Prochronists Brian Victoria, Jon Petry, Buku Mark Rogow and now Robert Kisala Risk Becoming Liars Through the Repetition of Debunked Falsehoods +,

[Chas.]

Prochronists Brian Victoria, Jon Petry, Buku Mark Rogow and now Robert Kisala Risk Becoming Liars Through the Repetition of Debunked Falsehoods +

Jon Petry continues to misunderstand the history of Japan, in particular, the events of 1935 and the "Organ Theory Affair" regarding the occurrences in the Diet surrounding Minobe Tatsukichi. There were two major factions, the Constitutional Monarchists who were liberal and progressive, and the Absolute Monarchists supported by the militarists who wanted total control over the government, the people and society, and to quell any voices that might disagree with their plans.

Minobe's Organ Theory made the case that the Emperor was an organ of the government and not an absolute ruler. This caused an uproar which ended with the militarists having total authority to do as they wished: and their wish was total Pacific war. Secretly, the Princes and the Emperor were backing the Absolute Monarchists, but the Constitutionalists never knew this.

So in their writings and in attempting to pull the country back into the center over a long struggle ending disastrously in 1935, the Constitutional Monarchists would write expressing loyalty to the Emperor pleading for a middle way to escape the spiral down into madness that was coming. The fact that there was no hope for their cause, does not impugn their efforts to attempt to hold off the darkness that was descending. That piece of intellectual dishonesty is utterly disgusting on the part of Brian Victoria, Robert Kisala and Jon Petry. They should be shunned by academia as prochronists perpetuating a fraud.

With that history in mind, let's examine Jon Petry's confusion regarding the misleading writings and intellectual dishonesty of Brian Victoria and Robert Kisala.

From a recent posting of Jon Petry:

| Engaged Buddhism: A Skeleton in the Closet? By Brian
| Daizen Victoria, Senior Lecturer Centre for Asian
| Studies, University of Adelaide
|.
| In both EBW and David Chappell's Buddhist Peacework
| (BP), Tsunesaburo Makiguchi is presented as another
| foundational exemplar of Engaged Buddhism. Makiguchi's
| Buddhist faith, it is claimed, impelled him not only to
| advocate a humane and peaceful world but to sacrifice
| his very life in resisting Japanese militarism.
|.
| In an article in EBW entitled "The Angulimala Lineage:
| Buddhist Prison Ministries," Virginia Cohn Parkum and J.
| Anthony Stultz describe Makiguchi (and his disciple,
| Josei Toda) as having "experienced incarceration in
| Japan during World War II for resisting the war effort
| and refusing to follow state Shinto worship" (p. 360). A
| second article in the same book, "Racial Diversity in
| the Soka Gakkai" by David Chappell, states that "when
| Makiguchi refused to support government thinking during
| the war, he was arrested in 1943 and died in prison on
| November 18, 1944 at the age of seventy-three" (p. 216).
|.
| Though somewhat more ambivalent, Peter Harvey adds his
| voice to the chorus in An Introduction to Buddhist
| Ethics (IBE) where he writes, "In the Second World War,
| most Buddhist schools agreed to support the nation in
| its efforts. Seemingly the one exception was the Soka
| Gakkai, which refused to take part in this unified
| front" (p. 270). Nevertheless, none of these voices can
| compare with that of Daisaku Ikeda, president of Soka
| Gakkai International, who has the strongest words of
| praise for Makiguchi. In an essay included in BP
| entitled "The SGI's Peace Movement," Ikeda writes:

All of those issues are relevant to the discussion of Makiguchi and his views in wartime, and Jon Petry will go on to distort those issues.

However, bringing up the following material from 1903 is really a red herring.

Makiguchi's 1903 writings were from a time long before he came into contact with Nichiren's Buddhism, when he was basically under earlier influences of the religion of his family, and are simply not relevant to the point that Victoria, Kisala and Petry are trying to make: that he might not have been imprisoned for resisting the War, or even that he might not have been a pacifist AT THAT MUCH LATER TIME.

One can argue over his pacifistic tendencies in 1903, which undoubtedly were in conflict at that time with his nationalism, but that does not in any way pertain to the occurrences in the middle and late 1930s and the early 1940s. These are truly specious as well as unjustified and distorted assertions.

Petry continues:

| Early in the twentieth century (1903), President
| Makiguchi published The Geography of Human Life (Jinsei
| Chirigaku), which strongly advocated a shift to
| humanitarian competition at a time when imperialism and
| colonialism were still the prevailing modes of
| international relations. He analyzed competition among
| nations as consisting of the phases of: military
| competition, political competition, economic
| competition, and humanitarian competition. He stressed
| that humanity's aim should be humanitarian competition
| (p. 136).
|.
| Robert Kisala, however, once again presents us with an
| alternative view. He begins by noting that the central
| focus of Makiguchi's first book, Jinsei Chirigaku, was
| on "drawing connections between geography and everyday
| life and advocating the study of geography through field
| trips and other hands-on experiences" (p. 75). As for
| Makiguchi's alleged war resistance, Kisala explains that
| the crux of the matter was Makiguchi's refusal to
| venerate a talisman of Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess,
| issued by the central Shinto shrine at Ise. It was this
| refusal, he claims, not war resistance, which led
| Makiguchi and some twenty other leaders of what was then
| known as Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Academic Society for Value-
| Creating Education) to be arrested on charges of lese
| majestè and the violation of the Peace Preservation Law
| on July 6, 1943.

This skin-deep analysis, more appropriate to a high school paper, completely ignores the contextual fact that Shinto was the religion that identified the Emperor as a kami (god) superior to the hoteke (the buddhas). That meant the Emperor was the country itself: the government, the military and the war effort ... and that resisting Shinto was resisting the Emperor's war. Resisting the state religion of Imperial Way Buddhism (according to Brian Victoria's very own book) was resisting Imperial State Zen at war in the Pacific.

This evil Shinto view had evolved according to the honji suijaku theory (13th century Tendai slanders of Dengyo) and the later foundations of the Sanno Ichijitsu cult of worshipping Ieyasu as a god (laid down by Tenkai, another Tendai slanderer of Dengyo, who inserted lies into his mentor's mouth stating that the gods were greater than the buddhas, and that the greatest god of all was Ieyasu), all of which was inherited by the Meiji Restoration to build a new Emperor Cult, which came to fruition in 1935.

[See my other posting regarding the Toynbee analysis of the Fuji School for vastly greater detail on this evil.]

Petry continues:

| Kisala concludes his study of Makiguchi by pointing out
| that while "Soka Gakkai literature often claims that
| this persecution was the result of an anti-military
| stance taken by Makiguchi. . . my reading of the
| situation indicates that Makiguchi's opposition was more
| narrowly focused on the religious policy of the
| government" (p. 90).

The utter ignorance of this statement is pathetic. There was no separation at all between the Emperor and the War effort, in the religious view of Shinto. Shinto equals War. It has no other purpose than the absolute power of a monarch leading to War. It was invented and reinvented by the Tendai at the behest of the Zen bakufu (military government) over several centuries expressly for the purpose of governing through distortion of Buddhism. [The fact that it is a distortion that suits Jon Petry and his Five Senior Priest cronies at Minobu, is no accident.]

