The Super Missionary

The Far East of late has become something of a spawning ground for spiritual leaders bent on converting the world. There was South Korea's Rev. Sun Myung Moon, 55, a self-ordained Christian missionary (and self-made millionaire) whose message of repentance was blatted across the U.S. last year by thousands of zealous young converts to his Unification Church (TIME, Sept. 30). Yet another prophet is Daisaku Ikeda, 46, president and spiritual leader of Japan's Soka Gakkai (Value-Creation Society), a laymen's Buddhist organization. Ikeda is fast earning a reputation as a super missionary for peace.

Although the sect's Utopian approach to global problems often sounds like an Oriental echo of Moral Re-Armament, Ikeda carries more political clout than most religious leaders. His organization is the founder of Japan's Komeito (Clean Government) party, which emerged second only to the combined forces of the Socialists and Communists as an opposition party in the last election. Moreover, on his global mission for what he calls "lasting peace," Ikeda last year was received by both Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and Chinese Premier Chou Enlai. When he visits the U.S. this week to address his organization's 200,000 converts in the country, Ikeda will meet U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim to inform him that Soka Gakkai has collected 10 million signatures against nuclear armament.

Lotus Sutra. Although Soka Gakkai is based on the teachings of a zealous 13th century Japanese monk named Nichiren Daishonin, who sought to demystify and simplify Buddhism, it has little in common with Zen or other more meditative sects. The emphasis is placed on repeated chanting of the Diamoku, (worship formula) in praise of the lotus sutra. Members must prove their piety by making fresh converts. One of their most debatable practices is shakubuku, or forcible persuasion, which some critics charge has often bordered on brainwashing.

The organization had a phenomenal growth after Ikeda, the son of a Tokyo seaweed vendor, became its leader in 1960. Since then, membership has grown from 1.3 million to 10 million, and converts have been made in more than 30 different countries. To propagate its teachings, Soka Gakkai publishes a daily newspaper, Seikyo Shimbun (circ. 4.5 million), operates its own university, Soka Digaku, near Tokyo, and has built a temple as big as the Houston Astrodome at the foot of Mount Fuji.

In 1964 the organization founded the Komeito party in hopes of wiping out corruption in government. Although the party is now theoretically independent of Soka Gakkai, believers in the sect account for 90% of party membership. With 30 representatives in the lower house of the Diet and 24 in the upper house, Komeito has become a force to be reckoned with. Says Yoshiaki Masaki, the party policy board chairman: "We stand on the side of small people and work against the base of authority in Japan."

Faith and Power. Ikeda himself has moved more and more into the political arena recently. He called for re-establishing diplomatic relations with China long before most other Japanese leaders did, and has written a bestselling book about his impressions of Mao's revolution. In other books, lectures and articles, which are seriously and lengthily analyzed in the Tokyo press, Ikeda has advocated a world food bank, cutbacks in defense expenditures, and nuclear disarmament. His most consuming passion is the creation of an international people-to-people crusade against war. "Government leaders come and go," he explains. "Not the contact established and fostered for peace, people to people."

Ikeda lives modestly in a Japanese-style house with his wife and three children. By many of his followers, he is regarded as a reincarnation of Nichiren, and he obviously relishes the role. True to the teachings of Soka Gakkai, Ikeda equates faith with power--and he makes no bones about the fact that power is what his organization is after. Why not? Says he: "You have to have power to do anything at all meaningful."

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