Daisaku Ikeda

About the Daisaku Ikeda

Daisaku Ikedawas a Japanese Buddhist leader and author, an educator and a businessman. He served as the third president and then honorary president of the Soka Gakkai, the largest of Japan’s new religious movements.: 5 At this time, he became a controversial leader, in Japan and abroad.

Ikeda was the founding president of the Soka Gakkai International, which claims to have approximately 11 million practitioners in 192 countries and territories, more than 1.5 million of whom reside outside of Japan as of 2012. Although these numbers are impossible to verify, recent research and surveys suggest that two percent of the Japanese population are active members of Soka Gakkai (2.5 million people).

Ikeda was the founder of a variety of educational and cultural institutions including Soka University, Soka University of America, Min-On Concert Association and Tokyo Fuji Art Museum. In Japan, he was also known for his international outreach to China.

In Japan, and many other countries, he has been described as a “controversial figure” over several decades from the 1970s. due to the ambivalent reputation of the Soka Gakkai– whose name has been linked to several political and financial scandals, cult of personality accusations, and his relation to the political party Komeito, which he founded. He has been the subject of numerous articles, doubts and accusations in Japanese and international media.: 43 : 147 : 149 At his death, scholars and journalists described Ikeda as among the most polarizing and important figures in modern Japanese religion and politics.