Toda Jōsei

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Toda Jōsei, second president of the Soka Gakkai

Toda Jōsei ( Japanese 戸 田 城 聖 ) (born February 11, 1900 in Ishikawa Prefecture , Japan , † April 2, 1958 in Tokyo ) was an educator and publisher. He was the co-founder and second president of Soka Gakkai, today's Sōka Gakkai International (SGI).

biography

Toda grew up in Atsuta ( Hokkaidō ). After finishing school, he became a teacher and moved to Tokyo at the age of 20. At his Tokyo school he met the school principal and educator there Tsunesaburō Makiguchi . A friendly relationship developed between the two, which influenced Toda both educationally and religiously.

At the age of 23, Toda took over the management of the Jishugakkan private school, where he implemented Makiguchi's educational approaches. During this time he also published the text collection Suirishiki Shido Sanjutsu , a textbook on arithmetic, which reached a circulation of over a million copies.

Makiguchi himself had already got to know Nichiren Buddhism around 1916 in the context of lectures by the nationalist Tanaka Chigaku (for his part the founder of the Kokuchūkai ). In 1928, Toda and Makiguchi joined the Nichiren Shōshū . Two years later, in 1930, both founded the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (German: Wertschaffende Erziehende-Gesellschaft) and Tsunesaburō Makiguchi became its first president.

During the Japanese military regime, the organization they founded was exposed to strong political pressure, as parts of the community, including Toda and Makiguchi, did not want to include the compulsory rites of the so-called state Shinto in their religious practice. Toda and Makiguchi were imprisoned on July 6, 1943 and Makiguchi died as a result of more than a year in solitary confinement. Toda is said to have continued to study the Lotus Sutra and the scriptures of Nichiren while in detention ; he was released shortly before the surrender of Japan. The community founded by Toda and Makiguchi had since disbanded.

The Soka Gakkai

After his release from prison, Toda continued the work of his mentor Tsunesaburō Makiguchi and rebuilt the Soka Gakkai. On May 3, 1951, he was elected second president of the Soka Gakkai. The number of members at that time was around 3,000 households. Within seven years the community had over 750,000 households.

In 1952, Toda was involved in an incident in the course of which there was violent physical abuse against a priest of the Nichiren Shōshū. In the incident, also known as the "Osgawara" or "Raccoon Dog Incident," sources report that Toda beat the priest Jimon Ogasawara twice. The reason for the assault was that members of the SG held the priest jointly responsible for Makiguchi's death.

The Soka Gakkai subsequently became one of the major Buddhist religious communities in Japan. In the writings of the Soka Gakkai, the relationship between Makiguchi and Toda is often rumored as a so-called "master student relationship". Together with Daisaku Ikeda , all three are referred to as so-called "Three Eternal Mentors".

On September 8, 1957, Toda published an appeal to condemn the use of nuclear weapons as criminal under all circumstances, appealing to the world's youth to work for their general elimination.

Jōsei Toda died on April 2, 1958 in Tokyo and was buried at the Jozai-ji Temple of the Nichiren-Shōshū . His wife, Iku Toda, passed away in 2000 and was also buried at Jozai-ji Temple. In 2001, Toda's ashes were reburied at Jozai-ji Temple. His tomb is now on Taiseki-ji in the immediate vicinity of Goju-noto, a five-story pagoda.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Levi McLaughlin in: Inken Prohl, John Nelson (Ed.): Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions. (Brill Handbooks on Contemporary Religion, Volume 6). Brill, Leiden et al. 2012, ISBN 978-90-04-23435-2 , p. 281.
  2. Jacqueline I. Stone: By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree. In: Steven Heine, Charles S. Prebish (Eds.): Buddhism in the Modern World. Oxford University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-19-514698-0 , p. 198. (online at: princeton.edu )
  3. ^ Daniel B. Montgomery: Fire in the Lotus, Mandala 1991, p. 181
  4. Murata, Kiyoaki (1969): Japan's new Buddhism: an objective account of Soka Gakkai ([1st ed.] Ed.). New York: Weatherhill. ISBN 978-0834800403 .
  5. ^ Daniel B. Montgomery: Fire in the Lotus, Mandala 1991, pp. 186-187
  6. [1]
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  9. http://myokan-ko.net/english/sgi8.html

literature

  • Daisaku Ikeda: Departure into humanity. Buddhism 1945–1952 . Edition Meyster 1989, ISBN 3485082244 .

Web links

Commons : Toda Josei  - collection of images, videos and audio files