Rissho Koseikei | Sokagakkai | Nichiren | Nichiren Shoshu
The Reiyukai was formally formed in 1930, "the same year that Makiguchi began what was to become Sokagakkai."1 Reiyukai grew up out of teachings which had been propounded by its founder since 1919. After 1919 it grew rapidly until World War II, when its center of operations suffered heavily from the bombing of Tokyo. By the mid 1950's its membership reached between two and three million and has stood at that level more or less since 2.
Reiyukai is very different from the Gakkai for a number of reasons. While Sokagakkai has its roots in Nichiren Shoshu the Reiyukai is not affiliated with any particular sect, calling itself "Dharma Flower Oriented" (Hoke-kyo Kai) rather than Nichiren Oriented. The result is that, as Daniel Montgomery tells us, "Nichiren is only one of its sources." You can see that in its literature.
The Reiyukai was founded by Kakutaro Kubo(1892-1944). He was the orphaned son of a fish merchant from Kominato, the Birthplace of Nichiren. Daniel Montgomery quotes a Helen Hardacre as telling us that Kubo saw "an esoteric[secret] significance in this." He considered himself the "Nichiren of the Taisho Era(1912-1926)3." At age 13 he moved to Tokyo to work as a Carpenters Apprentice and attend technical schools. He did well in his craft and by 1914 was supervising construction contracts for the Imperial Household Agency. It was there that he caught the eye of Count Sengoku (1872-1935), a prominant Bureaucrat who in 1920 was elected to the House of Peers. The Count took a liking to the young man, and arranged for him to marry the daughter of one of his retainers and adopt her family name of Kubo. Thus the orphaned son of fishmonger found himself "installed in a respectable family of ancient lineage." The marriage, however, seems to have brought no material benefit. It also seems to have been less than ideal for the young lady, even her son was raised by her sister in law Kimi Kotani.
Both Count Sengoku and Mrs. Kubo were devout devotees of Nichirenism. They arranged for young Kubo to be trained by a teacher of the Nichiren Shugi movement led by the nationalist teacher Chigaku Tanaka. Kakutaro Kubo had no interest in the political aspects of Nichiren Buddhism, but was very interested in the spiritual values. He seems to have been drawn to the notions of loyalty and filial piety. He willingly took over the duties of performing memorial services for the deceased members of the Kubo family.
In 1919 he found the writings of Mugaku Nishida. Daniel Montgomery next quotes Hardacre again4:
"The living individual is the body left behind by the ancestors in this world, so we should treat our ancestors as if they were our own bodies... In our hearts we have the seed of Buddhahood, which also remains in the ancestors souls, so we must protect it for our own salvation. The salvation of our ancestors is our own salvation, and our salvation is the ancestors salvation.(Hardacre, 14)"
As you can see, the veneration of ancestors, which is more Japanese, Shinto, and syncretic than strictly the kind of thing that Nichiren had been teaching.
For Kubo our "own life is intimately related to those of our ancestors. The important point is that we must do this ourselves, and not expect some priest to do it for us." Nishida had worked out specific methods for doing this and these became the genesis for the doctrines of the nascent Reiyukai. Daniel Montgomery says that Kubo "adopted them in toto."5
The practice he came up with included chanting the Lotus Sutra directly instead of paying a priest to do so, keeping a family death register in the home, and giving posthumous names to everyone in the family and not just immediate relatives. This too could be done without recourse to clergy. All this was loosely tied to such Gosho as the Hoon Sho (Repaying Debts of Gratitude) and the Four Debts of Gratitude Gosho, none of which specifically advocated such practices. However, they did note a fundamental truth of Nichiren's teachings. Daniel Montgomery writes:
" In his introduction to the work,6 editor Taikyo Yajima says that 'Nichiren believed that attaining Buddhahood was not a way that individuals attained an ideal state but a way of repaying the recompense of indebtedness to all living beings.'"
Nichiren did indeed powerfully argued that only by "opening our eyes" could we repay our debt of gratitude we owed others. But of course he wasn't teaching Reiyukai and for all his praises of filial piety such as the one that Daniel Quotes Toki Jonin as having been praised for bringing the ashes of his deceased mother to Mt. Minobu still he wasn't advocating a religion placing all emphasis on funeral practices.