Now, Kisala and Petry go back to the irrelevant evidence of Makiguchi's writings nearly thirty years before his conversion to Nichiren Buddhism, with some crazy idea that it informs us of his views and actions in the middle of the struggle leading to the events of 1935 and the later events of the early 1940s.

Simply and obviously irrelevant, a red herring is a red herring no matter how many times you repeat the fallacy: it remains fallacious reasoning. Indeed, repetition of an obvious fallacy is the propaganda technique numero uno of the fascists themselves, the big lie that becomes more acceptable when it is repeated endlessly (Josef Goebbels).

Petry continues:

| This writer's research on Makiguchi shows that not only
| is Kisala's conclusion correct but that he revealed only
| a small part of the story. That is to say, while
| Makiguchi may, as Ikeda claims, have looked forward to
| the coming of a future world based on "humanitarian
| competition," that world did not yet exist. In Jinsei
| Chirigaku, Makiguchi described the actual world he
| inhabited as follows:
|.
| "It is my view that the sole cause of the present danger
| to world peace is Russia's promotion of its own
| viability. That is to say, in the present age of
| economic struggle for existence, Russia seeks to exploit
| weaknesses among the international powers in order to
| acquire what it must have: access to the oceans. Thus it
| is in the process of expanding in three directions, from
| the Dardanelle Straits in Eastern Europe to the Persian
| Gulf in western Asia and the Yellow Sea in the Far
| East." (Makiguchi 1903:950-951).
|
| In identifying Russia as being solely responsible for
| endangering world peace, Makiguchi adopted a stance
| identical with that of the Japanese government of his
| day. Japan used this alleged threat to justify its
| surprise attack on Russia the following year,
| ostensively to protect Korea's independence and prevent
| further Russian encroachments on Chinese territory, most
| especially Manchuria. The reality, however, was that
| following its victory over Russia in 1905, Japan moved
| to take control of Korea for itself, turning it into a
| full-fledged colony in 1910. As for Manchuria, Japan
| steadily increased its control of this area of China
| until it established the puppet state of Manchukuo in
| February 1932.

The entirety of Jon's and Kisala's irrelevant argument, here, has been completely debunked already, SEVERAL TIMES IN SEVERAL PLACES.

I refer you to the first time that Koichi Miyata debunked Brian Victoria's canard (the fourth time that Victoria vomited forth this filth, polluting the public marketplace of ideas):

. Turning to my first point: Victoria quotes a passage
. from Makiguchi's 1903 work Jinsei Chirigaku (The
. Geography of Human Life), in which Makiguchi notes that
. Russia was engaged in a policy of expansionism in the
. search for year-round harbors. Victoria asserts that
. this world view was identical to that of the government
. of Japan, a view used to justify the Russo-Japanese War
. (1904-1905), then the annexation of the Korean peninsula
. (1910) and the founding of the puppet state of Manchukuo
. (1932). Victoria's assertion, and his implicit criticism
. of Makiguchi, simplistically links analysis of the
. global situation with the policies taken in response to
. that. Makiguchi was merely voicing what was then the
. accepted understanding of the geopolitical motives for
. Russia's expansionist policies, a view held not only by
. the Japanese government, but shared by the British, with
. whom Japan had formed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
. Certainly I know of no scholar of political geography
. who rejects this commonsense view in favor of one that
. Russia posed no danger. If we were to extend Victoria's
. argument, the logical conclusion would be to find not
. only Makiguchi but everyone who studies political
. geography guilty of complicity with Japanese aggression.
. Critical Comments on Brian Victoria's "Engaged Buddhism:
.
. From "A Skeleton in the Closet?", by Koichi Miyata.
. <http://www.globalbuddhism.org/3/miyata021.htm>

So, this was the actually the view of all of the allies of Britain at the turn of the 20th century, and not some Japanese imperialistic view.

Stop repeating this nonsense, Jon Petry and Robert Kisala, you are obviously lying in your deliberate repetition of debunked falsehoods (like Propaganda Minister Goebbels and Brian Victoria).

Leaving aside the wretchedness of your methods and lack of connection with any rational semblence of truth, this line of discussion continues to be a red herring, by delving again into Makiguchi's decades past ideas, way before Makiguchi's conversion to Nichiren Buddhism.

I can understand this from a non-believer like Kisala, but Jon Petry considers himself a believer, does he not?

Are not people allowed to change and grow as they age, or are we all simply static entities?

King Ashoka went from being a cruel conqueror to being a peaceful Buddhist, is that only OK for him to change his life, because he is ancient history?

I mean, (if it's OK with your Lordship) is it satisfactory to you if we practice human revolution, even we mortals who are less than your perfection?

Petry continues:

| Significantly, neither Ikeda nor Kisala mention a second
| seminal book Makiguchi first published in November 1912.
| Entitled Kyodoka Kenky (Study of Folk Culture), this
| volume was an extension of the ideas contained in Jinsei
| Chirigaku, with special emphasis on their relevance to
| the life and structures of local communities. Makiguchi
| wanted rural educators (rather than the central
| government's bureaucrats) to take the lead in developing
| educational initiatives attuned to local communities.
| But toward what end? The book's concluding chapter
| explained Makiguchi's ultimate goal for education as
| follows:
|.
| "Regardless of social class, everyone should be
| conscious of the nation's destiny, harmonizing their
| lives with that destiny and, at all times, prepared to
| share that destiny. It is for this reason that the work
| of national education is to prepare ourselves to do
| exactly this, omitting nothing in the process. . . .
| However, in order to do this, and prior to placing
| ourselves in service to the state, we should first
| contribute to the local area that has nurtured us and
| with which we share common interests." (Makiguchi
| 1933:460-461).
|.
| It should be noted that Makiguchi wrote the above
| specifically for an enlarged 1933 edition of this book
| (see Makiguchi 1933:6). Despite championing rural
| education under local control, by 1933 both he and his
| publisher, none other than Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, shared a
| vision of education that was as "state-centered" as any
| of his contemporaries.
|.

Once again, this nonsense of yours has been debunked by Koichi Miyata in the same article. Since you appear incapable of clicking and reading this article, I have included it in total at the end of this writing. Here is the passage debunking your (above) hypothesis:

. Secondly, Victoria quotes an extract from Makiguchi's
. book Kyodoka Kenkyu (A Study of Folk Culture), in which
. Makiguchi notes that the state plays an important role
. in the lives of citizens. From this, Victoria draws the
. conclusion that as the Japan moved closer to war,
. Makiguchi adopted the view that education should be "in
. service to the state". (Victoria states that Makiguchi
. added this section for the 1933 revised edition of the
. book. This is incorrect, as it appears in the first
. edition published in 1912.) Since the publication of
. Jinsei Chirigaku Makiguchi had consistently emphasized
. the formation of identity on three levels-that of a
. person's local community, the national and global
. levels. Within this context, and against a backdrop of
. global competition for empire, he placed particular
. importance on national independence. This is hardly
. unreasonable. Japan was one of only a handful of
. countries in Asia that had maintained independence amid
. encroachment by the Western powers, and Makiguchi was
. well aware of the miserable circumstances of colonized
. peoples. What we may find problematic-in terms of the
. current view that controlling peoples is intrinsically
. wrong-is that Makiguchi did not say enough after Japan
. itself acquired colonies, omitting to comment on the
. issue of independence for these colonized peoples, and
. only suggesting that imperialism was not the optimal
. policy choice because of the financial burden involved.
. Here I refer Dr. Victoria to my essay "Tsunesaburo
. Makiguchi's Theory of the State" in TJOS, in which I
. discuss Makiguchi's view that imperialistic-military and
. economic-competition should be supplanted by a
. cooperative sense of community, what he called
. "humanitarian competition."

