7 Sōka Gakkai

Fisker-Nielsen, Anne Mette

doi:10.1163/9789004362970_008

Handbook of East Asian New Religious Movements 2018

DOI: 10.1163/9789004362970_008

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7 Sōka Gakkai

Anne Mette Fisker-Nielsen¹

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The Sōka Gakkai 1968 Youth Movement: The Creation of Conviviality and Friendship in Sino-Japanese Relations

Fisker-Nielsen¹

2021

Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies

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This article discusses an episode in the history of Sōka Gakkai that began as alternative youth movement under Ikeda Daisaku who came to advocate “people’s diplomacy” (minkan gaikō) as a way to foster goodwill between China and Japan. Why would Sōka Gakkai, a legally constituted “religious corporation” (shūkyō hōjin) be so serious about engaging with a Communist regime that did not recognise religion? The article discusses what “religion” or “religious behaviour” means in Sōka Gakkai, and questions the usefulness of such a classification on a qualitative level. Ikeda’s interpretation of Nichiren Buddhism highlights his approach to something seemingly very “unreligious”—namely, the normalisation of Sino-Japanese relations. Unlike the more traditional “reactive revolution” of protest movements that constructed politics as primarily a binary, ideological choice to achieve its aims, Ikeda prioritised finding ways to transcend that very ideology-centric, counter-politics approach. By appealing to conviviality, a sense of shared humanity and humility on the part of the Japanese towards their past history of colonialism, a new social imaginary and attitude that differed from politics of opposition between left and right entered as a historical force that continues to be promoted by Sōka Gakkai today.

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The Sōka Gakkai 1968 Youth Movement: The Creation of Conviviality and Friendship in Sino-Japanese Relations

Fisker-Nielsen¹

2021

Vienna Journal of East Asian Studies

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‘Genderism vs. Humanism’: The Generational Shift and Push for Implementing Gender Equality within Soka Gakkai-Japan

Fisker-Nielsen

2022

Religions

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This paper investigates how young Japanese women in contemporary Soka Gakkai (SG) navigate Japan’s continuous gender stratified society that remains culturally rooted in the ‘salaryman-housewife’ ideology. How are young SG members reproducing or contesting these hegemonic gender norms that few seek to emulate? While SG has long proclaimed that it stands for gender equality, its employment structure and organization in Japan until recently reflected the typical male breadwinner ideology that came to underpin the post-war Japanese nation-state and systemic gender division of labor. As shown here, this did not mean that SG women were without power; in fact, in many ways they drove organizational developments in the Japanese context. The recent imposition of the global framework for Sustainable Development Goals of 2015 has enabled SG to more substantially challenge its own patriarchal public front. Based on long-term fieldwork, in-depth interviews and multiple group discussions with SG members in their 20s, this article explores how SG-Japan is being challenged to follow its own discourse of ‘globalism’ and ‘Buddhist humanism’, promoted by Daisaku Ikeda since the 1990s. Using Bourdieu’s analysis of symbolic power, the research shows how Japan’s powerful doxa of ‘genderism’ that held sway over earlier generations is currently being challenged by a glocalized Buddhist discourse that identifies Nichiren Buddhism as ‘humanism’ rather than Japanese ‘genderism’.

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7 Sōka Gakkai

Cited by 2 publications

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The Sōka Gakkai 1968 Youth Movement: The Creation of Conviviality and Friendship in Sino-Japanese Relations

The Sōka Gakkai 1968 Youth Movement: The Creation of Conviviality and Friendship in Sino-Japanese Relations

‘Genderism vs. Humanism’: The Generational Shift and Push for Implementing Gender Equality within Soka Gakkai-Japan

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