Still Daniel quotes as follows from the Kaimoku Sho:7
"To be filial(ko) means to be high(ko); Heaven is high(Ko) but not higher than being filial(Ko). To be filial(Ko) also means to be deep(Ko); The earth is deep but it is not any deeper than being filial... Disciples of the Buddha should not fail to be grateful for the four favors received from parents, all people, the ruler, and Buddhism. Show Gratitude to them all."So this practice of the Reiyukai had some foundation in Buddhism. It also was immensely popular with ordinary Japanese, expecially since Kubo agreed with Nishida's formulation of Nichiren's teachings, that narrowed the focus from gratitude towards all living beings to gratitude towards ancestors. This also happened to fit right in with what ordinary Japanese people were concerned with, which was the ancestor worship of their traditional beliefs.
Daniel Montgomery writes that Kakutaro went to a retreat at the Nakayama Hokekyo-ji Temple, founded by Lord Toki Jonin. Toki's school had emphasized direct spiritual insights since its inception, and Toki himself had been "self ordained." So it shouldn't be surprising that a lay movement would draw its inspiration from this school. Sure enough in 1919 he teamed up with a spiritualist named Chise Wakatsuki (1884-1971) to form the Rei No Tomo Kai ('Friends of the Spirits'). This organization was unsuccessful, disbanded and renamed the Reiyukai in 1924. Naturally they collaborated until they had differences of opinions and then split. Wakatsuki's group was renamed in 1936 to Reihokai and in 1939 the Hochikai. Kubo's group centered in the Akasaka Ward of Tokyo with a branch in Fukushima founded by Sadao Bekki (1897-1965) that later split away and became its own group. This became a pattern of the Reiyukai. Eventually it was to become the parent of another group the "Rissho Koseikei" as well.
During this time, Nichirenism was dominated by the Nichiren shugi idea, which was a non-sectarian, but ultra nationalist, view of Nichirenism championed by Chigaku Tanaka. Kubo's own teacher (Sensei) up until this point was Yukichi Matsuko, but he now broke with Kubo over this spiritualist approach to Buddhism saying that such practices had nothing to do with patriotic Nichirenism. But Kubo never formally broke with Yukicho Matsuko, and some of the elements of the Nichirenshugi were to remain in his practice, although later buried, to this day. You see this frequently in Japanese Master/disciple relationships. No matter how wrong the master might be about something, you almost never see him directly repudiate his teacher. Most of these people show a touching loyalty to teachers who don't always seem to deserve it.
Daniel says this8:
Thus the philosophical foundations of Reiyukai, rarely articulated but always implicit, include Nichirenism as taught to Kubo by Masuko, Count Sengoku, and Madame Kubo. Among its features are:
- The pre-eminence of the dharma flower,
- The Unity of Self and Society, and the importance of teaching others,
- the unity of the generations and the importance of chanting the sacred title for ones parents, facing the Absolute directly without any intermediary
- The imperative to convert the world into the Pure Land of the Buddha,
- and the vision of Japan as the kaidan for the world
To this day the "Blue Book" refers to Nichiren as the "emminent founder." So we see influencing the Reiyukai, Japanese Shinto beliefs transmitted by Nishima, Chigaku Tanaka's ideas, and also the influence of the Nakayama sect with its "shamanist" ideas derived from Toki Jonin's interpretation of the Lotus Sutra as taught by Nichiren.
During these first years the Reiyukai faithfully reflected the ideals of Chigaku Tanaka. Daniel writes that Kubo became a "soapbox orator." His teaching was that people needed to take Buddhism out of the temple into the home and become bodhisattvas, leading others along the same way they were going. At first Chigaku and his older brother Yasukichi were among the few people actually practicing. But then Yasukichi got sick, and Kubo insisted that his sister in law herself practice for the sake of his recovery. Yasukichi recovered and Kimi became a "true Believer." Daniel says "With the conversion of this humble housemaid with a fifth grade education. Reiyukai began to expand rapidly." She launched a "shakubuku campaign" based on her own effort, burning conviction and the power of personal testimonials.
Daniel writes that next:
"She was burning to tell people about her new faith. Night and day she wandered the slums of Arakawa Ward Tokyo among itinerant workers and ragpickers -- the poorest of the poor...She not only preached to these people, but ministered to them in every sense of the word. She would collect cabbages and greens that had fallen from produce trucks and bring them to her miserable flock. She brought them clothes to wear and soap to wash with. She gave them self-respect and a sense of purpose. She taught them elementary sanitation, cured them of their diseases, and earned for herself a reputation as a faith healer. In three months she converted an entire neighborhood of ragpickers9You see this pattern of faith and response throughout the efforts of disciples of Nichiren and others who take faith in "even a single phrase" of the Lotus Sutra. Again and again you hear similar stories, whether it was Daisaku Ikeda of the SokaGakkai travelling to Kansai (Kyoto) or Mr. Williams or someone else of the pioneers, travelling to the United States. In each case people responded to their faith, courage, enthusiasm, and the "proof manifesting in their lives" and came to join them. In each case this manifested the principle of "jiyu" or "emerging from the earth that is mentioned in the Lotus Sutra and that was predicted by Nichiren.