Miyata's article "Tsunesaburo Makiguchi's Theory of the State" is located at: http://www.tmakiguchi.org/assets/images/miyataforIOPspecialissue.pdf

I wonder if you are capable of clicking and reading this article, or will you continue to repeat that debunked piece of propaganda, too? Next time, I will include that article as well, if you continue to prevaricate, by floating this canard.

By the way, note the date 1933. Even according to your prochronistic reasoning, Jinsei Chirigaku was enlarged and published just at the point, 2 years before the crisis and catastrophe of the Constitutional Monarchists in 1935, when the Constitutionalists were desperately trying to pull the government back to the middle, while it was sliding away from them to the far right and utter chaos.

The Constitutionalist case would not be furthered by separation from the the ruling government, or by separating from the nobility that they were trying to influence, in vain as it would turn out.

So they made their plea from the center. In support of the Emperor. As Tony Blair has noted, all progressive governments that survive must rule from the center. Always from the broad center of the people. The fact that it did not work this time is not the fault of their rhetorical support of the Emperor, while trying to influence the royals.

Petry continues:

| Only a few years later, millions of young Japanese would
| be called on to sacrifice their lives, and those of
| their victims, in the process of "placing [them]selves
| in service to the state." Thus, Makiguchi's quarrel with
| the central government's bureaucrats over the control of
| local education was not about whether or not service to
| the state should be promoted, but simply how best to
| attain that goal.

That few years, after 1935 and a sharp break with the last glimmer of hope in 1933 when Makiguchi wrote, does not impugn the pre-Absolute Monarchy attempts of the Constitutional Monarchists in 1933 to preserve a progressive government in Japan. Those failed efforts were noble, and had they succeeded, could have prevented much death and destruction. THIS, TOO IS PACIFISM !!!

And during the last of the war years, Mr. Makiguchi and Mr. Toda were imprisoned, and they were the only ones who never gave in to the end, to Mr. Makiguchi's death, and Mr. Toda's unyielding and undefeated release from prison. The honor of Japan's Buddhists resided only with these two in the end. Certainly not with Zen and not with Minobu and their subjugated temples.

And, oh, by the way, Jon Petry. Your show is slipping.

Your evil Minobu sect (Nichiren Shu and the other subjugated temples) were not hiding away somewhere. They were unabashed cheerleaders for the war effort and the attack on Pearl Harbor, even worse than the evil Fuji School Priesthood.

They bowed to the Shinto talisman, that slanderous object of worship, which stands in opposition to the Lotus Sutra and the Gohonzon, and which was the direct cause of war, chaos and holocaust.

They bowed to the Shinto talisman and cheered as defeat after glorious defeat occurred, with the mass suicide of division after division, running out of the caves burning from the flamethrower's napalm.

Minobu cheered as the kamikaze flew and they cheered as the Yamamoto went down with all hands without inflicting any damage whatsoever on the Allies.

So noble.

Your Minobu priests cheered as Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki burned. And damn them to hell for it and all the rest of their distorting garbage Buddhism.

Petry continues:

| If, as the preceding quote demonstrates, Makiguchi
| believed the ultimate goal of education was to serve the
| state, what was the emperor's role in fostering this?
| Was Makiguchi in any way opposed or critical of either
| the emperor or the imperial system?
|.
| Though critical of patriotism based on "superficial
| reasons," Makiguchi wrote, "His Majesty, the Emperor, on
| whom is centered the exercise of Imperial authority,
| does so through his military and civilian officials. The
| reason he exercises this authority is definitely not for
| his own benefit. Rather, as leader and head of the
| entire nation, he graciously exerts himself on behalf of
| all the people. It is for this reason that in our
| country, the state and the emperor, as head of state,
| should be thought of as completely one and indivisible.
| We must make our children thoroughly understand that
| loyal service to their sovereign is synonymous with love
| of country. . . I believe it is only in so doing that we
| can clarify the true meaning of the phrase "loyalty to
| one's sovereign and love of country" [Châkun Aikoku]
| (Makiguchi 1933:411- 412).

This repeated nonsense of yours HAS ALSO already been repeatedly debunked, which ALSO throws into question, ONCE AGAIN, your putative intellectual honesty, Jon Petry. Here is Koichi Miyata's argument from "A Skeleton In The Closet?"

. Thirdly there is the problem of the emperor system.
. Quoting a section from Kyodoka Kenkyu in which Makiguchi
. argues that loyalty to the emperor is synonymous with
. love of one's country, Victoria implies that Makiguchi's
. view was identical to that of the military government.
. This, however, is a far too loosely framed argument that
. ignores the interpretative issues associated with the
. 1889 Meiji Constitution. The preamble to the Meiji
. Constitution recognizes the supreme authority of the
. emperor, while Article 3 declares the sacred nature of
. the emperor, and Article 4 his sovereign rights over the
. state -- making the state and the emperor system
. inseparable. If we stress the supreme authority of the
. emperor, the emperor is then cast in the role of
. absolute monarch. If we consider instead the role of the
. Constitution as a brake on the supreme authority of the
. emperor, he becomes a constitutional monarch. The former
. view is represented by the imperial fascism supported by
. the military regime, while the latter corresponds to
. Tatsukichi Minobe's theory of the emperor as an organ of
. the state. From the era of Taisho democracy through to
. the suppression of Minobe's theory in 1935, this view
. held sway among constitutional scholars and members of
. the Diet. The idea that loyalty = patriotism is common
. to both views, and by aligning Makiguchi with the
. imperial fascism of the military simply on the basis of
. his comments here, Victoria again appears determined to
. ignore the written record of Makiguchi's thoughts. From
. his earliest writings, Makiguchi viewed the emperor as a
. constitutional monarch, and was critical of moves to
. make the emperor's powers absolute.

Once again, Prochronists like Victoria, Kisala and Petry, will always judge a person's writings before the emergence of Fascism, in a post-Fascist light, to make whatever conclusion they desire seem correct. In this way they persecute the noble efforts of those who tried to forestall catastrophe, by twisting the truth and demonizing their nobility.

The State Fascism triumphant in 1935 was not the same as the Constitutional Monarchists struggling to survive as part of the Diet in 1933. Got that?

It is truly shameful, how Victoria, Kisala and Petry can exploit that subtle difference in timing, making fools of the public. But that is indeed what they do. And they call themselves academics. And people continue to publish their garbage writings.

More from Jon Petry:

| In urging his fellow educators to make the nation's
| children "thoroughly understand that loyal service to
| their sovereign is synonymous with love of country" we
| once again find Makiguchi situated squarely in the
| mainstream of the nationalistic fervor that increasingly
| came to characterize the 1930s. No matter how
| Makiguchi's position toward the emperor may have changed
| later on, in 1933 Makiguchi advocated the widely held
| proposition that love of country was synonymous with
| loyal service to the emperor. It was exactly this
| educational ideology that provided the foundation for
| the Japanese military's demand of absolute and
| unquestioning obedience from its soldiers, claiming that
| "the orders of one's superiors are the orders of the
| emperor."

