The Death of Ikeda Daisaku
A conversation with Levi McLaughlin
Ikeda Daisaku, the third president of the Buddhist organization Sōka Gakkai and a important political figure for a half century, died on 15 November. Ikeda’s death comes at a moment of great uncertainty for Kōmeitō, the party backed by Sōka Gakkai, and its coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party. To better understand the implications of Ikeda’s death, I spoke with North Carolina State University Professor Levi McLaughlin, a leading expert on Japanese religion and politics. The video can be viewed below. I have also provided a transcript, lightly edited for clarity.
Transcript
Tobias Harris
So I'm trying something new for the Observing Japan substack. I'm going to be having a conversation today with a friend, sometimes co author and really leading expert on Sōka Gakkai and Kōmeitō. My friend, Levi McLaughlin, who is an associate professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University, and the author of the 2019 book Sōka Gakkai's Human Revolution, also the co-author and co-editor of an excellent volume on Kōmeitō itself.
So, Levi, thank you for joining me today. It's really great to have a chance to talk to you on really what's an important moment when we're thinking about Kōmeitō’s role in Japanese politics. And that, of course, is, as we learned over the weekend, that Ikeda Daisaku, the third president of Sōka Gakkai, an instrumental figure in the creation of Kōmeitō as a party affiliated with Sōka Gakkai, his death was announced over the weekend. And, I mean, it was major news. This was front page coverage in every major newspaper, and lots of speculation on the political importance. Before we get into that, you've spent a ton of time in Japan doing field work, lots of people in Sōka Gakkai, lots of friends of yours. So if you could talk, before we even get into the politics, just the impact of this announcement, how the news was taken by Sōka Gakkai members, what you're hearing, and maybe we can start there.
Levi McLaughlin
Sure. Now, the first thing that to really emphasize is that for millions of people in Japan and across the world who are adherents within Sōka Gakkai, this lay Buddhist organization that's been led by Honorary President Ikeda Daisaku, for them, this is a loss of the most important person in their lives, and this is someone who is an equivalent of a parent, a teacher, a really cherished person. And so for them, the shock is real. It's really profound. And by and large, the folks I've been spending time corresponding with over text, Zoom and various other ways, they express that kind of mix that so many of us experience when we lose an elderly relative or loved one. You can prepare yourself on an intellectual level for the inevitable, but it's quite a different thing to experience it in reality. And I think that's what they're going through at the moment. And so the profundity of this loss, for them, the reality of that is sinking in now. But it's been a really profoundly emotional experience for these friends of mine. Yeah, for sure.
Tobias Harris
Before thinking about what direction the organization will go, could you tell us a little about Ikeda's life, his career. He was really an important figure at a number of points in time, even if his role has been less visible over the last decade or so. If you could talk a little bit about his historical legacy as a figure in post war Japan...
Levi McLaughlin
Well to put it in the most diplomatic way, Ikeda Daisaku has been a divisive figure in Japanese politics, religion more generally. He is, however, indisputably one of the most important people, I would argue, in Japan of the last century in terms of his leadership role in heading what is arguably the largest active organization of religious adherence in modern Japanese history, and the founder of one of the key players in Japanese politics, the Kōmeitō, the Clean Government Party sometimes glossed. He died at the age of 95. He's been ill for a long time. Before that, he fell out of the public sphere in 2010, but prior to that, he was this vigorous presence. And from taking the mantle as third president of the lay Buddhist organization Sōka Gakkai from 1960 onward, he took what was already a vibrant, robust, growing organization and turned it into a global phenomenon. And so he's responsible for powering the organization past from about a million households - that was around what they had when he took over - to 8.27 million households, is the claim. An exaggerated claim, but nonetheless a very substantial claim in Japan. And arguably creating Sōka Gakkai is Japan's most successful religious export. It claims a presence in 192 countries and territories across the world, including Japan, something like 2.8 million adherents. The face of Buddhism for many people is Ikeda Daisaku.
And beyond lay Buddhist practice, he's also became a very powerful statesman, a very important interlocutor, particularly between Japan and the People's Republic of China. It's notable, actually, that Chinese consulates in Japan are issuing their condolences to Ikeda, and that's at this key moment. But in the course of expanding these organizations, he also garnered a lot of critique. Right? A lot of became a very polarizing figure, accused of being the focal point of really intense forms of devotion adherence, for castigating other religions as being false and pernicious, for targeting other religions for conversion, for being a bitter enemy of a whole host of political and religious rivals. So he leaves this world with a very mixed reputation, but nonetheless, he's one of the most important figures of the 20th century, and thereafter, too,
Tobias Harris
Before we move to the present, could you talk a little bit about his role in Japanese domestic politics, how he as a driver of Sōka Gakkai's involvement in politics through Kōmeitō, how he sustained that over a number of years, up to and including the period the last quarter century where Kōmeitō has been part of the government in coalition with the LDP.
