What In The World Do They Mean By Religion?

The Principle of Separation of Politics and Religion Is Self-Evident..

Since Soka Gakkai established Komeito, and entered politics, once more the relationship between religion and politics has become a big problem, and it is a well known fact that this has created repercussions.  Considering their ideology, which advocates obutsu myogo (the fusion of government and Buddhism), their eventual advance into politics was not unexpected, but the abruptness of their switch to a political group has caused problems.
It is a major and obvious premise of government in modern states that, since religion and politics have entirely separate domains, they should be separated.  From long historical experience, as result of the great harm caused by religious use of government authority, humanity has learned the wisdom of keeping government separate from religion.
The corruption of religion during the ancient and middle ages, caused by combination with political authority, resulted in misery instead of making people happy, and at times deceived them, and it cannot be denied that whether we adhere to what Marxism teaches or not, such a religion was the "opiate of the people"-this is a clear and important indictment against religion mixed with government. As much as it is possible, religion should concern itself with the inner life of people, which is its appropriate function, and as a fundamental policy, should not allow itself to be mixed or related in any way to politics.
Nevertheless, Komeito, the political arm of Soka Gakkai, dares to ignore this basic principle of modern states, and is nothing other than a party which has been established for the purpose of coming to power.  The crime of violating this fundamental principle of modern governments by mixing religion and politics, we must say, is indeed enormous.  Religion meddling in government can result in nothing beneficial, and if it ventures in that direction, we cannot avoid branding it as a crime of greatest magnitude.
Repeating what has already been said, religion's domain is the inner life of man. On the other hand, government should never meddle in the area of man's inner life, his faith, or conscience.  If religion intervenes in government, as we stated previously, the experience of history shows that nothing beneficial can come of it.  We must not forget that in Europe, the political oppression by Catholics, Protestants, and various religions, caused great harm and in those bitter struggles the freedom of belief and conscience and the great principle of separation of religion and politics emerged.
Recently the struggle between the Arab States and Israel and the street fighting in Northern Ireland were caused by religious conflicts, and various quarrels between people will be caused by the intervention of religion in the future. To prevent such quarrels, religion and politics must be kept separate and distinct.
Komeito is even now the spearhead of a deliberate effort to combine religion and government in Japan.
At the time when Komeito was organized, in November of 1964, it was a problem for them to tell how many party members they had.  They could have counted as members all those who belonged to the parent body, Soka Gakkai. Since the Communist Party membership at that time was about 100,000, Komeito announced their membership as twice that figure, and started out with a membership of 200,000 I am told. If this is true, we must say this is a most unusual state of affairs.
In Japan, it is not necessary to furnish the names of political party members to the government authorities as long as the name of the responsible person is known, and the figures whether 200,000 or 300,000, are for purposes of publication only.  It is said that the Chairman of Komeito, as well as the party officials, is decided by the word, ex-cathedra, of Daisaku Ikeda, President of Soka Gakkai.  Komeito is the political front of the Soka Gakkai religion, and all members of Soka Gakkai may be said to be members of Komeito, and contrarily, not one of them may be said to be a full-time party member. Komeito may be likened to a Soka Gakkai branch store, which is in operation during the daylight hours and closes up for the night.  In this meaning, Komeito is a very illusive political party.  As soon as this religious political party, Komeito, sent twenty-five of their men into the House of Representatives of the Diet in January 1967, by the voice of authority of President Ikeda, all members of the staff of Komeito  were  replaced.  The staff of the  Central Executive Committee of Komeito visited Ikeda to receive instructions and then announced that Yoshikatsu Takeiri was to be the new Chairman of Komeito, and Junya Yano was to be Secretary-General-both of them were new members of the Diet.  Rather than decisions being made by the top leaders of the party, they are made by the will of some  higher authority who firmly controls the movements of the party.  In this meaning, it is something like the pattern of the authorities of the Middle Ages, when there was the authority of the Pope and the authority of the Emperor. We can say the President of Soka Gakkai is "Pope" and the Chairman of Komeito is the Emperor. Metaphorically speaking, the President of the four political parties of Japan, Sato, Narita, Nishimura and Nozaka, are all of equal rank of feudal Lords,  but even higher  in  rank  is President Ikeda, the "Pope." Accordingly, Komeito's Party Conventions are vastly different from the usual political party conventions being nothing more than rituals of "yes, yes, and yes". Soka Gakkai is the sponsor of Komeito~or to put it another way, judging from their activity, Komeito is only the Committee to take charge of the political part of Soka Gakkai. This is the reason why I have called Komeito the political arm and the branch office of Soka Gakkai.  In short, the present Chairman of Komeito, Yoshikatsu Takeiri, holds the rank of a branch manager of Soka Gakkai, in fact, it is no exaggeration to say that he is on the same level as a bank branch manager in Japan. The political department of this same organization is Komeito.  It should not be overlooked that in this regard, this is essentially different in character from the Christian Democratic Union in West Germany, or the Social Christian Party in Belgium or the Christian bemocratic Party in Italy. We cannot find in any other country an example of a religious political party with features in common with Soka Gakkai.  To this Komeito will retort, "In Europe they do not criticize because a religious political party succeeds in gaining many supporters," citing the examples of the "Christian" parties in Europe, but it must not be overlooked that these political parties are substantially different in their operations from Soka Gakkai-Komeito.