This time as well, Petry is repeating a section of Victoria's work that has been thoroughly debunked over and over by Koichi Miyata in "A Skeleton In The Closet?":

. Victoria mentions the military indoctrination of soldiers
. that "the orders of one's superiors are the orders of the
. emperor," and asserts that Makiguchi supported this
. view. In fact, however, Makiguchi commented: "The orders
. of the emperor could be mistaken, mind you", thereby
. rejecting the absolute authority of the emperor. This
. point is an important one when we come to consider the
. next, that of the relationship between Makiguchi's
. criticism of the religious policies of the military
. government and his anti-war activities. I refer Dr.
. Victoria here to Hiroo Sato "Nichiren Thought in Modern
. Japan: Two Perspectives" in TJOS in which he discusses
. the relationship between Makiguchi and the emperor
. system from a religious-historical perspective.

Does Petry simply refuse to read the debunking of his incorrect positions? Can he not see what is apparent to one and all, that his autistic lying, like a network device that is an open emitter, only serves to undermine his validity on every point he makes? Endlessly reformulating an erroneous statement into a new posting does not make it true, in spite of Goebbels' guidance to propagandists.

And trashing Makiguchi and Toda without regard to the truth of their heroism, does not make the devilish priests at Minobu and the other Nichiren temples into saints. The were, are and will remain war-mongering slanderers of Buddhism.

More from Jon Petry:

| Makiguchi also touched on Japan's colonization of Korea,
| claiming that Korea, prior to being formally annexed by
| Japan in August 1910, had been in such a state of
| anarchy that it was unable either to defend itself or
| protect its citizens. Not only that, the Chinese people
| presently found themselves in exactly the same situation
| (see Makiguchi 1933:413).

Once again, one does not succeed in influencing the powerful back into the center, by picking unnecessary fights about past history that cannot be changed now. Or by encouraging disloyalty against the leader of the nation, whom you are trying to influence.

This (1933) was the time when fate still held in the balance, when the course had not been decided (apparently), and when there was still hope. Should they have given in prematurely?

That appears to be what Kisala and Petry think.

They would rather be viewed in a better light by history, than fight in an effort to change the outcome. How determinist of them, what fatalism that is, and such intellectual detachment is merely a disguise for clucking defeatism.

It is precisely the hopeless causes that require the strongest fight and the greatest courage. Get your ass off the sidelines and into the fight, Jon Petry. You and your Tendai-influenced kin need to discard the notion of "original enlightenment", which is really the devilish function's most excellent disguise. You cannot attain the way by having an opinion of Buddhism that differs from Nichiren Daishonin. You are either with him, or you are in Avichi Hell:

From the Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, p. 77-78, Chapter Seven - The Parable of the Phantom City, Point Seven, on the passage "Now you must press forward diligently / so that together you may [all] reach the place where the treasure is.",

. The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings says: The
. word "all" refers to the Ten Worlds. The word "together"
. refers to the words [of the Buddha in chapter two, Expedient
. Means] "hoping to make all persons / equal to me, without
. any distinction between us." The word "reach" means to
. arrive at the level of the highest effect, the state of
. Buddhahood. "The place where the treasure is," the treasure
. land, is the holy mountain, Eagle Peak.
.
. Nichiren and his followers, those who chant Nam-myoho-renge
. -kyo, one and all will "together reach the place where the
. treasure is." This one word "together" means that, as long
. as they are together with Nichiren, they will reach the
. treasure land. BUT IF THEY ARE NOT TOGETHER WITH HIM, THEY
. WILL FALL INTO THE GREAT CITADEL OF THE AVICHI HELL.

When Nichiren placed all of Buddhism in the hands of Nikko Shonin, your ancestral mentors (the Five Senior Priests) ignored the final words of their dying mentor.

Now you are in Avichi Hell as a result.

While you still live, Jon Petry, you can still escape this hellish condition by following Nichiren's final admonition. (Yes, even after all of this evil ranting filth.)

By that, I don't mean joining your fellow Avichi denizens, the Transfer Box-less followers of Nikken in Nichiren Shoshu. I mean coming to the SGI. That is the only exit strategy that is sufficient to make an escape from your present predicament.

More from Jon Petry:

| The clear implication of the latter claim was that
| China, like Korea before it, would greatly benefit from
| Japanese control. This was of course a sentiment shared
| by the Japanese government, as seen, for example, in the
| Amau Statement of April 1934 issued by its Foreign
| Office. China, the statement declared, was not to avail
| itself of the assistance of any country other than
| Japan.

That detailed implication of Makiguchi's that you describe is actually, clearly and simply, a detailed inference on your part.

Your inference does not equate to Makiguchi's implication.

Makiguchi did not make that prediction: "will greatly benefit from".

Stop putting your thoughts and words into Makiguchi's mouth. If he didn't say what you really wished that he had, then there is a reason for it.

Cease your distortions, bad translations and quotes out of context.

More from Jon Petry:

| This said, it is equally clear that Makiguchi's chief
| concern in writing favorably about Japan's expansion
| onto the Asian continent was, as ever, directed toward
| the manner in which Japan's children were to be
| educated. Makiguchi saw, in a discussion of Korea's
| recent past and China's present, a golden opportunity to
| demonstrate to Japanese children just how fortunate they
| were to be living in Japan. Makiguchi continued:
|.
| "It is when we look at these concrete examples [of Korea
| and China] that thoughts about our own country emerge. .
| . . The result is that we cannot help but feel grateful
| and want to repay the debt of gratitude we owe [the
| state]. The practical application of the study of folk
| culture is to provide the fundamental basis for an
| understanding of the state by having [our children] look
| at situations like these that are right before their
| very eyes. I feel very deeply that we must vigorously
| seek to create persons of character who will in the
| future lead a state-centered life, having first acquired
| the germ of the idea of serving the state at the town
| and village levels." (Makiguchi 1933:413).

First off, I have not seen this translation, which is in direct contradiction to Makiguchi's views, and since all your other translation errors have been extremely self-serving to your purpose of trashing Makiguchi, I do not trust this little bit regarding "state-centered", either.

Since you have ignored Koichi Miyata's references to Makiguchi's other works delineating his views clearly, I will refer you to President Ikeda's speech at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in 1996, which appeared again recently in the World Tribune (10/30/09):

. Two years later, on Nov. 18, 1930, together with his
. disciple and fellow teacher, Josei Toda, Mr. Makiguchi published the first
. volume of 'The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy,' and
. it is from this day that we date the establishment of
. our organization.
.
. 'Soka' is Japanese for "value creation." From Mr.
. Makiguchi's viewpoint, the most fundamental and central
. value is that of life itself. Taking into account John
. Dewey's pragmatism, Mr. Makiguchi stated that "the only
. value in the true sense is that of life itself. All
. other values arise solely within the context of
. interaction with life." The fundamental criterion for
. value, in Mr. Makiguchi's view, is whether something
. adds to or detracts from, advances or hinders, the human
. condition.

Since Mr Makiguchi's central thesis is LIFE-CENTERED, as the name of our organization states clearly (and not state-centered), I think we can dispose of your putative translation into the same waste-bin as the other putative translations leading to the rest of the distorting rhetoric of Victoria, Kisala and Petry.

