Tricycle | Awake in the World

Soka Gakkai has its origins in Japan in the decades prior to the Second World War. It was founded as a lay organization by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, a progressive educator and convert to Nichiren Shoshu, an umbrella school comprising some forty sects dedicated to the teachings of Nichiren. A thirteenth-century reformer, Nichiren criticized Pure Land and other schools for being subservient to the state and for not empowering common people. Seven hundred years later, this criticism was leveled once again by Makiguchi.