The Record of My Life

By Daisaku Ikeda

In these fascinating personal essays, we can get a glimpse into the heart and mind of a great champion of peace as he reminisces about significant events in his life and some of the people he' s met. We not only will gain a new appreciation of President Ikeda' s wide-ranging efforts for peace, culture, and education as he traveled the world for sake of people' s happiness, but we will learn lessons we can apply as we, too, strive to be ambassadors of peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Dec 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781946635877

Book preview

A Record of My Life

Prologue

TO WAIT FOR the right time; to make the right time.

The SGI’s establishment on Guam in January 1975 was a watershed in the full-fledged spread of Nichiren Buddhism around the world. Almost a quarter century has passed since then. Who could have predicted then the global scope and development our movement has achieved today?

I made that visit to Guam the starting point of an essay series titled A Record of My Life, which was serialized in the Soka Gakkai–affiliated monthly magazine Daisanbunmei (The third civilization) from its April 1995 through June 1999 issues. In the essays, I endeavored to set down faithfully and without embellishment a record of my life and the significant incidents and events that happened along the way in chronological order.

My life is kosen-rufu. Hence the essays quite naturally portray the dynamic progress of our movement to promote peace, culture, and education.

That first series of A Record of My Life comprised a total of fifty-one essays, concluding with an account of my visit to the Dominican Republic in February 1987.

When I had finished writing the essays for that series—which I thought of as part 1 of a longer, ongoing series—I set down my pen for a short interval. Now at the request of many readers, I take up my pen once more to continue writing part 2 for serialization in the Daibyakurenge, the Soka Gakkai’s monthly study journal.

In any event, the record of my life resides only within the Soka Gakkai. There is no greater pride than living a life dedicated to kosen-rufu throughout the three existences of past, present, and future. I challenge myself again today to record another page.

1

The Thirtieth Anniversary of President Toda’s Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons

RECENTLY THERE HAS BEEN a great deal of talk about the year 2000 (Y2K) computer problem, a tremendous challenge to our computerized civilization. Older computers recorded and read the years of the century by only their last two digits; at the turn of the century, computers may mistake the year 2000 for 1900. If that happens, all sorts of computerized systems will cease functioning correctly, and unless we do something to avert this, our societies could be thrown into chaos.

Many fear that ATM cards will be rendered useless, that there will be power outages and downed telephone systems, and that even medical equipment will fail. The worst-case scenarios paint pictures of planes crashing and missiles firing inadvertently. Both government and private sectors are working hard to find a solution. Human beings, after all, made the systems. We must avoid at all costs a perilous future in which we are at the mercy of science and technology run amok.

The First of My Mentor’s Final Instructions for the Future

This Y2K problem has the potential to take us all unexpectedly back to the year 1900—which is incidentally the year of the birth of my mentor and second Soka Gakkai president, Josei Toda. Born at the dawn of a new century, he grew up in a period of great change. The Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904 and intensified Japan’s march toward militarism. Mr. Toda lived through the Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 and experienced the hardships of the Great Depression triggered by the stock market crash of 1929. He experienced two world wars and then Japan’s defeat in 1945.

With the twenty-first century approaching, it has become quite popular to look back over the past one hundred years. When we do so with Mr. Toda in mind, we find that his life, thought, and actions are inextricably linked to the twentieth century’s tumultuous history.

A museum dedicated to journalism—the Newseum in Arlington, Virginia—has published a list of the hundred most important news stories of this century, according to prominent American journalists and scholars. In first place were the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan’s surrender ending World War II in 1945. In second place was Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon in 1969, and in third were Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into World War II in 1941.

During the war, Japanese authorities imprisoned Mr. Toda for his opposition to militarism and released him just a few weeks before the war’s end. I think his later Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons in 1957, the first of his final instructions for his successors, was the natural consequence of the life he lived and the things he experienced. Not long after delivering the declaration, heedless of his frail health, he intended to visit Hiroshima, a city devastated by the atomic bomb, to give guidance and encouragement to the members there. To those who tried to dissuade him from going, he declared, I don’t care if it kills me, I’m going! His spirit blazed with such fierce determination.

The Vision of a Global Family

Although Mr. Toda did not live to see humankind take its first step on the moon, during his lifetime he propounded the concept of a global family, a prescient vision of the globalism humankind’s exploration of space would herald. His call for the complete elimination of all misery from the planet was a demand that we put the interests of humanity and of the individual before the interests of nation-states. In this, he stood on the same philosophical ground as first Soka Gakkai president Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, who foresaw the dawning of an age of humanitarian competition that superseded military and economic competition. Both men, having lived in a century racked by war and strife, were philosophers of the first rank who had a clear vision of humanity’s future. Their visionary thought will certainly become more and more widely appreciated around the world as the years pass.