I repeat once again regarding your continuing fallacious reasoning as well: Prochronists like Victoria, Kisala and Petry, will always judge a person's writings before the emergence of Fascism (1933), in a post-Fascist light (1935 and later), to make whatever conclusion they desire seem correct. In this way they persecute the noble efforts of those who tried to forestall catastrophe, by twisting the truth and demonizing their nobility.

To them, social criticism was the only correct line of attack, since the Constitutionalists SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that the cause was lost, in the view of Prochronism. The view of Prochronists is always, that you should have known the future, that you are to be judged in your actions in the past, by the unfortunate turn of future events against your cause and efforts, even when you were simply trying to avert that future disaster.

Hence, trying to avert disaster by political and rhetorical means is viewed by the Prochronists as complicity with the perpetration of the disaster. The only Prochronist-righteous course is to stand on the sidelines with a carefully positioned (and historically preserved) letter of protest, without taking any risk by participating in the fray.

No Philsopher of any note encourages this inactive ethical stance, they all, to a man (Kant, Descartes, Mill, Hegel, etc.) demand that we take action to avert disaster, or be branded as cowardly.

This is pure sophistry with an evil purpose, specifically to find fault where there is none.

More from Jon Petry:

| Makiguchi demonstrates yet again that his ultimate
| concern was implanting in Japan's children a willingness
| to serve the state. Makiguchi simply believed he knew
| how to do this in a more effective way than the central
| government's bureaucrats who showed such little concern
| or understanding of local conditions. While it is true
| that Makiguchi was arrested in July 1943 for refusing to
| worship a talisman of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu issued
| by the Ise shrine, this had nothing to do with being
| disloyal to the emperor.

Pure unadulterated Petry-thought with absolutely no foundation in fact.

This completely ignores the facts that in Shinto, the Emperor is the god above the buddhas, whose body is the state, whose word is divine law, and whose war is a religious practice. Resisting Shinto is resisting the Emperor's divine war. Imperial Way Buddhism (Shinto) IS Imperial State Zen and the Zen War on humanity. They are not separate, not even in the tiniest way.

You cannot defeat an evil by bowing to it.

The absolute monarch must not be obeyed in slandering Buddhism, the Shinto Talisman and everything it represented (Imperial Way Buddhism, Imperial State Zen, and the public acknowledgement of divinity of the Emperor, which is inseperable from supporting his divine Pacific War) even though required by law, must all be rejected.

The people must not bow down to Shinto, or the world falls into hell, never to emerge.

More from Jon Petry:

| As he informed his police
| interrogators, "I think it is, for we Japanese, the Way
| of the Subject to be loyal. This is what I have realized
| from my study of the truth of the Lotus Sutra" (Akashi &
| Matsâra, eds. 1975:172). Further, as contradictory as it
| may seem, Makiguchi's refusal to worship a talisman of
| the Sun Goddess did not even signify a lack of respect
| for this alleged progenitress of the Imperial family.
| Makiguchi made this clear when he told the police,
|.
| "The Sun Goddess is the venerable ancestress of our
| Imperial Family, her divine virtue having been
| transmitted to each successive emperor who ascended the
| throne up to and including the present emperor. Thus has
| her virtue been transformed into the August Virtue of
| His Majesty which, shining down on the people, brings
| them happiness. It is for this reason that Article III
| of the Constitution states: "The person of the Emperor
| is sacred and inviolable."
|.
| "Just as we [association members] recognize the
| fundamental unity of filial piety and loyalty, so it is
| our conviction that it is proper to reverently venerate
| His Majesty based on the monistic view that "His
| Majesty, the Emperor is One and Indivisible" [Tenno
| Ichigen-ron], thus making it unnecessary to pay homage
| at the Grand Shrine at Ise. . . . In light of this, who
| is there, apart from His Majesty, the Emperor himself,
| to whom we should reverently pray?" (Akashi & Matsâra,
| eds. 1975:174-175).

Buddhism is reason. Here, you see the excellent example of Makiguchi's brilliant shakubuku technique, exercised towards his persecutors. His mind is like a rapier in the hands of a master fencer.

Makiguchi APPEARS to be simply repeating what was a traditional view of the Japanese. It was even written into the Constitution that the Emperor was thus.

ACTUALLY, he is attacking the Shinto system with Reason, by setting the ends against the middle. You cannot perceive this if you do not have faith in the mentor: it is necessary to ask yourself, "Why is Sensei doing this?" That question will never occur to the mind of a non-disciple.

He tells them, FROM THEIR OWN WORDS, how their views are contradictory. Not needing to pray at the Ise shrine because of "the monistic view that 'His Majesty, the Emperor is One and Indivisible' [Tenno Ichigen-ron]", means that placing the Shinto talisman in one's altar is therefore redundant, as well.

SIMULTANEOUSLY, he was trying to draw the distinction, even at this late date, that his disloyalty to state Shinto and the order to accept the talisman was not the same as disloyalty to the Emperor, because the Emperor ("one and indivisible") and state Shinto were not the same entity.

Makiguchi's statement is like a razor, which cuts between loyalty to State Shinto, which he REFUSES to bow to, and loyalty to the person of the Emperor ("who is there, apart from His Majesty, the Emperor himself, to whom we should reverently pray?"), who as leader of the nation he MUST bow to.

There is a history to using the words and teachings of issendai against their evil goals. Dengyo (whom Nichiren Daishonin described himself as a disciple of) went to China to visit Miao-lo's disciple, where he copied the unmodified versions of the Lotus Sutra and the True Word Sutras, which he then fetched back to Japan.

Why did Dengyo carry back with him the True Word Sutras, which the Lord of Teachings, Shakyamuni himself asked his followers to "honestly discard" while only retaining the Lotus Sutra as his "remnant" -Nichiren?

Dengyo violated a precept, so that he could defeat the Six Schools at Nara in the year 792 ["They are the Dharma Analysis Treasury (Kusha), Establishment of Truth ( Jojitsu), Three Treatises (Sanron), Precepts (Ritsu), Dharma Characteristics (Hosso), and Flower Garland (Kegon) schools." <http://www.sgilibrary.org/search_dict.php?id=2078>] in a historic debate in front of the Emperor, resulting in Dengyo's Tendai School of Buddhism becoming the national religion of Japan.

He accomplished this great feat by showing that the Six Schools (which were not really independent, some temples taught all six) had modified their versions of the True Word Sutras to incorporate large sections of the Lotus Sutra. Exposing their flagrant appropriation, forgery and plagiarism, Dengyo was victorious.

By the way, Nichiren Daishonin gleefully recounts his mentor's victory in "The Selection of the Time", WND-1, pp. 548-549, <http://www.sgilibrary.org/view.php?page=548&m=0&q=>.

In that VERY SAME Gosho, Nichiren masterfully uses Dengyo's technique, by quoting the provisional sutras to defeat the schools that embrace them. That makes the "Selection of the Time" Gosho, itself, an embodiment of the principal of the Oneness of Mentor and Disciple.

Neat, huh? Dengyo, Nichiren and Makiguchi: cut from the same cloth. And this is also why Nichiren Buddhism is not a precepts practice.