Levi McLaughlin
So briefly speaking, Sōka Gakkai enters Japanese politics actually, prior to Ikeda taking over as leader in the middle of the 1950s. They enter politics to fulfill a Buddhist objective of basically marking the conversion of the populace to Sōka Gakkai's particular form of absolute reverence for the Lotus Sutra. And that sounds like an obscure and not terribly political objective by sort of contemporary standards, but that was the founding principle behind the party that he actually founded in 1964. So Ikeda is responsible for overseeing the transformation of this, what began as basically a millenarian Buddhist prop project into a standard and very sort of ordinary player in the Japanese political scene. And so he grew along with the party as basically a very savvy political actor, beginning with highly ideologically driven objectives and moving more into a kind of more on the ground quotidian willingness to take part in the regular operations of the give and take Japanese politics. And so under his leadership, Kōmeitō transformed. Basically, if Kōmeitō becomes a separate entity, he is no longer responsible directly for it, but he is responsible for leading Sōka Gakkai as the main vote gathering force, first only for Kōmeitō, but then, while he remains the absolute authority within Sōka Gakkai, Kōmeitō becomes part of the governing coalition from 1999 onwards. So he is a key player in this regard.
So when it comes to Japanese domestic politics, Ikeda is really considered a kingmaker in the sense that he leads a religious organization that is instrumental not only in ensuring that Kōmeitō candidates are elected, but that its political allies, most notably the Liberal Democratic Party, can also retain their seats thanks to the cooperation with Gakkai members.
And then also on a policy front, he is responsible for a number of major aspects. One of them is maintaining Kōmeitō’s focus on peace. This becomes a highly controversial area because as Ikeda's presence wanes, especially after 2010, when he's no longer on the scene, we watch Kōmeitō drift from its foundation in a dedication to absolute pacifism. But that really is an Ikeda platform. And it's really thanks to that commitment and members' commitment to Ikeda that we see a solid commitment to not revising Article Nine, for example, for mitigating against the most hawkish impulses of the LDP and otherwise preventing any sort of wholesale embrace of a move by Japan toward a normalization of its military. That's the one side of it.
The other side is that Kōmeitō, I think, is often underestimated as one of the major, most important conduits between Japan and the People's Republic of China. A major reason for that is, are the strong ties forged by Ikeda Daisaku with the leadership in the PRC. He meets with Zhou Enlai at the end of the Premier Zhou Enlai's lifetime in 1974. He goes twice to China. He secures this strong arrangement along with, also it's got to be stressed Kōmeitō politicians who actually initiate that a few years earlier. Nonetheless, it's Ikeda who's the figurehead, Ikeda who serves as members' representative in forging that tie with Communist China. And so that becomes a really important relationship and a symbol for his stature as a peace envoy, as a global statesman who can provide an alternative narrative for global political tensions and ways to pass them.
Tobias Harris
Thank you for really a thorough introduction to Ikeda. I mean, I think you really show us why his departure matters and why he was such an important figure for postwar Japan. Now, his death is at a particularly difficult time, maybe for Kōmeitō and for the ruling coalition. I've written about this. I think you and I maybe touched on this when we co-wrote our piece for Foreign Policy. But there have been tremors in the coalition, which is now again almost 25 years old. Kōmeitō's raw vote share in every election seems to be dropping. There's lots of talk about the party aging. The last decade of compromises with the Abe government has perhaps exacted a toll on enthusiasm. There's, of course, the question of Ishin competing with both LDP and Kōmeitō in the Kansai area. Lots of stressors on this relationship. And what does this death mean on top of all that? So you have all these trends pointing in a direction we could talk a little more about. For example, former Prime Minister Aso Taro having some unkind words to say in recent weeks about the coalition. And just in general, the right wing seems to be agitating against the coalition. So here now you have this big change in Kōmeitō's future, and it's going to be grappling with new leadership of Sōka Gakkai or sort of new identity, possibly. How does that fit in this tension that we're seeing in the coalition now?
