Seven Essential Attributes of Daisaku Ikeda's Peacebuilding Ethos
Beginning in 2024 the Ikeda Center is focusing more directly on Daisaku Ikeda’s life and teachings as they relate to urgent imperatives to grow and expand transformative cultures of peace in our world. Much of his thinking on peacebuilding is represented in his yearly peace proposals as well as his published dialogues, both of which have guided the work of the Center since its inception. For another perspective, the Center’s Mitch Bogen visited the Daisaku Ikeda website to see how his peacebuilding ethos is presented there and to identify several of its essential attributes. To do this, he reviewed two sections in particular, one which presents a series of articles introducing Ikeda’s efforts as a peacebuilder and another which features several essays from Mr. Ikeda himself reflecting on the subject of peace and its realization. Here are seven characteristics of Ikeda’s approach that Bogen found especially instructive.
Daisaku Ikeda As Peacebuilder – Seven Essential Attributes
1. Ikeda draws a different conclusion about the experience of war than many, refusing to blame the “other.”
Perhaps the most formative factor in Ikeda’s lifelong opposition to war was his eldest brother Kiichi’s experience during WWII fighting for the Japanese offensive in Burma. Returning home at one point from the front, Kiichi vehemently deplored what he described as Japanese cruelty in Burma. Young Daisaku picked up on this and focused his ire on the Japanese government as opposed to the “enemy.” That is, for Ikeda there is no enemy in the “them-versus-us” sense, a perspective that was greatly influenced by his mother. Ikeda recalls how she, upon learning of the violent treatment of a US B-29 pilot who had emergency parachuted into their neighborhood, immediately responded by saying, “How awful! His mother must be so worried about him.” Ultimately, in Ikeda’s view, the enemies are those who wage war and sacrifice youth. There is something natural about rooting for one’s “own side” when hostilities start, but Ikeda implores us to look to the sources closest to home. “Many of the young men of my generation were incited by the military government to go proudly to the battlefront and give their lives there.” And while the government praised the sacrifice of the “military mothers,” this rhetoric, writes Ikeda, could not conceal the “devastating tumult of pain, grief and misery [that] swirled in the depths of their hearts!” Ikeda urges us to never turn away from this fact, to never become complacent. In this, he followed the lead of his mentor, Josei Toda, whose rage against militarism and nuclear weapons proliferation, regardless of the source, was unstinting.
2. Never Underestimate the Power and Value of the individual.
Ikeda also shared Toda’s conviction that, as Ikeda described it, “the only thing that could prevent a resurgence of militarism would be for ordinary people to become stronger and wiser within the realities of their daily lives.” This focus on the individual emerged from his understanding of what happened in Japan in the first half of the 20th century as too many people served as “loyal subjects,” assenting to the aggressively militarist imperial government, which resulted in tragic, devastating consequences, both for Japan and other nations in Asia. Thus, Toda believed that a true culture of peace “required a spiritual movement among people that could transform the negative impulses of mistrust and violence within human beings themselves.” Ikeda was one of those people seeking to do this. Later, he would summarize what he learned both from Toda and through his own experience: “A great human revolution in just a single individual … will enable a change in the destiny of humankind.” An emphasis on each human life also encourages us to deplore the unearned suffering of a single individual, helping us to avoid the trap of abstraction in which our idealized goals or objectives can make it too easy to accept “collateral damage” in their pursuit. Indeed, Mr. Ikeda would remind us time and again, that each life is “precious and irreplaceable.”
3. Ikeda makes the cost of war personal.
In a similar vein, Ikeda was scrupulous in naming and confronting the human cost of war. Wars are justified through appeals to reason, for example as through the application of “just war theory.” Indeed, it is hard to argue that a nation does not have the “right” to respond to an attack. But such a justification will not prevent the loss of innocent life. And it is not just the loss of life that offends Ikeda; it is the way that citizen and soldier alike are robbed of the opportunity to go on to live contributive lives, which ultimately impoverishes society as a whole. The primary instance of deeply personal loss in Ikeda’s own life is that of his brother Kiichi’s death in Burma, where Kiichi had been returned after his brief time back in Japan. Time and again Ikeda recounts the sight of his mother convulsed in grief when she received the news. In the resources I reviewed for this piece, Ikeda wrote in depth about the human cost and very real atrocities of war, citing stories gathered in a book called The Battle of Okinawa. “It is a shocking document,” said Ikeda, as it shares in objective detail the experiences of more than 1,000 survivors. Said one: “My aunt was killed at Arakaki. The shells and the explosions there were terrible. Pieces of human flesh came flying through the air out of nowhere. The bodies were piled up all over.” Ikeda’s conclusion? “How stupid and senseless is [war’s] destruction? And always it is the nameless masses of people who are condemned to suffer and groan and weep in the midst of the gore and flames.” It is for these that we must oppose war, insists Ikeda.
