| Makiguchi | Nichiren Shoshu | Soka Kyoiku Gakkai | Nichiren |
| Ikeda | Josei toda | Temple Issue | Soka Spirit Website |
The Japanese term "Soka" means "value creation" and Soka Gakkai means value creation society. Both are based, at least indirectly, on the philosophy of Makiguchi and his theory of Value. Since his death "Soka" has come to mean a lot of different things and has become the name of a religious group and some of the ideas of it's guiding philosophy. It has also gotten to be "newspeak" for something that has nothing to do with soka Spirit at all.
The thinker and educator Makiguchi sought to make a distinction between "value" as those things which should be subjectively valued, and objective "valuations." For this reason he replaced the Kantian values of "Beauty Goodness and Truth" with "Beauty, Goodness and Gain" in an effort to emphasize the subjectivity of valuation. The idea was that Beauty Goodness and Gain were values that could be subjectively measured, while "Truth" was an abstract property of reality. He wrote extensively on his theories, which were inspired by the American thinker Thomas Dewey.
"Value creation thus can be said as the capacity to find meaning so as to enhance one's own existence and bring happiness to others, under any circumstances.1"Makiguchi was a seminal teacher and a philosopher. Later in life he converted to the teachings of Nichiren as embodied in the school of Nichirenism known as Nichiren Shoshu. This reaquaintance with Nichiren's teachings didn't mean much change in his theory of value except that Makiguchi came to see his theory as congruent with those of Nichiren's, he came to see "religion" as the ultimate expression of the "Theory of Value." Indeed Buddhism with its doctrine of "Sunyatta" or "Ku, Ke, Chu" is teaching something that the theory of value helps explain in more modern terminology. The principle of emptiness doesn't mean that things are meaningless at all, but that this world is a "creative" thing in which we "create value" by our actions words and deeds. He joined Nichiren Shoshu and founded the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai(value creation educators philosophy under the inspiration of the ikonclastic notions of Reverend Hori. He dreamed of spreading both the teachings of Nichiren and his own value creation ideas, directly, among educators.
Makiguchi came into conflict with the authorities on these counts. Some Nichiren Shoshu priests saw his theories as being outrageously heterodox. And as a convert Makiguchi found himself focusing on the Rissho Ankoku Ron and its relevence to the present day. Reading the Rissho Ankoku Ron, and Nichiren's actual writings in Gosho such as "On Debating other Sects" written to Sanmibo Nichigyo, Makiguchi felt the priests toadying, nationalistic, and accommodating attitudes towards authority to be a prescription for ruin. He identified his own philosophy and lifetime struggles with those of Nichiren.
Makiguchi died during World War II. He had faced opposition for even the most common sense of his ideas. Ironically that opposition had come from jingoistic Nichiren Groups in Japan such as those founded under the influence of Chigaku Tanaka or the Myoshinko. He was betrayed in a conflict with Jiko Ogasawara. In the end he was imprisoned as a "thought criminal. Unrepentant he gave his life to memorialize his ideas.
He had created a value creation education society (Soka Kyoiku Gakkai) to spread Buddhism among laymen focusing on educators. His successor Josei Toda had also been an educator and became his disciple as a result of his impression with Makiguchi's upright attitude and theories. After the war he renamed this organization from Soka Kyoiku Gakkai to Sokagakkai, the organization changed in character from one predominantly focused on educational reform to one determined to spread Nichiren Shoshu Nichiren, Buddhism and the Lotus Sutra. Josei Toda died in 1958 having made this previously insignificant teachers organization into a broadbased lay organization. Ironically it was an organization sometimes weak on "study".That metamorphosis continued on under the stewardship of it's third President Daisaku Ikeda, who was in charge of the Sokagakkai from 1960-1979, and who later broadened the Sokagakkai into a "Sokagakkai International".
