Essays

Excerpt from “Daisaku Ikeda and America: The Reception and Transmission of Nichiren Buddhism” (Excerpted from Soka Faith Studies III) Daisaku Ikeda delivered his first university lecture overseas on April 1, 1974, at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). In fact, exactly eleven years earlier, on April 1, 1963, the historian Arnold J. Toynbee had given a lecture at the same university. During a lecture that ran just over fifty minutes, Arnold J. Toynbee surveyed five t

Introduction On April 1, 2019, Mikio Matsuoka established the Institute of Soka Faith Studies with the aim of exploring “Soka Faith Studies.” In this paper, I will first clarify the significance of the Institute of Soka Faith Studies and then, in order to further invigorate its activities, present my own understanding of what “Soka Faith Studies” entails. Regarding the Institute of Soka Faith Studies, Mikio Matsuoka states on its official website that it is a research institu

A Theory of Scholarship Based on Faith as Articulated by the Three Presidents of the Soka Gakkai In this essay, I would like to present my reflections, from the standpoint of a research fellow, on the faith-based scholarship of the Soka Gakkai as explored by the Institute of Soka Faith Studies. The Institute is a research body dedicated to investigating a theory of scholarship grounded in faith as established by the three presidents of the Soka Gakkai. The first president, Ts

Congratulations on the inauguration of the Institute of Soka Faith Studies. With Director Mikio Matsuoka, I have engaged in numerous dialogues from the perspectives of Buddhism and Christianity, including the Daisanbunmei Publishing project Speaking about the Soka Gakkai. Director Matsuoka always takes Daisaku Ikeda as his point of departure. Without relativizing faith from a purely academic standpoint, he lives out the fundamental commitment that he, as a disciple, must upho

Reductionism in modern science has led to the specialization of academic disciplines. The humanities, which seek to explore human beings, have likewise become differentiated into specialized fields such as philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and religious studies. Each of these fields examines particular phenomena manifested in human beings, such as logic, language, culture, and religion. However, if one seeks to investigate the essence of the human being as an integrated