From this time forward, the focus of the Ryukai shifted from being centered around Kubo, to being centered around Kimi Kotani, and she came to exploit that shift, as a natural leader, by dominating that organization more and more. Her husband died in 1929 and she devoted herself full time to the organization. In 1930 the Reiyukai was officially incorporated with Baron Taketoshi Nagayama (1871-1938) named President. As Daniel Montgomery says "a titular post which gave the organization both respectability and protection from the interference of the police10." Also typical was that Kubo was the formal Chairman of the Board of Directors and Kimi the "honorary President." As is usual with such organization the "real powers" in the organization were disguised, but of course everyone knew who was really in charge.
Kakutaro Kubo died in 1944. Daniel Montgomery doesn't say how, but one must note that this was the middle of World War II. Kimi took over formally, and imprinted a very different style from her Brother in Law. She had abundant energy. Her nephew Tsugunari Kubo tells us that "the severity of her scoldings" "was surpassed by few." As a result people either worshipped her or hated her. And I get the impression some did both. For her the "scoldings" were part of spirituality. She would say things like "even though I forgive you the spirit world will not." For her you could deceive each other but you could not deceive the "spirit world" and so she was trying to inculc a "strict standard" on her disciples. This represents a kind of understanding of causality. People do benefit from understanding that causality is strict. But this sort of attitude can also breed a kind of reckless arrogance. As a result of her leadership nearly 30 groups "split off" and went their own way.11. Most of them didn't teach that differently from the Reiyukai. In each case it was the personal conflicts and the group infighting that drove the splits. Though you would probably never believe that if you listened to the partisans talk about their issues. The truth is that Kimi's style was imperious. She didn't like dissent, and the only way people could dissent was by walking with their feet. This too is typical for Japanese Religious organizations, whether you are talking about Sokagakkai, Nichiren Shoshu, or others dominated by a single person or committee. Open dissent is not tolerated by most of them.
One of her converts was Sukenobo Arai, and one of Sukenobo Arai's converts was a man named Nikkyo Niwano. Both converted to the Reiyukai, but Niwano left in 1938. For more on that follow the link to the page for Rissho Koseiekei, but what is important about this is how it happened and why it happened. The Reiyukai purposely is not heavy on doctrines, for the most part the important things are applying Buddhism to daily life and practical matters. But Kimi Kotani was one who ruled the leaders with an Iron fist. Daniel Montgomery writes12:
Reiyukai had experienced a number of schisms. Two branch leaders had recently been fired, and Mrs Kotani was anxious to get everything back on track. A meeting of all the leaders was called, and everyone was invited to speak his mind, but the meeting did not go as planned. The discussion grew more animated. Mrs. Kotani listened with growing impatience and suddenly stood up.
"What the hell is this about!" she shouted. "You are supposed to be believers, but you act as if you were big shots. If anyone has a gripe, speak up!"
Silence fell on the hall. Mrs. Kotani went on, giving vent to her pent-up feelings. Study groups, she said were a waste of time. All that was needed was discipline and unity of purpose.
"Lectures on the Lotus Sutra are out of date. Anyone who tries anything like that around here must be inspired by the devil."Professor Arai, deply offended, stood up and walked out. Niwano remained to the end, but was engulfed in gloom. By the time the meeting was over, he knew that he and Reiyukai had come to a parting of the ways.
The Rissho Koseikei dates from that meeting. While "faith" and discipline, and unity of purpose are important. Understanding the dharma or teachings of Buddhism is important if one is going to be practicing Buddhism and not some convenient philosophy masquerading as Buddhism. For Kimi Kotani the Lotus Sutra was simply a means to get in touch with the "spiritual realm" and the focus of religion should be veneration of ancestors. Nichiren's thesis had embraced respect for ancestors as only a small part of the practice of the Lotus Sutra, which involves respecting the potential for enlightenment of all living beings. This is why Nichiren had talked about teachers who appear to praise the Sutra but destroy its intent. She was simply teaching the faith that she had aquired from her own experience, and yet that faith is a limited thing without the understanding that comes from the "path of practice and study."