This new organization was determined to create a "human revolution" in Japanese society. It spread a more liberal version of Nichirenism in which Nichiren's goal of Kosenrufu was to be spread outside of Japan as well as inside of Japan and would benefit the entire world. This new organization was in competition with other Japanese "New Religions" and Nichiren groups. It launched a vigorous path of "shakubuku" based on personal experience and "refuting" "erroneous" teachings.
Out of the grateful feelings of Josei Toda, the Gakkai was reinvented after World war II as the "Sokagakkai" and its mission broadened from an educators group to a lay society devoted to world wide "Kosenrufu." Toda also kept Makiguchi's educational ideas alive and made sure they were published in Japan and widely disseminated. Following his death, his successor, Daisaku Ikeda expanded this initial effort by creating institutes memorializing them; the Toda Institute and he founded a University named "Soka University" in honor of him.
The word "soka Spirit" originally meant the spirit of "value creation" which was to create beauty goodness and Gain in Society by the actual proof of faith and practice of the Lotus Sutra. Soka Spirit is this spirit of creating value through our practice and study of Buddhism. It is a wonderful term when used this way. It also began to be identified with Nichiren's teachings and in that way it morphed in meaning yet again. The spirit of "creating value" also meant "refuting" anti-value. In this modern eschatology "anti-value" came to mean misleading (i.e. different) teachings from those held by the proponants of "soka Spirit." In this way Soka Spirit came to carry meanings not originally associated with it.
In the 90's, when a dispute with the parent religion, Nichiren Shoshu, turned personal, complaints about the demonizing and warlike manner in which the struggle with Nichiren Shoshu was being waged led the leadership deciding to change the name of that struggle to "Soka Spirit". This name change didn't really change any content. Though some new layers of rationalizations were added to the struggle. What had been formerly known as the "Temple Issue" was claimed to be actually about deeper and broader issues and principles. If this -- in fact -- were entirely true, I'd be the first one to support the proferred ideas. But in fact "soka spirit" has often been misused and the term "soka" misused along with it. From being an effort to make a distinction between correct and incorrect ideas it became part of an "eternal struggle" against the priests who had formerly been associated with the Gakkai.
Nichiren Shoshu and other Nichiren groups were now opposed on the grounds that they were agents of Fundamental Darkness that were misleading people, slandering the Dharma and led by greedy 'evil' monks bent on fame and fortune. Thus "Soka Spirit has become "newspeak" for slander, of the former colleagues of the Gakkai in the Nichiren Shoshu. This tendancy to fundamentalism and 'triumphalism' often led to people obscuring the complexity, depth, and interconnectedness of these issues. Unfortunately this is also a reversion to the fundamentalist tradition of the Gakkai that "made it" in the 50's and 60's so scary to other Japanese. It has nothing to do with real soka spirit. We had perfectly reasonable reasons to "refute" Nichiren Shoshu as they did attempt to disband our organization and did "excommunicate" us from theirs. We survived those attempts and have prospered. We'd prosper even more if some of us didn't have a grudge against our former colleagues. This pursuit of grudge feelings (see personal.html for examplesnewspeak for value destruction.
Worse the theory of value is often misused. Makiguchi's removal of "truth" from the equation is sometimes paired with a misunderstanding of the meaning of the word "hoben" or "upaya", with the result that some people use these theories to justify lies, deception, groupthink, newspeak, and similar "means" for a noble cause (value creation). But that is not what that theory implies.
Indeed the theory of value actually implies that truth is all the more paramount for not being explicitly part of the "three values." Actual Beauty is the goal of the value of Beauty. We may be subjective about what it is, but we all recognize it (or can be educated to recognize it) when we see it. Actual Goodness is the same way, and Gain is as well. Lies, and evil means, are not only "bad" but are anti-value in and of themselves. There is a paramount importance to truth because it is the only way that we can be sure that we actually have goodness, beauty and Gain. The fruit of lies, deception, selfish behavior, is evil, ugliness, and loss.
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