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SOKA GAKKAI'S HUMAN REVOLUTION: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan. Contemporary Buddhism. By Levi McLaughlin. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2019. xiv, 219 pp. (Figures.) US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-7542-8.
In Soka Gakkai's Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern japan, Levi McLaughlin provides a historic and ethnographic account of the Soka Gakkai, or Value Creation Study Association, a lay Buddhist organization that was founded by a society of educators in the 1930s and grew to become Japan's largest lay-centric religious organization. As a neutral scholar with an "emphatic yet critical" perspective, McLaughlin offers a unique analysis into the Soka Gakkai based on not only his exhaustive archival research into both primary and secondary sources, including the writings and teachings of the thirteenth-century reformer Nichiren, but also his extensive fieldwork in local Gakkai communities (xi).
McLaughlin begins by outlining the origins, history, and development of the Soka Gakkai and introduces various aspects of the organization, including a summary of the practice of Nichiren Buddhism and the institutions and enterprises that constitute the religious organization. For example, the author elaborates on the Soka Gakkai's bureaucratic administrative structures, culture of examinations and ranks for Buddhist doctrines, electioneering activities, and media empire that includes the daily newspaper Seikyo Shinbun, the nation's third-highest newspaper subscription rate with a daily circulation of 5.5 million copies.
In chapter 2, the history and evolution of the Soka Gakkai under each of the three founding presidents is presented. According to McLaughlin, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi conceptualized the principles of Nichiren Buddhism into an educational philosophy that laid...