Here is Koichi Miyata's refutation of Victoria's bad translation in Petry's passage above (which has been repeatedly ignored by Victoria, Kisala and Petry):

. Victoria also quotes from a report produced by the
. special police on their interrogation of Makiguchi as
. proof that Makiguchi acknowledged the divine status of
. the emperor. Again, this assertion arises from a
. distortion of the relevant passage. Victoria quotes a
. reference by Makiguchi to "praying" to the emperor. He
. could hardly, however, have been more distorting in
. selecting the passage he quoted, deliberately excluding
. the following extract, which I have underlined:
.
... "The august virtue of His Majesty the Emperor is
... manifested in the security and happiness of the
... people, through the organs of his civil and
... military officials. Should these be deficient in
... some way, the people can petition him through
... the Diet or other bodies. In light of this, who
... is there, apart from His Majesty, the Emperor
... himself, to whom we should reverently pray?"
... ("Pray" is Victoria's translation; "beseech" is
... probably more accurate in this context.)
.
. It is obvious that "beseech/pray" and "petition" have
. the same meaning in this context. The manner in which
. Victoria has misused Makiguchi's choice of a term
. normally used in a religious context, but with a special
. meaning in this context, to claim that Makiguchi
. supported emperor worship, is not what one would expect
. from a serious scholar endeavoring to document his
. claim. Surely in examining the interrogation report
. Victoria must have encountered the following statements
. by Makiguchi:
.
... "His Majesty the Emperor is an ordinary man, who
... went to the Peers' School as Crown Prince, and
... studied how to be an emperor. The Emperor too
... makes mistakes. They say that in the early years
... of the Meiji era Tesshu Yamaoka admonished the
... Meiji Emperor and pointed out his mistakes on
... many occasions." [Tokko Geppo (Monthly bulletin
... of Special Higher Police), August 1943 issue, p.
... 152]
.
. These comments indicate clearly that Makiguchi rejected
. completely the deification of the emperor. Victoria
. mentions the military indoctrination of soldiers that
. "the orders of one's superiors are the orders of the
. emperor," and asserts that Makiguchi supported this
. view. In fact, however, Makiguchi commented: "The orders
. of the emperor could be mistaken, mind you", thereby
. rejecting the absolute authority of the emperor. This
. point is an important one when we come to consider the
. next, that of the relationship between Makiguchi's
. criticism of the religious policies of the military
. government and his anti-war activities. I refer Dr.
. Victoria here to Hiroo Sato "Nichiren Thought in Modern
. Japan: Two Perspectives" in TJOS in which he discusses
. the relationship between Makiguchi and the emperor
. system from a religious-historical perspective.

Does Jon Petry listen? He hasn't in the past, but we continue to hope.

More from Jon Petry:

| In fact, nowhere in Makiguchi's writings, either before
| or during the war, either in prison or out, do we find
| any statements critical of Japan's wartime policies. On
| the contrary, not only did Makiguchi justify Japan's
| colonial takeover of Korea (and earlier war with
| Russia), but he devoted his entire life as an educator
| to devising more effective ways of instilling "service
| to the state" in Japanese children. He further advocated
| that these same children "thoroughly understand that
| loyal service to their sovereign is synonymous with love
| of country." Even after imprisonment, he affirmed that
| loyalty to the emperor was but a natural part of the
| "Way of the Subject" based on his understanding of the
| Lotus Sutra. And, as we have seen, as far as the emperor
| was concerned, Makiguchi asked, "Who is there, apart
| from His Majesty, the Emperor himself, to whom we should
| reverently pray?"

Every single one of these serial distortions, which are serial defamations of a truly noble person trying to avert disaster (and save the many millions who died in that disaster), each and every one is debunked above, and has been repeatedly debunked in the past.

Finally, the last from Jon Petry:

| For apologists to now claim that, his imprisonment and
| death notwithstanding, Makiguchi resisted or opposed
| Japan's war effort is an attempt to turn night into day.

As I said before, Jon Petry, your show is slipping.

This attempt by Zen (Victoria) and slanderous Nichiren Schools (Petry) to trash Makiguchi and Toda, who were the only honorable Buddhists who stood their ground against the Shinto War against Buddhism and humanity to the end of the war, is an obvious ploy.

Victoria had problems with his thesis in chapter six of his book (CH 6: "No Organized Resistance Against Imperial State Zen After 1942"). The problem was that after he wrote it, he found that Makiguchi and Toda made a liar out of him, or worse, a lazy academic. So he proceeded to repeatedly attempt to tar these noble men with these lies, so as to make himself a truthful and a diligent academic, at least in retrospect. Of course this is a pathetic and vain attempt, no matter what the outcome, because he did not do his dirtywork within the confines of his thesis, which is therefore, trash. Then, Victoria, as an academic, is no more than a producer of trash.

This is the way of Zen, as the Tokugawa bakufu hired Tendai and Zen scribes to create new Shinto fantasies of themselves as kami (gods), who were greater than the Hoteke (Buddhas). Writing something down does not ascribe truth to the writing, nor nobility to the author. A lie is a lie, however often it is repeated. And even when the truth is silenced (fortunately, not the case this time).

Similarly, whenever heroes like Makiguchi and Toda rise up nobly, the mass of weaklings who cower in the face of adversity must later tear them down, to cover up their own shameful cowardice at the time.

It is no accident that they are led by a Roshi of the Zen School (Victoria) that perpetrated this horror on humanity. And it is no accident that his water is (once again) carried by a follower of the Nichiren Schools and temples (Petry), that gratefully accepted the Shinto Talisman and worshipped that object of Shinto devotion to the Zen war against Buddhism and the human race.

No one in the Nichiren Schools refused to bow to Shinto, which is a mask over the face of Zen War. No one went to prison and stayed there after 1942 (Victoria's own thesis), with the exception of those Victoria overlooked: Makiguchi and Toda of the Soka Gakkai, who were the only ones bearing the honor of Buddhism in the midst of this holocaust. No other Buddhists had the determination and valor necessary to stay the course against Imperial State Zen to the bitter end (Makiguchi's death and Toda's release after the war was lost).

Indeed, Nichiren Shoshu and the other schools gleefully supported the war, cheering every victory, screaming for more blood, and highlighting the glorious sacrifice of young Japanese in this 'noble' cause. This is all on record, for every school. Here is a list of infamy, of Nichiren Schools that accepted the Shinto Talisman and supported the war (some are now split off from temples, which at that time, were infamous):

... Nichiren Schools
...
... Nichiren Shu (Kuon-ji at Minobu)
... Nichiren Shoshu (Taiseki-ji at Fujinomiya)
... Honmon Butsuryu Shu ja
... Kempon Hokke Shu (Myoman-ji)
... Hokkeshu, Honmon Ryu
... Hokkeshu, Jinmon Ryu
... Hokkeshu, Shinmon Ryu
... Honmon Hokke Shu (Myoren-ji)
... Nichiren Honshu (Yobo-ji)
... Nichiren Shu Fuju-fuse-ha (Myokaku-ji)
... Nichiren Hokke Shu
... Hokke Nichiren Shu
... Hompa Nichiren Shu
... Honke Nichiren Shu (Hyogo)
... Fuju-fuse Nichiren Komon Shu
... Honke Nichiren Shu (Kyoto)
... Shobo Hokke Shu
... Honmon Kyoo Shu
... Nichiren Komon Shu
... Reiyukai (Spiritual-Friendship-Association)
... Rissho Kosei Kai
... Nipponzan Myohoji
... Kokuchukai
... Shoshinkai
... Fuji Taisekiji Kenshokai
... Honmon Shoshu

They all bowed to the great evil that is Shinto, wielded as a weapon by Imperial State Zen. They all bowed to the destruction of Buddhism and the human race that would have been the outcome of Shinto War. Only Makiguchi and Toda stood up against and refused to bow to this evil to the end.