Levi McLaughlin
There's arguably not any good time for the loss of the leader who constitutes the absolute center of your organization, but this is particularly fraught, as you point out, Tobias. Now this is, I think, an underreported story that we've mentioned in our piece at Foreign Policy a couple of years ago, and this is something I've been writing about for a while, that the death of Ikeda Daisaku is going to be, I think, arguably one of the most consequential events for Japanese politics. And there's a few reasons for this.
One is that, and you've alluded to this and what you were just describing, the ability for both Sōka Gakkai and Kometo to mobilize adherence to vote, to gather votes, has been one of the core strengths of the organization for generations. And very specifically, it's the women's division within Sōka Gakkai that has been the engine that has driven electoral politics, arguably, from the ground up in Japan. Much of that has been driven by an affective, one to one relationship between those adherents and Ikeda Daisaku. So though most of those adherents would not have directly met with Ikeda, some of the older ones would have, certainly. But especially in more recent years, there's this understanding that any of these actions is undertaken as a form of obligation, a form of repaying gratitude and debt to their living leader, who is understood, at least on a sort of an emotional or affective level, to be appreciative of this and to be directly cognizant of it.
Now we're in a new era. Now we're going to be moving from, this is what Ikeda Sensei would desire, would like to "this is what Ikeda Sensei would have wanted." And that second claim is an opinion, and it's an opinion offered by a fellow member who might be an administrator, might be a Kōmeitō politician, but this is an organization in which everyone is cultivated to understand themselves as being on an equal plane below Ikeda. Right? And so you're contending with an opinion offered by someone who is not necessarily understood, at least to be superior to you in terms of their accomplishments or their spiritual status.
And so if I have problems with how things are going politically, or if I don't think that continuing to gather votes for a coalition that no longer represents my interests and my values is a meaningful way for me to practice my religion, this is my moment to make those feelings clear.
And the members that I've been speaking with, they've already been expressing these sentiments to me. And this is in the immediate aftermath of Ikeda's passing, what this might lead to, of course, there's already worries being expressed about, yeah, certainly the capacity for Sōka Gakkai to continue its signature vote gathering strength.
The other side is that will Sōka Gakkai remain coherent? And if it doesn't, this is going to deliver a blow not only to Kōmeitō's fortunes but to the LDPs as well. This is going to mean that the coalition will no longer be able to rely on that vote gathering machine that has powered its way for the last decade and a half. Will the LDP start seeking out alternatives? And what will that mean, for example, for its aspirations for constitutional revision, for yet again reinterpreting Article Nine, for all kinds of domestic issues? These are serious concerns and much of this is going to be precipitated by the death of this individual.
Tobias Harris
So you mentioned conversations that you've had in recent days and in general from your conversations not just in the past few days but just over time, to what extent do you feel that Ikeda's continuing presence as a titular honorary president of Sōka Gakkai kept a lid on some discontent? So you had, of course, during the Abe years, Kōmeitō, I think, has shown itself to be remarkably skilled pragmatists, right? They talk about playing this role as a brake on the LDP, some of the LDP's more hawkish aspirations. But they've been incredibly flexible, incredibly nimble, very good at getting what they want, but also knowing when to bend, knowing when they have to concede some ground. But pragmatism doesn't always, it's not always popular. It's not always easy to sell to people who might have a more idealistic vision of politics, a desire for political purity or politics that reflects values. How much was Ikeda able to keep a lid on that? And are we now going to see some of these kind of internal tensions that maybe were contained come more out into the open?
Levi McLaughlin
That's a very important question. The truth is that even in his sort of liminal status as neither here nor there, that Ikeda has maintained since 2010, the idea that he could be somehow present and somehow able to weigh in on policy shifts undertaken by Kōmeitō was something that I think did have the function of keeping the lid on a lot of simmering tension. Many members over the last few years have been expressing to me that they think that a reasonable solution would be to return Kōmeitō to the opposition because there at least they could give voice to their true feelings. And those feelings sometimes take the form of policy, right, of supporting policies that they think are coherent with their values more generally. And these are the same members who have, and this puts them into a small camp in Japan, have had the experience of being both in government and in opposition, right? So as long-term supporters of Kōmeitō, they grew up and these are people who are say, in their fifties, sixties, seventies and onwards grew up with supporting a party that was always in the opposition, was kind of floating in, kind of didn't really know why it existed. Especially after it gave up its aspirations for realizing this very singular Buddhist goal in 1970 is when those were abandoned. And then went through a very difficult period in the mid 90s when Sōka Gakkai and Ikeda specifically were targeted by the LDP and other conservative allies in the wake of the Aum Shinrikyo attacks.