In 1971, Kimi Kotani died, she was replaced by Kakutaro Kubo's son Tsugunari Kubo. This too reflects a pattern in Japanese (and not just Japan) organizations. As the Son of the Founder, and also the nephew of Kimi Kotani, Kakutaro Kubo had been raised with a "strict regimen" to be her successor. She probably fully expected him to do a good job. Daniel Montgomery recounts that:
"...he had had a good academic training in Buddhism, majoring in Indian Philosophy and going on to earn a Ph.D. in Buddhism from Rissho University. One of his professors, Senchu Murano, recalls him with affection: 'Unlike so many people associated with the "New Religions," he says, 'Kubo is a real scholar -- more he is a profound thinker.'"
He also was married to an author of best selling books named Katsuko Kubo, and her books, devoted to the application of Buddhism to the home were best sellers13. He seemed to have everything going for him.
Of course no human being is perfect, and if you give someone unchecked power, there is no guarantee he/she will use it as intended. And within any organization there are always centers for rivals. The Post reported in 1996:
Now, Tsugunari Kubo, the leader of another large religious group, the 'Reiyukai', was criticized for having a mistress and an illegitimate child. Reiyukai has about 3 million followers and they are anti-Sokagakkai. They support the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), while Sokagakkai supports the New Frontier Party.
This scandal was uncovered during an internal power struggle within Reiyukai and Mr. Kubo was ousted from the position of the highest leader. A fierce fight has been taking place between Kubo's faction and anti-Kubo factions. As a result of their fight, a story of 'religious aristocrats' fully corrupted by money and power has surfaced.14
Reiyukai took the lead in revising the laws of religious groups when the ruling coalition submitted legislation last fall to limit the political activities of Sokagakkai which has been fully supporting the New Frontier Party, the opposition.
Reiyukai has been playing a central role in promoting legislation to separate political activity from religious activity which the ruling coalition will submit to the Diet this coming fall. They want to attack the Sokagakkai.
Since Mr. Kubo has been identified as the central figure in the movement, his stepping down from the highest position of Reiyukai due to the scandal will affect the legislation by the LDP and their relationship with the LDP as well.
An elite, who were good at "faking" their righteousness and religiousity had developed at the top of the Reiyukai organization. One could blame Tsuginaro entirely, but the corruption came from giving him all that power and responsibility while not holding him accountable for all his actions. And at the same time, he knew the theory. He, as mentioned earlier, had recounted his aunts terrible strictness with him. Perhaps she had perceived the patterns of his human nature. At any rate, exactly as depicted in the Lotus Sutra, this is an "evil age" when people are prone to be deceived by appearances. All religious leaders are subject to the corruption of money, power, and the things that possessing those attributes attract. The Sutra warns that "In the evil age to come there will be people who seem wise and holy but are cunning and deceitful at heart. At any rate, the Lotus Sutra
The Reiyukai doesn't advertize that its President stepped down in 1996, and since his departure the organization has headed in new directions. Once he departed, it seems that the organization developed a more "democratic structure." Once the issue of who the "founders" were was settled the organization was able to settle into an "orthodoxy" that is more bureaucratic and the personality issues less out front. Perhaps that is a good thing. There have been at least two changes in leadership since 1996, both by election, and one can hardly tell who is in charge. The story goes on.
- See Fire in the Lotus page 214.
- Ibid
- Ibid page 215, Helen Hardacre seems to have written her own book. If I get time I'll look it up for corrobration.
- Ibid, the page cited is page 14
- Ibid, bottom of page
- Its not clear which work Daniel is referring to, but I think it is a book by Tsuginari Kubo called "Dharma Flower" but the reference is to the Ho'on Sho.
- Page 216, quote is from Kaimoku Sho
- bottom of page 218
- Page 220
- Page 220
- Ibid page 221
- Page 235
- Page 224
- Source for quote: Weekly Post: http://www.weeklypost.com/96/960624/960624c.htm
- Most of this webpage comes from:
- Fire in the Lotus, Written by Daniel Montgomery, published by Harper Collins, ISBN 1-85274-091-4
- I had heard of Reiyukai and read some about them before, but my other sources had not had this depth of detail, nor had they done the research before World War II to the origins.
- Additional browsing and sources:
- http://www.inthelight.co.nz/spirit/gurus/kubo001.htm
- http://www.the-reiyukai.org/visaries.htm
- http://www.rk-world.org/outlook/biography.html
- http://www.adherents.com/adhloc/Wh_166.html (info on Reiyukai)
- http://www.reiyukai.org/history.htm
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| Kakutaro kubo | Kimi Kotani |