Contemporary Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. xiv, 219 pp. (Figures.) US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7542-8.
In Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan, Levi McLaughlin provides a historic and ethnographic account of the Soka Gakkai, or Value Creation Study Association, a lay Buddhist organization that was founded by a society of educators in the 1930s and grew to become Japan’s largest lay-centric religious organization. As a neutral scholar with an “emphatic yet critical” perspective, McLaughlin offers a unique analysis into the Soka Gakkai based on not only his exhaustive archival research into both primary and secondary sources, including the writings and teachings of the thirteenth-century reformer Nichiren, but also his extensive fieldwork in local Gakkai communities (xi).
McLaughlin begins by outlining the origins, history, and development of the Soka Gakkai and introduces various aspects of the organization, including a summary of the practice of Nichiren Buddhism and the institutions and enterprises that constitute the religious organization. For example, the author elaborates on the Soka Gakkai’s bureaucratic administrative structures, culture of examinations and ranks for Buddhist doctrines, electioneering activities, and media empire that includes the daily newspaper Seikyo Shinbun, the nation’s third-highest newspaper subscription rate with a daily circulation of 5.5 million copies.
In chapter 2, the history and evolution of the Soka Gakkai under each of the three founding presidents is presented. According to McLaughlin, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi conceptualized the principles of Nichiren Buddhism into an educational philosophy that laid the foundation for the movement to eventually take shape under his disciple Josei Toda, who reformulated the Soka Gakkai into a structurized religious institution that expanded from a few hundred practitioners in 1945 to over a million households in 1957. However, it was under the leadership of Daisaku Ikeda in the 1960s that the organization began to evolve from a domestic religious organization largely devoted to spreading Nichiren Buddhism to an international organization that began branching into various aspects of social and civic life. It is this shift under Ikeda’s leadership that the Soka Gakkai today reflects through what McLaughlin calls its twin legacies: one based on a tradition of self-cultivation grounded in Nichiren Buddhism and the other based on the valourization of modern humanism through standardized education and philosophical ideals.
McLaughlin argues that the Soka Gakkai’s rise is best understood metaphorically as an organization mimetic of the Japanese nation-state. Specifically, the Gakkai appealed to its adherents by “emulating the institutions, activities, and ideologies perpetuated by nation-state enterprises” (19). It was under its second president Josei Toda that the Soka Gakkai’s mimesis of the Japanese nation-state began in earnest. The author contends that Toda formulated the Soka Gakkai based on the cues of governmental structures. The various features and aspects presented throughout the book are emblematic of the Soka Gakkai mimesis of the Japanese nation-state.
In many respects, McLaughlin’s metaphor is an effective one. For example, McLaughlin elaborates on features of the Soka Gakkai that seemingly reprise the nation-state: the creation of an organizational flag, an educational system, cultural centres and so-called territory that includes a headquarters in central Tokyo, and textual canons like Daisaku Ikeda’s The New Human Revolution (Shin Ningen Kakumei, World Tribune Press, 1995) that adherents study and follow. In particular, chapter 5 examines the Soka Gakkai’s culture of study and argues that Japan’s standardized education system was reprised internally through a scholastic model that not only helped staff the organization’s bureaucracy, but also rewarded examinees’ doctrinal mastery and discipline with hierarchical ranks. However, over time and consistent with societal changes, this model relaxed as the Soka Gakkai began to commend and reward examinees’ commitment to the process of merely partaking in the exams. Through his personal experience studying for and taking the nin’yō shiken, or appointment examination, McLaughlin reveals how the Soka Gakkai utilized such programs to cultivate and instill in youth “a lifelong commitment to Soka Gakkai through standard, and standardizing, techniques” (119).
While McLaughlin does note that the metaphor of a mimetic nation-state is a useful etic rather than an emic framework (that is, an observer’s perspective of the social group being researched rather than the perspective of a subject from within the social group), the metaphor can at times seem stretched (22). For instance, are the structurized institutions, enterprises, activities, and culture of the Soka Gakkai mimetic of a nation-state or are they organic extensions of the largest lay-centric religious organization in Japan? Rather than conflating the various dimensions of the Soka Gakkai to the nation-state, could the features and development discussed in the book be understood as the institutionalization of deep-seated societal and cultural norms?
There are contentious points in the book. Given the difficulty of studying an organization like the Soka Gakkai, McLaughlin must at times rely on inferences to shape his argument and narrative. For example, McLaughlin interprets the Soka Gakkai’s serialized novels, particularly The New Human Revolution, as participatory canons that allow “sufficiently virtuous” members “the possibility of being personally enshrined within a collection of new writings conceived in canonical terms” (91–93). To argue that lay practitioners view the serialized novels as an opportunity to be “memorialized” and “rewarded with the promise of immortality in the group’s collective memory” seems overstated (91–92). Furthermore, McLaughlin surmises that women in the Soka Gakkai are barred from occupying administrative positions without providing evidence of such gender-based prohibitions within the organization (138).
Nevertheless, the strength of the book lies in the author’s ethnographic approach to analyzing the Soka Gakkai. McLaughlin develops intimate relationships with local members and illustrates the complex and multifaceted nature of the Soka Gakkai. By immersing himself in local activities, McLaughlin offers a grassroots perspective that goes beyond the extant literature. The narratives he expands on range from dedicated and devout administrators like Mr. Iizuka to individual practitioners like Miho, a second-generation member who defies Gakkai expectations of how ideal members carry themselves, but is nonetheless committed to her practice. By knitting together diverse anecdotes in his study, the author weaves a comprehensive, yet intimate portrait of the Soka Gakkai. McLaughlin’s unique analysis and study of the Soka Gakkai offers an important and timely contribution to the literature.
Daniel K. Nagashima
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign