Founding of Soka Kyoiku Gakkai

While Makiguchi was principal of Shirogane Primary School in mid 1928, he was visited by a reporter for a trade paper who was a Nichiren Shoshu adherent. The reporter introduced Makiguchi to a believer named Sokei Mutani. Mitani converted him to Nichiren Shoshu. If this chance meeting had not occurred, the Soka Gakkai, as we know it today, would not exist.

The first volume of Makiguchi's major work, Soka Kyoikugaku Taikai, was published in 1930. The Soka Kyoiku Gakkai is identified as the book's publisher. Thus, the Soka Gakkai considers the publishing date, November 18, 1930, as the founding date of the Soka Gakkai. The formal founding of Soka Kyoiku Gakkai occurred early in 1937 with the first general meeting, about 60 people attending. The second general meeting was held three years later with 3 or 4 thousand attendees. This showed remarkable growth in spite of government imposition of Shinto and emperor worship on the people as part of the nationalist drive. Makiguchi conducted annual summer courses and began publishing Kachi Sozo (Creation of Values).

In spite of government oppression, Makiguchi continued his efforts to spread Nichiren Daishonin's teachings. On July 6,1943, he, along with Josei Toda and other leaders, was arrested. On November 18, 1944, Makiguchi passed away at the Sugamo Detention House in Tokyo.

Information for this series was gleaned from 'Japan's New Buddhism' by Kiyoaki Murata and 'Makiguchi the Value Creator' by Dayle M. Bethel. A few copies of these books are available through Amazon.com resellers. This will be the last article of the Makiguchi series for this year. More in depth articles are slated for November 2008.

Remembering Tsunesaburo Makiguchi

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi June 6, 1871 - November 18, 1944. Founder and first president of the Soka Gakkai. Author of Jinsei Chirigaku (The Goegraphy of Human Life) and Soka Kyoikugaku Taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy). Converted to Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism in 1928. Arrested by the militarist Japanese government on July 6, 1943, for intransigent opposition to State Shinto, he died in prison on November 18, 1944. See About Tsunesaburo Makiguchi at SGI-USA.

Value Creating Pedagogy

Makiguchi published Jinsei Chirigaku (The Geography of Human Life) in October 1903. He had been encouraged by some respected scholars in Tokyo who agreed to look at his manuscript. The book was well received and became a standard reference in geography. However, the success of the book did not increase his social standing (since he had not graduated from a university, he was not accepted by high level scholars) or his financial resources. He worked a number of jobs in the publishing field but he continued to suffer hardship and deprivation.

Beginning in 1910, Makiguchi served as an elementary school teacher and principal in a number of schools in the Tokyo area. His research in the are of community studies led to the publication of Kyodoka Kenkyu (Research Studies in Folk Culture) in 1912). Makiguchi was considered an effective teacher and educator but his disregard for nearly sacred aspects of Japanese culture led to conflict with authorities, teachers and parents. Such conflicts eventually led to his being forced into retirement from active school work in 1929.

In 1928, Makiguchi was transferred to Niibori Primary School. This school was scheduled to be closed in the following year, thus the transfer amounted to a dismissal with a year’s notice. During this year, Makiguchi prepared his educational ideas and methods that he had developed during his years of teaching for publication. Ably assisted by Josei Toda, he published the first of four volumes of Soka Kyoikugaku Taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy) in 1930, The work Kachiron (The Philosophy of Value), a reissue of volume two edited and enlarged by Josei Toda. was published after Makiguchi’s death. An English translation was published by the Seikyo Press in 1964.

Makiguchi held that creation of value is part and parcel of of what it means to be a human being. He wrote, “The highest and ultimate object of life is happiness, and the goal of life is none but the attainment and creation of value, which is in itself happiness…. A happy life signifies nothing but the state of existence in which one can gain and create value in full.”

