Kenshōkai

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Kenshōkai building in Sapporo

The Fuji Taiseki-ji Kenshōkai ( Japanese 冨 士 大石 寺 顕 正 会 ) is a lay organization that can be attributed to Nichiren Buddhism "and according to its own information it should have around 1,370,000 members". Although the Kenshōkai is no longer part of the Nichiren Shōshū , it regards the Dai-Go honzon, which is kept in the Taiseki-ji temple, as the "real" Nichiren Gohonzon .

The Kenshōkai was founded in 1942 as a lay organization within the Nichiren Shōshū. The name of the organization at that time was Myōshinkō ( 妙 信 講 ). In 1963, the rapid growth of the Sōka Gakkai and their growing influence within the Nichiren Shōshū led to the Nichiren Shōshū in turn calling on the Myōshinkō to limit their missionary activities. In 1973, the Myōshinkō began to print their own publications, in the following year the organization publicly protested against building projects by the Soka Gakkai on the temple grounds of Taiseki-ji and was then expelled from the Nichiren Shōshū. In 1978 the Myōshinkō was renamed Kenshōkai and in 1996 the name Nichiren Shōshū was also deleted from the official name of the Kenshōkai.

Although the nationalist Kenshōkai is seen as the fastest growing Buddhist group in Japan, it is also one of the least documented groups in the West. In contrast to the Soka Gakkai and their political arm of the Kōmeitō , the Kenshōkai are said to have no political connections or ambitions.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pokorny, Lukas (2011). New Religious Movements in Japan Today: An Overview ( December 14, 2013 memento on the Internet Archive ). In: Hödl, Hans Gerald and Veronika Futterknecht, ed. Religions after secularization. Festschrift for Johann Figl on his 65th birthday, Vienna: LIT, page 187
  2. ↑ [1] “Kenshokai” has no relation to “Nichiren Shoshu”
  3. ↑ Jacqueline Stone: The Sin of "Slandering the True Dharma" in Nichiren's Thought . In: Phyllis Granoff, Koichi Shinohara (Ed.): Sins and Sinners: Perspectives from Asian Religions . Brill, 2012, ISBN 978-90-04-22946-4 , pp. 147 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

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