Word: gakkai
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Thus went one of the nightly prayer meetings of a new and fast-growing U.S. religious cult, the American version of Japan's Soka Gakkai, or "Value Creation Society." An odd blend of militant Buddhism, the power of positive thinking and showbiz uplift, Soka Gakkai in the U.S. has grown from some 30,000 members in 1965 to more than 170,000 today. The sect, which is known in the U.S. as Nichiren Shoshu of America (The True Church of Nichiren), claims to be gaining at least 2,000 converts a month. In the New York general chapter alone...
Clean Government. Soka Gakkai was founded in Japan in the early 1930s by an evangelizing Japanese schoolteacher named Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, who blended the theology of a militant 13th century Buddhist monk named Nichiren with a philosophy of this-worldly benefit that stressed personal success. The sect now claims a membership of at least 16 million in Japan, and its Clean Government Party is the third largest political group within the Diet. In the U.S., Soka Gakkai at first concentrated on winning converts among Japanese-Americans or G.I.s who had married Japanese girls. About 1967, because the movement had virtually exhausted...
...taken firmer control of his party than ever. In a major defeat, Sato's chief opponents, the Socialists, lost at least eight seats. At their expense, gains were made by the small parties, notably the "clean government" Komeito Party (tour seats), which is backed by the Soka Gakkai sect of Buddhists, the Communist Party (three) and the independents (five). It was the last group-plus a trio of reform-minded members of Sato's party-that accounted for the most interesting new faces in Japanese politics...
...Liberal Democrats commanded 285 seats-seven more than they had held last December when Sato dissolved the Diet. Japan's second-ranking Socialists barely held their own level from the last House (141 seats). The burgeoning, Buddhist-backed Komeito Party-the "clean government" arm of the militant Soka Gakkai sect-captured 25 seats, emerging as a new force in Japanese politics, one with which the Liberal Democrats might ultimately become allied. As a result of last week's elections, Japan can now count on many more years of the sort of relatively reasoned and reasonable rule that...
...political arm of the Buddhist-backed Soka Gakkai (Value-Creation Society), led by piously political Daisaku Ikeda, 38, Komeito attracts the new Japanese: city dwellers who have lost contact with the ward-oriented politics of their rural home towns. Komeito calls for a cleanup in the wheeling and dealing typical of Asian government. Since Japan is fated, for better or worse, to a continuing urban growth and a growing urban malaise, it is mass parties of the Komeito brand that will doubtless dictate Japan's political future...