Makiguchi in Sapporo

Information about Makiguchi’s years of teaching in Sapporo is limited. He appears to have been popular with the student teachers he supervised because he was always easy to approach with questions and problems. Makiguchi thought that Japanese education was stifling and destroying the creative potential of children rather than releasing and developing that potential. His writings of this time show a sense of mission and personal responsibility to question the educational practices of his day.

Early in his teaching career Makiguchi became interested in geography. His concept of geography included the study of people and their relationship with the environment. He believed that it could be used as a means of organizing the elementary school curriculum. Accordingly, he spent his spare time for nearly ten years collecting material and working on a geography book for use by elementary school teachers.

The government wanted to produce teachers who would follow unquestioningly. Thus the students at Sapporo Normal School endured rigid discipline. A serious breakdown in discipline occurred in the spring of 1901. Makiguchi shouldered the blame for the student’s defiance and was asked to resign. Although he regretted the situation, Makiguchi was now free to move to Tokyo with his wife and children and with his precious manuscript.

Makiguchi's Politcal Environment

During the early years of the Meiji era, there was intense debate among Japanese leaders and intellectuals. One side wanted to build loyal subjects who could be depended upon to support government programs. The other side wanted to build citizens who could be depended upon to be independent and self-assured. The final answer was to build subjects. This decision became part of in the Constitution of 1889 and the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890.

Makiguchi’s entire educational career was a protest against the production of subjects. Although he didn’t challenge government policy directly, he criticized Japanese teachers and educators for their tendency to accept popular educational ideas. But it wasn’t his educational philosophies and activities that led to his imprisonment. In the end, it was his religious convictions and refusal to accept the military government’s declaration of Shinto as the state religion that led to his arrest in 1943.

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi was born on June 6, 1871, in a small village in northwestern Japan. He was the first son of Chomatsu Watanabe; his mother’s name was Ine; his parents named him Chohichi. Makiguchi’s father abandoned him and his mother when he was very young. When he was three years old, he was left with the family of an uncle, Zendayu Makiguchi. His mother met with him secretly from time to time, eventually attempting murder-suicide by jumping into the Japan sea with Makiguchi in her arms. They were both rescued but he never saw his mother again.

In his mid-teens Makiguchi moved to Hokkaido and lived for a time with an uncle, Shiroji Watanabe. He took a job as an errand boy and studied to pass a government exam that would qualify him to take college entrance exams. His studiousness and dependability impressed the chief of police who invited him to accompany him to Sapporo.

Just before he graduated from Sapporo normal school in 1893 he changed his name to Tsunesaburo Makiguchi. He was accepted a position as a supervising teacher in the primary school attached to the normal school. He held the position for eight years.

In 1894 Makiguchi married Kuma. They had eight children, four boys and four girls. Tragedy struck repeatedly during the last twenty years of his life. Four of his children died between 1924 and 1932. In 1944 he was consigned to solitary confinement in Sugano Prison for refusing to cooperate in government required religious practices. During this incarceration his remaining son was killed in battle in World War II. Makiguchi died on November 18, 1944, at the age of seventy-three.

Soka Gakkai Founded in 1930

The Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Value Creation Education Society) was founded on November 18, 1930, by Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda. Born in 1871, Makiguchi was an educator and author passionately dedicated to educational reform. The theory of Soka (value-creating) Education was first set out by Makiguchi in the book Value Creating Pedagogy, in which he voiced criticisms of the Japanese pre-war education system, many of which continue to be leveled today. Makiguchi asserted that the purpose of education is the development of the unique creative potential of each child - not the "manufacture" of obedient servants of the state. Makiguchi's relentless critique of existing philosophies in his search for a basis for his educational views eventually led him to take faith, in 1928, in the Buddhism of Nichiren. Josei Toda, a young teacher, had met Makiguchi around 1920 and joined his mentor in his conversion. The Soka Kyoiku Gakkai was founded in order to promote humanistic education based on Buddhist principles.