And ironically, it was that kind of persecution that drove Kōmeitō into the arms of the LDP in ‘99. So thereafter they were in power and they really, for the first time could taste what it meant to be in power and how important it was and how being in power is better than not being in power in terms of actually achieving the stated objectives. And then they were out of power from 2009 to 2012. Right? That brief period when the coalition was voted out. And during that time it was really striking to me how these same members were feeling that return of humiliation, of what it means to be marginalized, to no longer be taken seriously. And so it was keenly felt, now we are into a new age, a new era where people are becoming more reflective, where they're reflecting on the costs of what it means to stay supportive of a regime that it seems to be, have really departed from the will of the people. The murder of Abe Shinzo last year by a disgruntled person who had held a grudge against his alliances with another highly controversial religious organization has brought some of those feelings, I think, back to the fore. This feeling of being stigmatized, this feeling of being on the side of people who are actually working against your interests. You're no longer in a position now where that could be justified as loyalty to a living leader. And now it's going to be a sense of instead, how best can we defend ourselves as the disciples of our deceased leader?
And there's going to be, I think, not a few people who decide that the best way to do that is to no longer support Kōmeitō, but instead to speak truth to power and perhaps even oppose Kōmeitō and oppose the LDP vocally. I think we're going to see a dissolution, a sort of a dispersal of people's opinions and actions. I think the net effect is going to be a pretty dramatic drop, potentially pretty dramatic drop in the vote total gathered by Gakkai adherents. And basically the next general election is going to be a huge test, and I think it's going to be a real sort of bellwether for the future of both the party and the religion and also the coalition itself.
Tobias Harris
So it's interesting because, of course, there's been a lot of research done to document how Kōmeitō has helped elect LDP members and how the LDP has benefited from this relationship. And there's the paper, which I can link to when I share this, by Adam Liff and Ko Maeda, that tries to estimate just how large Kōmeitō's role has been. But I mean, the point is, Kōmeitō supporters have done a lot to put LDP representatives in office. And yet in the last couple of months, we have seen some pretty prominent LDP officials talk about maybe it would be better if Kōmeitō were not in the government. And of course, as I alluded to earlier, Aso's reference to Kōmeitō as a "cancer" in the coalition. And I mean, just not the kind of language you use when you're talking about -- LM: your pals -- your pals and a party that has actually done quite a lot of service on behalf of LDP members. So do you have a sense from talking to friends and contacts, why now? Why we're hearing this from the LDP? And of course, the right wing has maybe never been entirely happy with Kōmeitō as a partner, but they've managed to swallow some of those concerns at different points in the past. So why? Why now? Why are we seeing this?
Levi McLaughlin
Well, okay. For Aso's sentiments are not new, especially not new from him. But that's a longstanding feeling on the part of the more conservative wing of the LDP, is that, yeah, the Kōmeitō is singularly responsible for preventing them from realizing their more cherished objectives and notably constitutional revision and other more sort of utopian ideals of that nature. I think the right now question has a lot to do with Prime Minister Kishida, to be honest. Unlike his predecessor, Suga, [Kishida] has not managed the coalition very skillfully. It's notable. Suga was, in the aggregate, not a very successful prime minister. Right? But he had a very congenial relationship with Kōmeitō, and that went back to his early days as a local politician in Yokohama. He'd forged these strong ties. And one of the results was that they had a really strong communication across that LDP-Komeito divide. And that helped to smooth things over during that crucial period of transition out of the longstanding Abe regime.
Kishida did not enjoy that kind of relationship with Kōmeitō. The comparatively recent breakdown in relationship is in Tokyo. There was several months long period in which both parties where Kōmeitō basically for the first time in over 40 years said, we're not going to recommend LDP candidates in Tokyo. This is massive, right? This speaks to a real failure on the part of the coalition to maintain this regular part of vote sharing that's gone on between the two coalition partners. They apparently have patched this up, but it's striking to see that happen. And we're at this crucial period in terms of leadership, not only for the LDP, with approval ratings for Kishida cratering down to 21% in the Mainichi poll recently, but also on the Kōmeitō side. Yamaguchi Natsuo has been leading the party now for a very long time. He's recently reelected for the eighth time as party leader right around the time of Abe Shinzo's assassination. And he'd been intending to move on. He'd been intending to pass the baton. But so tense was that event for the intersection of religion and politics that he felt compelled to stay. And now it's difficult to say with the death of Ikeda Daisaku again, if he's going to be able to quit. It doesn't seem like anytime soon. But his leadership has been under pressure from Gakkai members too, who are dissatisfied with the fact that he has gone along with so many policy reversals on the security front for the party. It's going to be really important to watch how that coalition arrangement plays out over the next short time.
