I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way at all. A lot of my family is actually a part of SGI and I generally agree with the loose understanding I have of their teachings and philosophy. However, I do feel like SGI is too fixated on Sensai Daisaku Ikeda, which I feel (as a non-Budhist) ventures away from Buddhism.
Additionally, I’ve heard a lot about the ‘cult culture of Japan’. Not all of these cults engaged in nefarious activities – but were just ‘different’ in their own ways. However, I have read that some did manage to grow internationally.
This has led me to ask – did SGI manage to become so big internationally that no one realised it was originally a cult?
(Considering the nature of their functioning I am refraining from the strong negative connotation the word ‘cult’ has but rather referring to it as one of the early members of the cult culture of Japan.)
I believe getting a Japanese perspective on this subject would be quite revealing, which leads me to ask – is it a genuine religious movement that the Japanese community believes in?
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Probably want to put this in r/Japan, this is predominantly a language learning subreddit. To answer your question, not really. At least not enough to be consistently labeled as one. It was however politically powerful, however you could draw parallels to American evangelicals. I’d recommend just reading more about the religion/organisation.
Whether it’s “technically” a cult or not, most Japanese people would probably call it one.
There are organized crime links
I would not respect any group with strict power hierarchy either.
What does international expansion have to do with being or not being a cult? I don’t get the premise of your question.
It really depends on you definition of a cult. Some people prefer to call larger or less strict “cults”, High Control Groups. And there are people who consider all religion cults.
Check out the BITE model: https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model/
I don’t know enough about SGI to determine whether they are one. People also say you can recognize a cult by what happens when you try to leave.
I used to be married to a Niciren Shoshu practitioner. She heard about them in Temple and had this picture in her head of devious scammers pulling people into religious camps like the Mormon fundamentalists.
Then we were chatter with the chef at a sushi restaurant and she a quick chant over her food and he started asking about her practice. We found out he was Soka Gakki and that he was married to a woman from my wife’s temple. He was nice guy, and explained that he and his wife didn’t really care about the doctrinal differences.
The two faiths are almost exactly the same, but there was a disagreement in the 50s that led to Nichiren Shoshu declaring them an apostate group in the 90s, and Soka Gakki declaring that the head temple no longer served the faith, but acted in their own interest.
Long history short, it’s as much a cult as Lutherans are.
It’s somewhere between Scientology and Mormonism. Although officially disavowed due to outside pressure, Komeito, one of the most powerful minority political parties in Japan, is a wing of SGI.