Trashing these heroes will not raise up the lot of you by even a millimeter in stature. Your heritage will remain that of cowardly and treasonous Buddhists, who betrayed the Buddha, the Law and the human race.

Live with it.

-Chas.

_________________________________________________

Jon Petry, since you seem incapable of going and looking at this paper of Miyata's I include the entire text here, so that you could not possibly miss it:

. Critical Comments on Brian Victoria's "Engaged Buddhism:
. A Skeleton in the Closet?", by Koichi Miyata.
.
. <http://www.globalbuddhism.org/3/miyata021.htm>
.
. Abstract
. In "Engaged Buddhism: A Skeleton in the Closet?"
. (Vol. 2) Brian Daizen Victoria claims, among
. other things, that Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-
. 1944), founder of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai
. (forebear of the Soka Gakkai and Soka Gakkai
. International), was an active supporter of the
. Japanese wars of aggression. In this response,
. Koichi Miyata argues that Victoria's claims rest
. on the highly selective use of quotes, and
. ignore key interpretative issues associated with
. Japanese imperial fascism and its underlying
. belief structures. Miyata discusses the
. significance of Makiguchi's arrest and
. imprisonment under a law specifically aimed at
. opponents of the war efforts, in his analysis of
. critical lapses in Victoria's article.
.
. Having read the recent essay by Brian Daizen Victoria, I
. found its contents so problematic that, as someone who
. has studied the ideas of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-
. 1944) for many years, I feel compelled to respond.
.
. While many studies and essays on Tsunesaburo Makiguchi
. exist in Japanese, researchers unable to read Japanese
. have had limited access to Makiguchi's ideas and
. actions. To help fill this gap, last year I edited a
. small collection of English-language essays for the 2000
. special edition of The Journal of Oriental Studies
. (TJOS) which was devoted to the "Ideas and Influence of
. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi." In this response, I will refer
. to this research as I attempt to shed some light on the
. thoughts and actions of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi.
.
. Turning to my first point: Victoria quotes a passage
. from Makiguchi's 1903 work Jinsei Chirigaku (The
. Geography of Human Life), in which Makiguchi notes that
. Russia was engaged in a policy of expansionism in the
. search for year-round harbors. Victoria asserts that
. this world view was identical to that of the government
. of Japan, a view used to justify the Russo-Japanese War
. (1904-1905), then the annexation of the Korean peninsula
. (1910) and the founding of the puppet state of Manchukuo
. (1932). Victoria's assertion, and his implicit criticism
. of Makiguchi, simplistically links analysis of the
. global situation with the policies taken in response to
. that. Makiguchi was merely voicing what was then the
. accepted understanding of the geopolitical motives for
. Russia's expansionist policies, a view held not only by
. the Japanese government, but shared by the British, with
. whom Japan had formed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.
. Certainly I know of no scholar of political geography
. who rejects this commonsense view in favor of one that
. Russia posed no danger. If we were to extend Victoria's
. argument, the logical conclusion would be to find not
. only Makiguchi but everyone who studies political
. geography guilty of complicity with Japanese aggression.
.
. Elsewhere in Jinsei Chirigaku Makiguchi points out that
. the countries of Western Europe had a great deal of
. trouble operating their colonies, and expresses doubts
. about the value of acquiring colonies, particularly from
. the point of view of the financial burden that they
. would entail. If Victoria had read Jinsei Chirigaku
. carefully, he would not identify the thoughts of
. Makiguchi with the expansionist doctrine of the time.
.
. Secondly, Victoria quotes an extract from Makiguchi's
. book Kyodoka Kenkyu (A Study of Folk Culture), in which
. Makiguchi notes that the state plays an important role
. in the lives of citizens. From this, Victoria draws the
. conclusion that as the Japan moved closer to war,
. Makiguchi adopted the view that education should be "in
. service to the state". (Victoria states that Makiguchi
. added this section for the 1933 revised edition of the
. book. This is incorrect, as it appears in the first
. edition published in 1912.) Since the publication of
. Jinsei Chirigaku Makiguchi had consistently emphasized
. the formation of identity on three levels-that of a
. person's local community, the national and global
. levels. Within this context, and against a backdrop of
. global competition for empire, he placed particular
. importance on national independence. This is hardly
. unreasonable. Japan was one of only a handful of
. countries in Asia that had maintained independence amid
. encroachment by the Western powers, and Makiguchi was
. well aware of the miserable circumstances of colonized
. peoples. What we may find problematic-in terms of the
. current view that controlling peoples is intrinsically
. wrong-is that Makiguchi did not say enough after Japan
. itself acquired colonies, omitting to comment on the
. issue of independence for these colonized peoples, and
. only suggesting that imperialism was not the optimal
. policy choice because of the financial burden involved.
. Here I refer Dr. Victoria to my essay "Tsunesaburo
. Makiguchi's Theory of the State" in TJOS, in which I
. discuss Makiguchi's view that imperialistic-military and
. economic-competition should be supplanted by a
. cooperative sense of community, what he called
. "humanitarian competition."
.
. Further, in deciding that Makiguchi viewed education as
. a means of serving the state, Victoria completely
. ignores Makiguchi's argument in his 1930 Soka Kyoikugaku
. Taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy) that the
. goal of education must in fact be the happiness of the
. child. In the March 1942 issue of Kachi Sozo (Value
. Creation), the short-lived periodical of the Soka Kyoiku
. Gakkai, Makiguchi criticizes the ideologically central
. concept of messhi hoko -- sacrificing the interests of
. the individual to those of the state. He noted that this
. was mere rhetoric to ordinary Japanese, impossible to
. put into practice. Rather, he stressed, it is natural to
. strive for the realization of one's own and others'
. happiness. In May 1942, he was ordered to halt
. publication of Kachi Sozo. While Makiguchi did view the
. state as having an important role to play, this is
. entirely different from holding the ultra nationalist
. view of education that people should be educated to
. ensure their uncritical acceptance of the policies of
. the state. Here I refer Dr. Victoria to "Value-Creating
. Pedagogy and Japanese Education in the Modern Era," in
. TJOS, by Kazunori Kumagai in which he compares
. Makiguchi's educational philosophy with the statist
. educational system.
.
. Thirdly there is the problem of the emperor system.
. Quoting a section from Kyodoka Kenkyu in which Makiguchi
. argues that loyalty to the emperor is synonymous with
. love of one's country, Victoria implies that Makiguchi's
. view was identical to that of the military government.
. This, however, is a far too loosely framed argument that
. ignores the interpretative issues associated with the
. 1889 Meiji Constitution. The preamble to the Meiji
. Constitution recognizes the supreme authority of the
. emperor, while Article 3 declares the sacred nature of
. the emperor, and Article 4 his sovereign rights over the
. state -- making the state and the emperor system
. inseparable. If we stress the supreme authority of the
. emperor, the emperor is then cast in the role of
. absolute monarch. If we consider instead the role of the
. Constitution as a brake on the supreme authority of the
. emperor, he becomes a constitutional monarch. The former
. view is represented by the imperial fascism supported by
. the military regime, while the latter corresponds to
. Tatsukichi Minobe's theory of the emperor as an organ of