4. Nonviolence and “non-killing” is essential.
Given Ikeda’s refusal to turn away from the cost of war, it follows that Ikeda is unequivocal on the question of whether violence is ever justified. Posing the question of whether we have learned anything from the approximately 200 million deaths* resulting from the violent conflicts of the 20th century, he insisted: “In the new era of the 21st century, humanity must be guided by the overriding principle that killing is never acceptable or justified – under any circumstance.” This view presents a challenge to most of us, who, not without reason, believe that in the worst circumstances violent responses are justified. What Ikeda challenges us to do is realize that an arguably just cause or response does not sanitize or redeem the act of killing itself. It still constitutes “barbarity,” writes Ikeda. Yet, the essay that Ikeda presents to make this case is also full of moral ambiguity, showing that the path to complete nonviolence is a complex one. In “Stop the Killing,” Ikeda presents the story of the murder of Archbishop Romero and the legacy of the violent civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. Romero had been working for a nonviolent solution to the violent repression of the people of El Salvador carried out on behalf of the small ruling class who dominated society. One day he appealed directly to the soldiers who were fighting for the rulers: You must stop killing your own neighbors even when ordered to do so, for the law of God saying “Thou shall not kill” is more important than the power of men. For this he was murdered, after which a full-scale civil war erupted, a war that was nearly inevitable, suggested Ikeda, given the injustice in El Salvador. Yet, what was also inevitable, said Ikeda, was that at a certain point the people would be desperate for the killing to stop, especially since both sides, i.e., the ruling class soldiers and the communist guerillas, were, partly because of their respective ideologies, quite willing to accept civilian deaths. Thus, the common people were deeply grateful when a peace agreement, brokered by Oscar Arias Sanchez and others, was reached.
5. His commitment to dialogue is unconditional.
One of the most instructive aspects of the presentation of Ikeda as peacebuilder was his willingness – even desire – to talk to people you’re not “supposed” to for various political and ideological reasons. Two instances in particular are emphasized: talks with Zhou Enlai of China and with Aleksey Kosygin of the Soviet Union. In each case, Ikeda’s goal was clear: to build “bridges of communication where walls of suspicion and mistrust have been erected.” The most consequential meeting was with Zhou, in 1974. As early as 1968, Ikeda had called for normalization of relations with China, something that was met with outrage and condemnation within Japan. But Ikeda was motivated by many factors, including: the need for healing and humility after the sorry history of Japanese militarism in China; a recognition that China must be included in the “family” of nations; and, not least, a desire to help Japanese young people understand the cultural debt Japan owed to China. Meeting with Premier Zhou represented the pinnacle of Ikeda’s engagement with China. Ikeda’s approach to dialogue was also in evidence during his meeting with the Soviet Premier Kosygin. Apparently, the Premier was “doubtful” about meeting with Ikeda, but when Ikeda expressed sympathy for the suffering the Soviet people endured during the “infamously brutal” siege of Leningrad during WWII, the ice was broken and they proceeded to discuss profound matters of war and peace. Ikeda’s attitude forces us to ask ourselves: How infrequently do we grant full humanity to others, especially when they are considered enemies, and what is the cost of this to our prospects for peace?
6. Ikeda is careful in distinguishing causes of conflict, refusing to assign intrinsic characteristics to civilizations and members of groups.
In 1996, Samuel Huntington published his influential book, The Clash of Civilizations, which argued that the future of global conflict would be centered on differences between cultures more than between nation-states alone. There is no doubt that current conflicts include those motivated by what participants perceive to be unimpeachable cultural or religious motivations. Ikeda, however, asserts that we must not fall into the trap of thinking that these cultures and religions possess intrinsic characteristics that make conflict inevitable. Rather, writes Ikeda, the real problem is “exclusionary ideology and fanatical actions cloaking themselves in the language and symbols of [for example] religion.” A prime instance of this phenomenon occurred with the terrorist attacks of 9-11. While Ikeda views violent terror as an absolute evil, he is skeptical that “military reprisals” will accomplish anything, since the core problem is a “’root rot’ eating away at the depths of people’s understanding of what it means to be human – how we define ourselves and how we relate to those different from us.” Thus, in times of conflict we should redouble our commitment to the tools of soft power, with an emphasis on dialogue. Simultaneously, in Ikeda’s view, we must also address social factors such as poverty and other forms of injustice, which in so doing would constitute “genuine proof of civilization.”
