Daisaku Ikeda

Daisaku Ikeda (Tokyo, 1928-2023) was a Japanese Buddhist thinker, educator, writer and advocate of nuclear disarmament. He led the Soka Gakkai and founded the Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist movement that claims about twelve million practitioners in 192 countries and territories. He matters for spreading Nichiren Buddhism beyond Japan, for his work in education, and for his insistence that dialogue is the path to peace.

He was born into a family that farmed edible seaweed, in a Japan moving steadily toward war. One of his brothers died in combat and others were sent to the front. His family home was destroyed by air raids, and he witnessed the devastation of Tokyo in 1945. In the postwar years he met Josei Toda, who had been imprisoned for opposing the militarist government. Ikeda joined the Soka Gakkai in 1947, and Toda became his mentor. After Toda died in 1958, Ikeda succeeded him as president in 1960, at the age of thirty-two.

During his presidency he travelled widely to strengthen the organization. He promoted a network of Soka schools, from kindergarten to university, with campuses in Tokyo and California, along with research institutes and cultural bodies such as the Min-On Concert Association. In the 1970s he met leaders including Zhou Enlai, Kosygin and Kissinger, and published dialogues with figures such as Arnold Toynbee and Mikhail Gorbachev.

His literary output includes the serialized novel The Human Revolution, begun in 1955, which follows Toda's efforts to rebuild the Soka Gakkai after the war. His thought centres on the supreme dignity of life and holds that lasting peace begins with the inner transformation of each person.

His figure has drawn controversy. Some critics have pointed to a personality cult around his leadership and to the group's ties with the Kōmeitō party, which he founded as an outgrowth of the Soka Gakkai. His legacy is an international network of educational and cultural institutions devoted to dialogue.