Questions and Answers on the Temple Issue
10. WHAT IS BEHIND THE TEMPLE'S PROMOTION
OF MEDIA REPORTS THAT PAINT THE GAKKAI IN A NEGATIVE LIGHT?
English-speaking temple members have translated
many libelous anti-SGI articles from Japanese publications - both
from temple publications and weekly tabloid- type gossip magazines.
They have posted these to the Internet or distributed them to
SGI-USA members to try to create distrust and antipathy toward
the SGI.
Through its ongoing efforts to protect civil
rights, the Gakkai has frequently opposed the authoritarian behavior
of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party or LDP (the name may
be misleading as the LDP is actually a politically conservative
party). The LDP is now working closely with the Japanese media
to defame and discredit the organization and SGI President Ikeda.
The flurry of libelous articles about the SGI - more than 500
in 1995 alone - is the Work of this alliance.
Almost all of these articles or stories have
appeared in publications known as "weeklies" widely
read magazines that focus on scandal and innuendo. In the area
of culpability for what they report, they fall far below such
publications many Americans call "tabloids."
In addition, Japan's lax libel laws make it quite
easy for them to get away with this. In the May 27, 1997, edition
of the San Francisco Examiner, Takesato Watanabe, a professor
of journalism at Doshisha University in Kyoto Japan, commented
on the low level of reporting found in magazines by two publishers
in particular, the Bungei Shunju and the Shinchosha.
These two companies have been most active in running articles
that defame the SGI. Among other things, he writes that they have
recently carried articles that have:
- Denied that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz.
- Systematically downplayed the brutal Rape of Nanking at the
hands of the Japanese Military during WorldWar II.
- Falsely accused an innocent man of the 1994 Matsumoto sarin
gas attacks....
- Heaped racy slanders on Okinawa Gov. Ota, who opposes the
government's stance on American military bases on the islands.
Nichiren Daishonin would have considered this abuse the SGI today
faces from such quarters as a natural result of the organization's
faith and growth, something completely in line with Buddhist teachings.
False accusations by self-interested individuals or groups have
always been part of the equation of such persecution, which the
Daishonin and his disciples experienced firsthand:
I was kept at Eichi for more than twenty days. During that
period seven or eight cases of arson and an endless succession
of murders took place in Kamakura. Slanderers went around saying
that my disciples were setting the fires. Government officials
thought this might be true and made up a list of over 260 of
my followers they believed should be expelled from Kamakura.
Word spread that these persons were all to be exiled to remote
islands and that those disciples already in prison would be
beheaded. It turned out, however, that the fires were set by
the Nembutsu and Ritsu. believers to implicate my disciples.
There were other things that happened, but they are too numerous
to mention here. (MW-1, 184)
As long as the SGI continues to grow and is socially
involved, we can expect groundless accusations about the organization
to ensue.
In "On
Practicing the Buddha's Teachings," the Daishonin warns
us:
From the very day you take faith in this teaching, you
should be fully prepared to face the three kinds of persecutions.
(mw-i, 99)
While it is not as likely that we will be persecuted
as individuals, as a Buddhist group we are certain to be.
Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism says that it is
ordinary people who have power -a message sure to incur the wrath
of entrenched authority in any day and age. Criticism and attack
by certain vested interests thus go with the territory. Rather
than being surprised by them, we can actually take pride in them,
for they offer proof that the SGI's movement is on the right track.
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