7. Creating true cultures of peace requires grassroots movements strengthened through education and culture.
One important encounter described in the Ikeda-as-peacebuilder resources was with Fidel Castro in 1996. This meeting in Cuba was the outgrowth of many years of cultural exchange between Cuba and Japan, initiated in 1987 by the Soka Gakkai, “when the Min-On Concert Association, founded by Ikeda, invited Cuban musicians to perform in Japan.” In an address at Havana University, Ikeda offered his view of the nature and value of their exchange: “Bridges toward an indestructible peace for humankind can only be forged by fostering people and forging strong ties between them, their hearts and minds. And that process is, by its very nature, a gradual, grassroots effort.” For Ikeda, another benefit of grassroots cultural exchange is that it “counteracts cultural and national prejudices, creating the awareness that no one culture is superior or inferior to another.” Education serves many of the same purposes for Ikeda, and he values it enough to have founded two universities and a number of K – 12 schools. At all Soka-affiliated schools there is a strong emphasis on global citizenship. For the members of the Soka Gakkai International and students at these institutions, one thing this can mean is that learning is enriched by “bringing Buddhist wisdom to bear on the task of resolving the problems confronting the world, and of building solidarity for social justice and peace.” In essence, Ikeda is an advocate and practitioner of what is called value-creating education. This is a positive approach which encourages people to grow and contribute to social wellbeing in accordance with their individual strengths and interests. To understand Ikeda’s commitment in these regards, we need only consider his response when Premier Kosygin asked him to “define the ideology of his Buddhist movement.” In response, Mr. Ikeda simply said: “Peace, culture and education, the underlying basis of which is humanism.”
Conclusion: Thoughts on the Way of Gradualism
When I assigned myself the task of researching specific resources at the Daisaku Ikeda website I knew that, given the relatively small amount of offerings being considered, my findings wouldn’t address everything that is critical to Ikeda’s peacebuilding ethos. At the same time, I suspected that by voluntarily restricting myself in this manner I might be able to come up with some fresh ways to frame this subject. I think that did happen, especially in the way that many of these attributes are quite personal in nature, in contrast with the sorts of policy recommendations that appear in sources such as the annual peace proposals.
That said, there is one foundational attribute not included as one of the seven discussed here that we should address before concluding this essay. This is something that many peace and Ikeda scholars, such as Alexander Harang of the Ikeda Center and Soka University America, have highlighted as crucial to understanding Ikeda, namely his steadfast commitment to gradualism. This principle is briefly touched on in my discussion of attribute seven, but the truth is that it is implicit in all the attributes I have identified and, further, is the logical outcome of Ikeda’s abhorrence of militarism and the acceptance of harm to regular people present in most coercive attempts to “settle” rather than resolve conflicts. It also explains Ikeda’s commitment to dialogue, education, and culture, all of which may strike the hard-headed realist as ineffectual or “the long way around,” as Ikeda often phrases it. Yet this way is the only true way to peace, he insists.
It should be noted that this gradualist approach stands in opposition to those revolutionary approaches in which an ends-justify-the-means philosophy is employed in the cause of social improvement. In contrast, Ikeda contends that it is a grassroots, bottom-up movement based on human revolution and value creation that will produce the kind of change that lasts. In his talk “Radicalism Reconsidered,” delivered at Claremont McKenna College in January 1993, Ikeda gives expression to his deepest convictions on this matter of gradualism, thoughts that provide a context for all of the seven attributes identified in this brief essay. Above all, stated Ikeda during his talk, we must reject any ethos that
fundamentally denies the human capacity to create our own destiny through our own efforts. We must always resist the temptation to treat individual lives or history as mere objective things or facts; their truth can only be known through active, living engagement and participation. To be of real and lasting value, change must be gradual and inspired from within. The application of external, coercive force will always destroy some aspect of our total humanity and compromise the balance and integrity of life.
Notes
1. The Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland estimates a “total sum of deaths in wars and conflicts ‘killed or allowed to die by human decision’ of approximately 231 million for the 100 years of the 20th Century.”
https://cissm.umd.edu/research-impact/publications/deaths-wars-and-conflicts-20th-century
2. “Historical inevitably” likely refers here to the determinist Marxist viewpoint in which communism represented the end state of society that naturally must replace capitalism.
