What Is The Soka Gakkai Style
of Politics?

The Seventh Year-Lucky and Unlucky

After President Toda's death, Daisaku Ikeda was installed as the new President, and his work will be taken up later in this book.
In the development of Soka Gakkai, it is said that the significant events and developments are marked by the seventh year.  It could not have been planned this way, but it is a fact that the seventh year has become conspicuous in their history.
For example in 1930, Soka Kyoiku Gakkai was formed and seven years later formally established; seven years later President Makiguchi died, and seven years later, President Toda was installed, and seven years later died.  On the seventh anniversary of his death, the Grand Reception Hall (Daikyakuden at Taiseki-ji) was dedicated and the announcement was made that candidates would run for the Lower House.  Such important events which have occurred at seven year intervals explains the significance they attach to the seventh year. Following this pattern, the next seventh year falls in 1972. What will be Soka Gakkai's big move then? This is a very intriguing question.  Entering the era of the Seventies, Japan's role in the international affairs will gradually increase, and on the domestic scene, this will be the critical
time for Soka Gakkai's real political merit to be judged. With this in mind, their future development, whether they will continue to expand, or retrogress, will be determined largely by whether the membership increases or decreases. In order to learn something of what shape the future development of Soka Gakkai might take, as well as to learn something of how they expanded in past years, it is now appropriate to take a look at the stages in their numerical growth.
In 1960, Daisaku Ikeda became the third President of Soka Gakkai, and at that time, their membership already exceeded 1 million households.  By the end of the year, that had increased to 1.72 million households. Then as
follows:
 1961 2.3 million households plus.
 1962 3
 1964 5
 1966 6
 1967 6.5
 1969 7
The total number of households in Japan is approximately 25 million.  If the published figures of Soka Gakkai are correct, one out of 3.5 families of Japan are Soka Gakkai believers, however, these figures are those of Soka Gakkai and cannot be verified, and we must allow for some defections and uncertainty, as well as for the bloated character of membership statistics given out by religious groups.  But if we accept their figures of 7 million households, this means that they have almost reached one third of the population of Japan and are near to realizing the formula of shae no san-oku, so dear to the heart of President Ikeda.
These figures might also be said to explain their extremely cocky attitude toward the public today.
The question is, can they gain another one third of the population?  After Soka Gakkai launched Komeito, their political organization, three national elections were held. This was an important test of strength of their political organization and the outstanding performance of their membership in these elections will long be remembered, but votes cast for their candidates by non-Soka Gakkai members were almost nil.  Recently it has been rumoured that there have been some defections in their ranks at election time.  If this is true, the reason would be an interesting matter.
The source of Soka Gakkai's confidence in advancing into politics was of course the strength of their religious faith, the religious backbone we might say, which has proved to be their superiority in the elections.  However, if in the future they are forced to depend on their membership alone, we must say that the task of realizing President Ikeda's forumula of shae no san-oku will be a rather difficult one indeed.  If we compare it to mountain climbing, the nearer the top, the thinner the air, the more physically exhausted you become and your condition worsens.  Soka Gakkai has recently shown some signs of exhaustion.