Recently, in a Time magazine poll, Albert Einstein was listed among the twenty most influential scientists, thinkers, and inventors of this century. Mr. Toda and Mr. Makiguchi attended one of Einstein’s lectures in Japan, which Mr. Toda described as one of the happiest events of his entire life. The lecture took place on November 19, 1922, at the Keio University auditorium in Tokyo, and it lasted for some five hours. How like these two men of tremendous intellectual curiosity to attend such an address!

Incidentally, the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (forerunner of the Soka Gakkai) was founded almost exactly eight years after that, on November 18, 1930.

Many years later, I conducted a dialogue with Dr. Linus Pauling, recipient of two Nobel Prizes (one for chemistry and one for peace). In our discussion, we touched upon the Russell-Einstein Manifesto launched by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in 1955, calling on fellow scientists and researchers to recognize the grave threat that thermonuclear war poses to humanity’s future. Dr. Pauling was one of the eleven scientists who signed the manifesto.

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto paved the way for the Pugwash Conferences, a series of gatherings attended by scientists from both Eastern and Western blocs, transcending ideological borders. Dr. Joseph Rotblat of the University of London, also a signatory of the manifesto, served as the Pugwash Conference’s first secretary-general. The conferences went on to play an important role in creating a tide of thought that put the brakes on the nuclear arms race among the United States, the Soviet Union, and other powerful nations. Interestingly, the first Pugwash Conference took place in 1957, the very year that Mr. Toda made his Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.

In 1989, incidentally, I had an opportunity to meet and exchange views with Dr. Rotblat.

A progression of significant developments surrounding war and peace has marked this turbulent century. First came the construction of the atomic bomb, brought within reach by Einstein’s theory of relativity, a development quickly followed by concerned scientists warning of the dangers of nuclear weapons, which in turn led to the appearance of numerous peace movements around the globe. I am certain that I am not the only person who, as we approach this century’s end, feels that the world is converging toward a reexamination of the innermost depths of the human being.

An Epochal Declaration

The sound of members’ chanting and the buzz of conversation and animated discussion always filled the old Soka Gakkai Headquarters in Shinanomachi. The president’s office was in a corner on the second floor.

In the days leading up to the youth division sports festival at the Mitsuzawa Stadium in Yokohama on September 8, 1957, Mr. Toda could be found sitting in his office busily making notes. He would write something, then, through his thick glasses, peer closely at what he had written. Every time he wrote, he would stop to look over his notes again.

His mentor, Mr. Makiguchi, made it a practice to always jot his thoughts down. He called it storing up thoughts. Now Mr. Toda was doing the same. When Mr. Makiguchi was active as a teacher, he accumulated an enormous quantity of notes about the importance of education and its practical methods. It was these notes that Mr. Toda compiled and published as Mr. Makiguchi’s master-work, The System of Value-Creating Education.

As the sky outside the window began to take on the shades of evening, Mr. Toda would pause in his contemplation and say, Ah, it’s time to go, and head off to that night’s meeting. His mood of intense concentration continued for several days. I was always nearby, and I sensed he was preparing some very important announcement. This was how Mr. Toda’s epoch-making Declaration for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons was born.

When I close my eyes, I can still see the Mitsuzawa Stadium in Yokohama as it was on that day, September 8, 1957. It was perfectly clear, without a cloud in the sky. The prior evening’s newspapers had forecast heavy rain, as Typhoon No. 10 made its way toward Eastern Japan. This only increased the joy of the festival’s participants when the next morning they awoke to the bright blue skies left in the typhoon’s wake. The heavenly deities—the protective functions of the universe—must surely have provided the fine weather to celebrate this event, the stage from which Mr. Toda launched his landmark declaration and an occasion that would be remembered down through the generations.

The youth division sports meet, dubbed Festival of Youth, began with a Cessna flying overhead and dropping a congratulatory message. I then opened the event by firing a starter’s gun, which signaled a hundred doves being released into the sky.

I can still see Mr. Toda’s vigorous figure that day in my mind’s eye. He declared:

Today’s Festival of Youth has been blessed with clear skies free of any trace of yesterday’s storm, as if the heavenly dragon has responded to your enthusiasm. It was with a profound sense of joy that I watched the competitors among you fully embody the Soka Gakkai spirit in each event, as the rest of you wholeheartedly applauded their efforts.

Chinese legend has it that heavy rains are caused by a dragon that resides in the heavens. It was just like Mr. Toda, with his great fondness for the Chinese classics, to open his speech in this manner. He continued:

Nevertheless, for all our joy today, it is likely that the Soka Gakkai will encounter persecution again in the future. And we ourselves may face all kinds of attacks. Having said that, I would now like to share with you what I hope you will regard as the foremost of my instructions for the future.

And indeed they were final instructions, as if he knew in advance the limits of his life and that just six months hence his health would fail him and he would die. At the same time, it indicated to us that we must be prepared for every imaginable kind of persecution and attack, and be determined to overcome them. This is the ultimate lesson for a practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism. How truly fortunate we were to have such a great mentor as Mr. Toda!