Tobias Harris
So as a final question, I'm not going to ask for a prediction, because particularly at a moment like this, where as political scientists say, that multiple equilibria, there are lots of different ways things could go, but it would be helpful maybe to think about what those possible futures are. So it seems that one is the pragmatists prevail. Kōmeitō finds a way to stay in the coalition. Its votes are too valuable to the LDP. Another would be maybe the more purist approach wins and they maybe go into opposition or use the next general election if it doesn't go well for the LDP as an opportunity to break ranks with the LDP. Is there an option where Kōmeitō and Sōka Gakkai basically decide I mean, that there's basically an end to a political role for Sōka Gakkai? Is that realistic or is that this has now been the majority of post war Japanese political history, you've had Kōmeitō. So it seems hard to imagine that the party would just fold up. But it's clearly a moment where there are new possibilities. So if you want to just talk a little bit about how you see the landscape of possible futures, not necessarily putting probabilities on any particular one, but just thinking through what we might see happen.
Levi McLaughlin
Let me give you two insider voice opinions. I won't name who it is, but there's two people who have a great deal of insight by virtue of their institutional affiliations and experiences on these sides.
One of those voices said, pointed out something that even if Kōmeitō's vote total falls to one third of what it is in the present, it's still the biggest vote gathering machine in Japan. And so by those standards, it's in the LDP's interests to stay with them in the coalition, right? And that's true. I mean, it's still an impressively large number. If it falls from 6 million to 2 million votes per election, that's a heck of a lot of votes in it. So that's something to think about. And also the other side of that is that people historically have always called, basically said a Kōmeitō is about to fold. This has been the call since its founding in the 1960s, over and over again, political scientists and others have said its future is limited and it's always defied that. So Kōmeitō is a real survivor. And so that's one thing to really keep in mind, no matter what might transpire.
The other person who I've spoken with about this has suggested that it's quite possible that Kōmeitō could cease to exist, at least on the national level, in the next decade. And it might no longer be if it is demonstrating a really catastrophic drop in its vote gathering potential, already in place because of demographic shift, already happening because of generational shift of commitment to electioneering that's really quite visible within Sōka Gakkai. And now with Ikeda Daisaku's death and the felt commitment to him and how to express that through electioneering. Because of all that, if it really falls and is no longer useful to the LDP, there's no real reason for it to exist. And so he thinks that within a decade we're not going to see Kōmeitō at the national level. It might persist at the local levels, where there are very strong ties that are maintained between local level Kōmeitō politicians and their constituents, be they Gakkai members or no.
So we've got both of those opinions at play on the part of critical yet dedicated adherents. I mean it's hard to make a prediction. I think it's not a good idea to make a prediction as you suggest, Tobias, but those are the kind of musings that are going around right now.
Tobias Harris
Well, Levi, thank you so much for helping walk us through, really an important moment for Japanese politics, but one that's maybe not widely understood. And you've certainly done a lot over the years to help people understand Kōmeitō more. So thank you very much. I'm Tobias Harris from the Observing Japan blog, and please feel free to direct questions to me. And if you've got questions for Levi, I will pass them along as well. And thank you for listening to this conversation.
Levi McLaughlin
Thank you, Tobias.
Further reading
George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steve Reed, Eds. Kōmeitō. IEAS.
Tobias Harris and Levi McLaughlin. The Small Pacifist Party That Could Shape Japan’s Future. Foreign Policy.
Adam Liff and Ko Maeda. Electoral Incentives, Policy Compromise, and Coalition Durability: Japan's LDP-Komeito Government in a Mixed Electoral System. Japanese Journal of Political Science.
Levi McLaughlin. Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan. University of Hawaii Press.
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Asahi Shimbun interview (jp) with scholar Shimada Hiromi on Ikeda’s death
Mainichi Shimbun article (jp) on the past, present, and future of Kōmeitō
Nikkei Shimbun article (jp) on Kōmeitō’s waning electoral clout
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