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.