. the state. From the era of Taisho democracy through to
. the suppression of Minobe's theory in 1935, this view
. held sway among constitutional scholars and members of
. the Diet. The idea that loyalty = patriotism is common
. to both views, and by aligning Makiguchi with the
. imperial fascism of the military simply on the basis of
. his comments here, Victoria again appears determined to
. ignore the written record of Makiguchi's thoughts. From
. his earliest writings, Makiguchi viewed the emperor as a
. constitutional monarch, and was critical of moves to
. make the emperor's powers absolute.
.
. Victoria also quotes from a report produced by the
. special police on their interrogation of Makiguchi as
. proof that Makiguchi acknowledged the divine status of
. the emperor. Again, this assertion arises from a
. distortion of the relevant passage. Victoria quotes a
. reference by Makiguchi to "praying" to the emperor. He
. could hardly, however, have been more distorting in
. selecting the passage he quoted, deliberately excluding
. the following extract, which I have underlined:
.
... "The august virtue of His Majesty the Emperor is
... manifested in the security and happiness of the
... people, through the organs of his civil and
... military officials. Should these be deficient in
... some way, the people can petition him through
... the Diet or other bodies. In light of this, who
... is there, apart from His Majesty, the Emperor
... himself, to whom we should reverently pray?"
... ("Pray" is Victoria's translation; "beseech" is
... probably more accurate in this context.)
.
. It is obvious that "beseech/pray" and "petition" have
. the same meaning in this context. The manner in which
. Victoria has misused Makiguchi's choice of a term
. normally used in a religious context, but with a special
. meaning in this context, to claim that Makiguchi
. supported emperor worship, is not what one would expect
. from a serious scholar endeavoring to document his
. claim. Surely in examining the interrogation report
. Victoria must have encountered the following statements
. by Makiguchi:
.
... "His Majesty the Emperor is an ordinary man, who
... went to the Peers' School as Crown Prince, and
... studied how to be an emperor. The Emperor too
... makes mistakes. They say that in the early years
... of the Meiji era Tesshu Yamaoka admonished the
... Meiji Emperor and pointed out his mistakes on
... many occasions." [Tokko Geppo (Monthly bulletin
... of Special Higher Police), August 1943 issue, p.
... 152]
.
. These comments indicate clearly that Makiguchi rejected
. completely the deification of the emperor. Victoria
. mentions the military indoctrination of soldiers that
. "the orders of one's superiors are the orders of the
. emperor," and asserts that Makiguchi supported this
. view. In fact, however, Makiguchi commented: "The orders
. of the emperor could be mistaken, mind you", thereby
. rejecting the absolute authority of the emperor. This
. point is an important one when we come to consider the
. next, that of the relationship between Makiguchi's
. criticism of the religious policies of the military
. government and his anti-war activities. I refer Dr.
. Victoria here to Hiroo Sato "Nichiren Thought in Modern
. Japan: Two Perspectives" in TJOS in which he discusses
. the relationship between Makiguchi and the emperor
. system from a religious-historical perspective.
.
. My fourth point concerns the significance of Makiguchi's
. persecution by the military government for criticizing
. its policy on religion. This is also relevant to the
. arguments of Robert Kisala, which Victoria cites in
. developing his own argument. We must remember that when
. Makiguchi was persecuted by the authorities for
. instructing members of the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai to burn
. talismans provided by the Ise shrine, regarded as home
. of the ancestral deity of the imperial family, it was
. not under any law dealing with religious matters, but
. the Peace Preservation Law. Neither Victoria nor Kisala
. appear to understand the significance of this. The Peace
. Preservation Law was demanded by the Privy Council in
. exchange for approving the Universal Manhood Suffrage
. Law in 1925 to ensure that the newly enfranchised
. populace did not begin criticizing the emperor system.
. It was originally designed for the suppression of anti-
. Establishment groups such as socialists, communists and
. anarchists. Having all but eliminated anti-Establishment
. activity of an overtly political nature with a massive
. crackdown on the Communist Party in the early years of
. the Showa era (1926-1989), the military government next
. targeted liberals and religious movements as impediments
. to implementation of their war policies. By completely
. obliterating Tatsukichi Minobe's liberal view of the
. emperor as organ of the state in 1935, the militarists
. established the absolute authority of the emperor,
. brooking no opposition whatsoever their policies, now
. fully shielded by imperial authority.
.
. Next they turned to the religious movements. Religions
. having as their object of worship gods, or the Buddha,
. which their teachings accord a position in the cosmic
. order far superior to that of the emperor, religious
. groups tended to have less regard for his authority. The
. year 1936 saw a crackdown on Ohmotokyo, a new Shinto
. movement that preached the restoration of peace and
. order to the world under a mythical god. To enable more
. systematic repression of religious movements, the
. military government revised the Peace Preservation Law
. in 1939 to provide for punishment of religious groups
. found to be committing blasphemy against the Ise shrine.
. This shows the military government viewed religious
. movements that rejected the authority of the emperor as
. the last remaining impediments to rallying the nation
. behind its war policies. It was against this political
. and social backdrop that Makiguchi came to criticize the
. religious policy of the military regime. His arrest
. under the Peace Preservation Law shows that the regime
. judged his actions a hindrance to their conduct of the
. war. Thus, Makiguchi directly opposed the militarist
. ideology of imperial fascism for its religious policies,
. and because this opposition constituted an impediment to
. conduct of the war by the military regime, there is no
. doubt that he was persecuted for implicitly anti-war
. activities. I refer Dr. Victoria to my Introduction to
. TSOJ in which I examine the historical background and
. significance of Makiguchi's wartime persecution.
.
. I have responded to the views of Brian Victoria on four
. fronts. I can only imagine that in order to prove
. Tsunesaburo Makiguchi cooperated with the war effort,
. Victoria has shaped his arguments to fit his pre-
. established conclusion, willfully quoting only those
. passages of Makiguchi's writings that would seem to
. support it. I cannot imagine he studied all ten volumes
. of Makiguchi's writings in Japanese to reach this
. conclusion. While there is ample room for the frank
. exchange of academic views, including highly critical
. ones, it is important that a tendentious agenda, clothed
. in the guise of academic research, not stand
. unchallenged.

-Chas.
___________________________________

Quoting from "Reply to Kyo'o", Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, p. 412 ...

Since I heard from you about Kyo'o, I have been praying to the gods of the sun and moon for her every moment of the day. Always cherish the Gohonzon that I gave you some time ago for her protection. The Gohonzon was never known, let alone inscribed, by anyone in the Former or Middle Day of the Law. The lion king is said to advance three steps, then gather himself to spring, unleashing the same power whether he traps a tiny ant or attacks a fierce animal. In inscribing this Gohonzon for her protection, Nichiren was like the lion king. This is what the sutra means by "the power [of the Buddhas] that has the lion's ferocity. Believe in this mandala with all your heart. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is like the roar of a lion. What sickness can therefore be an obstacle?