Daisaku Ikeda, leader of the influential Japanese Buddhist group, dies at the age of 95

Daisaku Ikeda, the president of Soka Gakkai International, the global arm of a Buddhist movement in Japan that produced an influential political partner for the country’s ruling party, died on November 15 at his home in Tokyo. He was 95.

His death was confirmed by Soka Gakkai in a statement.

Mr. Ikeda (pronounced ee-KEH-da) was the third leader of that Buddhist association, which was founded in 1930 and is Japan’s largest organized religious group. At his death he was honorary chairman.

In his two decades at the helm, beginning in 1960, Mr. Ikeda was credited with broadening the group’s appeal; it says it now has followers in 192 countries, including more than 8 million households in Japan and 2.8 million members in the rest of the world.

His greatest legacy was leading Soka Gakkai into parliamentary politics with the formation of a political party, Komeito, or Clean Government, in 1964. The party, which Soka Gakkai says is now independent of the religious organization, has been a coalition partner for the Japanese government. Komeito has governed the Liberal Democratic Party since 1999. Relying on a base of election volunteers who can benefit from membership in Soka Gakkai, Komeito regularly provides a bloc of voters to help strengthen the ranks of the Liberal Democrats, who have since ruled Japan for nearly four years. 1955.

The party was founded partly to represent vulnerable people in society, but also to support Japan’s post-war pacifist stance. On another front, Mr. Ikeda asked the party to urge Japan to recognize the People’s Republic of China; the two countries normalized diplomatic relations in 1972. Two years later, Mr. Ikeda met Zhou Enlai, then the prime minister of the People’s Republic, at a hospital in Beijing, where Mr. Zhou was being treated for cancer.

Mr. Ikeda described himself as “anti-authority” and urged the abolition of nuclear weapons. “The real enemy we must face is the mindset that justifies nuclear weapons,” he said wrote in a 2009 peace proposal. “The willingness to destroy others when they are seen as a threat or an obstacle to the achievement of our objectives.”

Mr. Ikeda was at times a divisive figure, accused of being a cult leader with dictatorial tendencies; at one point he publicly apologized for trying to censor a book criticizing the Soka Gakkai and its leadership. He was also repeatedly accused of sexual and financial abuse – none of which was proven – and was acquitted in 1957 of charges of violating electoral laws.

His charisma helped attract followers, including abroad, as well as celebrity admirers, including jazz musician Herbie Hancock and actor Orlando Bloom. When Mr. Ikeda presided over the dedication in 1972 of a new main temple for the Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist sect, from which the Soka Gakkai derived its spiritual principles, congratulations were sent from political leaders such as Senator Edward M. Kennedy and Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau of Canada and Governor Ronald Reagan of California and Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama.

Mr. Ikeda founded schools and universities based on the principles of the Soka Gakkai, including kindergartens in five countries, elementary through graduate schools in Japan, and a liberal arts college in Aliso Viejo, California.

In a speech at Columbia University Teachers College in 1996, he said he believed education could contribute to the cause of world peace.

“The fundamental task of education should be to ensure that knowledge advances the cause of human happiness and peace,” he said. “It must be the driving force for an ever-unfolding humanitarian quest.”

Daisaku Ikeda was born in Tokyo on January 2, 1928, the fifth son of Nenokichi and Ichi (Komiya) Ikeda, who were involved in seaweed farming. He was diagnosed with chronic tuberculosis as a child.

All four of his older brothers were conscripted into the Japanese army during World War II, and his eldest brother was killed in Burma (now Myanmar). Witnessing his mother’s grief was “the starting point of my activities for peace,” Mr. Ikeda wrote in a 2006 essay.

He was drawn to the Soka Gakkai when he met its postwar leader, Josei Toda, in a philosophy reading group. After completing a night school course at Toyo High School in 1948, he enrolled at Taisei Gakuin University (now Tokyo Fuji University) and studied political science while working at a publishing house headed by Mr. Toda. Mr. Ikeda dropped out of college in 1950 to work full-time, and Mr. Toda gave him private lessons.

In 1952, Mr. Ikeda married another follower, Kaneko Mori, and they had three sons. Their middle son, Shirohisa, died in 1984. Mr. Ikeda is survived by his wife and sons, Hiromasa and Takahiro.

Mr. Ikeda took over the leadership of Soka Gakkai at the age of 32. He traveled extensively outside Japan to recruit followers and enjoyed the publicity that came with his meetings with world leaders. In 1975, he was named co-founder and president of Soka Gakkai International, a title he continued to hold after his death.

He wrote or co-wrote more than 250 published works, including collections of essays and poetry, as well as children’s literature and multi-volume novels on the history of the Soka Gakkai.

Soka Gakkai entered the political waters in the 1950s, but it was Mr. Ikeda who consolidated the group’s influence in 1964, when he founded the Komeito political party, which began supporting candidates for Japan’s parliament. He insisted that the party was separate from the religious group, but many Japanese were skeptical, viewing the two as intertwined and the party as Mr. Ikeda’s personal instrument.

In 1970, Hirotatsu Fujiwara, a university professor, wrote a sensational expose on the inner workings of Soka Gakkai, saying that the group consisted of a “bunch of fanatics” and that Mr. Ikeda maintained “a dictatorship.”

The group’s attempt to block the book’s publication caused public outrage. Mr. Ikeda apologized and promised “not to repeat the same mistake in the future.”

When Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi appointed a new coalition cabinet in 1999 and formally united the Liberal Democratic Party with Komeito, widespread public disapproval was registered. Many Japanese, shocked by the 1995 nerve agent attack on the Tokyo subway by another obscure religious sect, feared that Soka Gakkai was also a cult.

By then, Mr. Ikeda had stepped down to become honorary chairman, and Komeito became a crucial partner for the Liberal Democrats in their efforts to retain power.

Over the past decade, Mr. Ikeda has lowered his profile, but he continued to write and was known to drive past Soka Gakkai headquarters and greet followers from his car.

Since 1983, he has written peace proposals to the United Nations every year. And until the end, he remained committed to the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Soka Gakkai International, he wrote, “will continue to increase the solidarity of civil society, with a special focus on youth, towards creating a culture of peace in which all can enjoy the right to live in authentic security to live.”

Hikari Hida reporting contributed.