The immediate reason for the Gakkai being excommunicated from Nichiren Shoshu was as a result of President Ikeda, and many of the rest of us, criticizing the High Priest. The overt cause was a speech, known as the "35th Anniversary Speech" which Ikeda gave in a supposedly closed door session, which the priests felt was highly inflammatory. At the time it looked (to me at least) that the Gakkai was finally standing up for itself. This was because, instead of kowtowing and apologizing for the rudeness of that speech, as they had done in prior incidents (see prior.html) insisting that the priesthood reform itself and levelled counter-charges. Earlier, in 1979 he had apologized for similar "deviations in doctrines" but this time he didn't. The "split" was the culmination of longstanding disputes that had finally mushroomed out of control and become "irreconcilable."
- For more on the conditions leading up to the split, and what happened after, visit these pages
- prior.html
- Seattle Incident
- How the "war" became Personal
I think the case can now be safely made that my initial assessment of what happened had been guided, maybe even orchestrated as part of a plot by the Gakkai to take the Gakkai out of Nichiren Shoshu that probably dates back in inception to before 1979. When I first created this page I was still assuming that the Gakkai was completely innocent and Nichiren Shoshu completely evil. But over time I've come to see complexity. To explore that complexity you have to follow the history of the Gakkai back to just before World War II. So the whole thing is of one piece. Rather than explain it on one page I've spread the story out by examining it in the context of main characters. Some of them are listed here: