist and Shinto 
shrines, with all their festivals and routines.

The seventies brought a new breed of so-called “new 
new religions”. It was a time of growing affluence, a 
time of growing urbanisation and a decline in the old 
rural lifestyle. Journalist Shoichi Okawa says the 
appeal of the “new new” religions stems from the 
disintegration of the nuclear family that came with 
Japan’s rapid economic growth.

“Both parents and children are still living under the 
same roof, but their lives have become separate: 
workaholic father leaves house early in the morning 
and comes back late after kids are gone to sleep; 
mother takes a part-time job to supplement family 
income to pay for the housing loan; and children go 
to cram school to enter a better school or for a 
better job. They live together, but no longer share 
the time together.”

“About 30 years ago,” says Professor Kitano, “when 
Japan achieved strong economic growth, ordinary people 
lost their sense of purpose. People’s incomes are 
high, people are well educated, but their hearts are 
empty. This is the point Asahara and Ikeda have 
utilised.”

Michio Ochi, Professor of English at Meiji University 
in Tokyo, says the spiritual vacuum is the result of 
Japan’s high -tech society. “Because of high 
technology, making use of fax and telephones and 
watching TV, we no longer have direct relationships 
with other people ... In Japan we have been used to a 
group culture. Because rice-growing involves community 
cooperation, we are very good at doing things with a 
group. At first, when Japan modernised, we just loved 
the be able to live in the highly industrialised 
society because of its indirect relationships. We were 
fed up with the direct relationships of rural 
communities --- when you were always being watched by 
other people you couldn’t feel free.”

“When we had children we suddenly found that they 
were seriously lacking in community spirit. But we 
couldn’t do anything to stop it. Some hippies and New 
Left people tried to stop it in the sixties and 
towards the end of the Vietnam War but the counter- 
culture collapsed. The appeal of the new religions is 
that they meet the need for a sense of community.”

Susuma Oda, Professor of Psychiatry at Tsukuba 
University in Chiba, says new religions serve as 
surrogate families and their leaders as substitute 
fathers in the “fatherless” society of modern Japan, 
“where the paternal authority of the past has been 
eroded”.

Another view is that science and rationalism have 
failed in their quest to answer people’s deepest 
questions. If religion is seen in its broadest sense, 
as a way of explaining fundamental truths, then the 
religion of modernity is science, with rationalism its 
reed. The growth of cults in Japan, that most modern 
of States, seems to be telling us that rationalism and 
science don’t fully satisfy the human need for 
ultimate answers.

***********************************
Another "tabloid" joins forces with the - OOOOH   MYYYY   GODDD!! - 
3 powerful enemies???
 Or just plain ol' CAUSE AND EFFECT????

You be the judge.

Craig Bratcher




The Soka Gakkai also has begun a campaign of harassment 
against the priests. Rumors have been spread that the Taisekiji 
Temple grounds are in disarray, with stray dogs wandering
about and robbers lurking in the shadows. Right-wing groups 
park their sound trucks outside the temple and blast out their 
criticism of the priests..."
Los Angeles Times, 12/16/91

"I know what the group does to people whom it
regards as its enemies. It's not safe for anyone 
who dares to criticize it."
TIME - THE POWER OF SOKA GAKKAI

http://pathfinder.com/@@cQhxKQUA1N@02C68/time/international/1995/951120/japan.html

Ms. U witnessed four SGI senior leaders storm Bukkenji Temple. 
She attempted to take a photograph of the vehicle that they 
had arrived in. The four persons turned their attention on her 
and charged her, knocking her into the air. When she hit the 
ground, they brutally kicked and assaulted her. She suffered 
multiple serious injuries, a broken hip and spinal fractures.
Shukan Jitsuwa 12/02/93

The list showed this powerful
nonprofit group, which has been involved in several other scandals 
this year, received slightly more than $3 million from
Kokusai Securities...
New York Times - THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1991

But as the police have begun to unravel puzzle of the Yokohama safe
....the money has been linked to a powerful, militant Buddhist religious 
sect, the Soka Gakkai. The sect, in turn, controls the Komeito or Clean 
Government party.."
New York Times 7/20/ 89 - - Japan Finds Latest Scandal in a Dump 

One member of the group of four monks and six followers 
said they were verbally abused and punched by local members of
the Singapore Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist Association 
(SNSBA) [Soka Gakkai Singapore]. 
The Straits Times - TUESDAY, JUNE 25, 1991 

"They tried to chase us when my sisters
 went out. They came to our home to try to harass us. My former
friends told lies to get my phone number. When they called, 
they said,‘You will go to hell, you will be unhappy’. Some were
subjected to physical violence. There was an order by Ikeda to
 harass members who leave the cult."
Japan’s Rush Hour of The Gods
THE AUSTRALIAN MAGAZINE
http://www.cebunet.com/sgi/rushour.htm

...."a mob of Soka Gakkai members, marched into the Kaishinji temple during a
religious service. Shoving aside worshippers, they seized Yahiro and
Kashiwazaki. I thought I was going to die, recalls Yahiro, an
asthmatic. He almost did. A large man grabbed Yahiro by his necktie and lifted
him off the floor, and others took turns punching him until he passed out."
TIME Magazine November 20, 1995 Volume 146, No. 21 
http://pathfinder.com/@@S4Ji*gUAlYDFN9mI/time/international/1995/951120/TIDE.HTM

"...several hundred Soka Gakkai members invaded his temple during a
service and beat him so severely that he was hospitalized for three months.
Yahiro's hospitalization in April 1991 brought to light a brewing battle..."
San Francisco Chronicle: - Japan Fears Another Religious Sect
http://www.sfgate.com/programs/srch_archive/srch_archive_wrap?unregistered=true&WAISdocFile=/WAISlink/chronicle/archive/1995/12/27/MN62956.DTL&WAISdbName=/doc_root/wais/chronicle/1995&WAISaction=retrieve&WAISdocID=0666914397+0+0+0&WAISheadline=PAGE


SGI corporate charter:
  3.SGI shall respect and protect the freedom of religion and religious
expression.

7.SGI shall, based on the Buddhist spirit of tolerance, respect other
religions...
SOURCE: SGI Homepage

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