Uphold Humanity’s Right to Life!

Mr. Toda continued speaking with powerful conviction to the fifty thousand young people assembled before him, his voice shaking them to the core of their beings:

The responsibility for the coming era must be shouldered by the youth. Needless to say, kosen-rufu is our mission, and we must absolutely achieve it. But today I would like to state clearly my feelings and attitude regarding the testing of nuclear weapons, a topic that is currently being heatedly debated throughout society.

I hope that, as my disciples, you will inherit the declaration I am about to make today and, to the best of your ability, spread its intent throughout the world.

He spoke simply and clearly, but the faith and expectations he held for the young people who would carry on the work of kosen-rufu were apparent, as were his love for them and the extraordinary depth of his determination in making this declaration.

He went on to declare that he wished to rip out the claws that are hidden in the very depths of the issue of nuclear weapons. At the time, there was mounting public opinion against nuclear weapons. Three years earlier in 1954, a Japanese fishing vessel, Lucky Dragon V, encountered radioactive fallout from a hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, and the ship’s radio operator, Aikichi Kuboyama, had died of radiation poisoning.

Mr. Toda began to approach the crux of his speech, the portion that he had recorded in his notes, the fruit of his intense and prolonged thought:

We, the citizens of the world, have an inviolable right to live. Anyone who jeopardizes that right is a devil incarnate, a fiend, a monster. I propose that humankind applies, in every case, the death penalty to anyone responsible for using nuclear weapons, even if that person is on the winning side. Even if a country should conquer the world through the use of nuclear weapons, the conquerors must be viewed as devils, as evil incarnate. I believe that it is the mission of every member of the youth division in Japan to disseminate this idea throughout the globe.

Mr. Toda declared that the use of nuclear weapons was an absolute evil that violated people’s right to life, and he exposed the claws of the demon that lay hidden behind all arguments for their use. In other words, he pursued the issue to the profound level of human life itself, condemning the demonic nature within humanity that produced nuclear weapons and sought to justify their use.

Dr. Pauling said to me in our dialogue: I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs—there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism. I believe in the power of the human spirit.¹ Those words are very similar to a sentence from the Russell-Einstein Manifesto: We appeal as human beings to human beings: remember your humanity and forget the rest.² And both statements strike a resonant chord with my mentor’s words.

Mr. Toda’s declaration set a clear course for the Soka Gakkai’s future activities for peace and culture. So many of our activities have been born from its spirit. These include the youth division’s petition to the United Nations with ten million signatures for the abolition of nuclear weapons in the 1970s; the more recent Abolition 2000 campaign, in which thirteen million signatures were collected; the Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World exhibition, which opened at the United Nations Headquarters in New York and has been shown in Moscow, Beijing, and other leading cities around the world; and the War and Peace exhibition, among many others.

Inheriting My Mentor’s Vision

In September 1987, the thirtieth anniversary of Mr. Toda’s declaration, the Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World exhibition was held in Yokohama, Kanagawa, where the declaration was made. The then governor of Kanagawa, Kazuji Nagasu, attended the opening and said, I sincerely hope that this exhibition being held here in Yokohama, a city with an illustrious history, will serve as an opportunity to unite and strengthen the commitment of the people of our prefecture to work for the abolition of all nuclear weapons.

Along with the exhibition, we held a lecture series on the theme of peace, and the Soka Gakkai youth division members in Kanagawa conducted a public opinion poll among local residents on the subject of nuclear weapons. The Kanagawa organization also held a general meeting to coincide with these events, marking a fresh start for the prefecture’s activities. On that occasion, I said, Let us carry on our mentor’s vision and go out widely into the world, there striving for its realization. From that time I have worked and fought without rest to make that wish come true.

The Soka Gakkai’s peace movement is a natural consequence of the Buddhist ideal of peace as articulated in On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land and active involvement in society. A famous passage from this writing is most succinct: If the nation is destroyed and people’s homes are wiped out, then where can one flee for safety? If you care anything about your personal security, you should first of all pray for order and tranquillity throughout the four quarters of the land, should you not? (WND-1, 24).

A genuine religion does not dream of some ideal vision of society while making people forget the issues they face in reality; it does not lose itself in meditation on a perfect world while fleeing from daily life. True security for both oneself and others can be attained only by praying and acting for order and tranquillity throughout the four quarters of the land.

But why, in particular, has the SGI’s peace movement spread throughout the world and proven so enduring? In Japan in the 1950s numerous organizations and movements vehemently opposed nuclear weapons. As the only nation that had experienced nuclear warfare, this wasn’t surprising. But while for a time these movements had widespread support, many later became political tools, which led to growing division and a loss of momentum. The Soka Gakkai’s peace movement, in contrast, has persevered and spread from Japan out to the world. It has never lost sight of the people. That is because it has always remained firmly based on the bonds of mentor and disciple. This strong foundation has saved it from deviating from its course and becoming self-centered. The motivation behind everything in our movement is to carry out