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Japan: Goodness, Beauty & Benefit-But for Whom? (The World / JAPAN)
Japan's political parties were as rattled as if the Emperor had suddenly reclaimed his forsaken divinity. Soka Gakkai, a society of Buddhist laymen, already holds 15 seats in the 250-member upper house, plus some 4,000 seats on local councils. Soka Gakkai (the Value-Creation Society) is more than just another party; it is a militantly organized, crusading sect vaguely combining Buddhism with left-wing reform or perhaps revolutionary politics, and its confessed ambition is to convert Japan and then the world. Fuji's Foot. The movement mixes the evangelism of Moral Rearmament with the get-out-the-vote discipline of the Communist Party and lots of show biz. Founded in 1930, it was suppressed during World War II and began sweeping the nation in 1947 under a talented organizer and ex-schoolteacher named Josei Toda. Soka Gakkai now claims 13 million members and 100,000 converts a month. While some critics question these figures, there is no doubt that the movement is gaining impressively. Last month, at ceremonies featuring martial bands, a waltz-playing orchestra, an all-girl chorus and sutra-chanting priests, Soka Gakkai formally dedicated a $4,500,000 recreation-and-worship center at the foot of Mount Fuji. Soka Gakkai is tightly organized into squads (each composed of 20 to 30 families), companies (made up of six squads), districts (formed by ten companies) and regional chapters. In thou sands of local meetings held throughout Japan on any night of the week, members discuss their spiritual progress and prepare for their highest duty, which is shakubuku (literally, break and subdue), or gaining converts. Until some years ago shakubuku was accomplished by relays of devotees chanting sutras round the clock in a prospective recruit's home and literally wearing him down. In other cases, members burned a family's Shinto altar, or prevented a doctor from treating a sick devotee on grounds that faith alone would cure him. Because of public protest, Soka Gakkai eased off on such tactics, but even today it stresses obedience, and members must vote for the sect's political candidates as a religious duty. Highest Values. Just what its faith and its political program consist of is not easy to discern. The society propagates a simplified, modernized version of doctrines taught by the 13th century Buddhist reformer, Nichiren, who maintained that happiness consisted of pursuing the highest values in life—"goodness, beauty and benefit." Grandly promising its followers material as well as spiritual benefits, Soka Gakkai, operating through a political affiliate called Koseiren, is competing with Japan's Communists and Socialists for the support of the discontented urban poor, who have missed out on the country's industrial boom. A Tokyo newsman explains, "Soka Gakkai is more appealing because religion sounds better than Communism." Soka Gakkai collects no dues, instead selects 400,000 families a year to provide 1,000 yen ($2.78) apiece; being allowed to contribute is considered a great honor. The sect derives even more income from a vast publishing empire that puts out a newspaper, two monthly magazines, a picture magazine and a children's magazine, boasting a combined circulation of
5,000,000. Domestically, the society visualizes a powerful welfare state, attacks corruption, political bosses, waste of taxpayers' money and favoritism for big business. In the Diet, Soka Gakkai has supported aid to small businessmen and most welfare measures. In contrast to the easygoing approach of many of their fellow representatives, Soka Gakkai Deputies painstakingly investigate every bill, carefully compile factual data on which to base their support or opposition. In foreign policy, the society calls for diplomatic relations with both Nationalist China, which Japan already recognizes, and Red China, friendly relations with South Korea, and the return of U.S.-occupied Okinawa to Japanese control. Explains a Soka Gakkai spokesman: "We do not think it is good to be friendly to the U.S. and the Western nations to the exclusion of others." Fixing Fences. Many Japanese are sure that there is far more to the movement than this sort of crusading reform spirit. They worry about Soka Gakkai's militant organization, its occasional signs of fanaticism. Many hope that the movement may prove a passing phenomenon, but Japan's political pros are not so sure. One fact that particularly impresses them: the society's converts are mainly young adults under 30. Soka Gakkai's president, Daisaku Ikeda (no kin to Japan's Premier), is himself only 36. Before the war, Ikeda says, the Japanese did have an ideal of sorts—to conquer Asia by force. But since then his argument goes, nothing has been advanced to take its place. Says he: "We give the young a principle, a practical and sincere ideal." Just what that ideal is, and where it might lead, is another question. Last week Premier Hayato Ikeda's Liberal-Democratic Party, as well as the Socialists, began discussing ways to repair their political fences among the masses and counteract Soka Gakkai. |
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Nov. 10, 1967
Essay: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO PATRIOTISM?
Patriotism is just as important as ever. The problem is in defining it—and few definitions are so elusive. It consists of three distinct but interrelated emotions—love of country, pride in it, and desire to serve its best interests. The love is easily traced to man's natural affection for his particular home, language and customs. The word patriotism comes from pater, Greek for father, and means love for a fatherland. From the love flows pride: the firm belief that one's country is good and perhaps superior to all others—a pride not only in the country's objective worth but because that worth enhances one's own. Adlai Stevenson's definition was expectedly eloquent. "When an American says that he loves his country," he declared, "he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect." Eric Hoffer, the philosopher-longshoreman has a more prosaic but very pragmatic description: "The day-to-day competence of the workingman." He adds: "If I said I was loading ships for Mother America, even during a war, I would be laughed off the docks. In Russia, they can't build an outhouse without having a parade and long speeches. This is the strength of America." Few people seem to be willing to proclaim their patriotism these days, and Fourth of July oratory has gone out of fashion. But John F. Kennedy's inaugural address was squarely in the old spine-tingling tradition. "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." And more: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." There was an affirmation in the best spirit of patriotic oratory, and it forced the blood up into the temples of people who never really expected to feel that way. Right & Wrong For centuries, countless thinkers have denounced patriotic pride for one of its unhappiest effects: the irrational hatred that one people aims at a "lesser" people. Arnold Toynbee attributes the death of Greco-Roman civilization to patriotic wars between city states—and failure to establish international law. Early Christians rejected patriotism on the ground that man's obligations are to God, and after that to all of humanity. A Jesuit general once called patriotism "the most certain death of Christian love." There is no question that chauvinism—hyperpatriotism—can be induced in any country, including a democracy, where truth may be a poor competitor in the marketplace of ideas. A tragic example is Germany, where Nazi excesses in the name of the fatherland left such scars that today patriotism is for Germans an embarrassing idea.
At its root, patriotism bore no such scar. In 1578, during the Dutch-Flemish revolt against Spanish rule, the word patriot was. first used to mean one who represents people and country against the king. By the 18th century, patriotism denoted love of a free country, devotion to human rights as well as nationalism. To Stephen Decatur's famous toast "Our country may she always be right; but our country right or wrong" Carl Schurz later replied: "When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right." Who decides what is right and what is wrong? The Schurz position suggests that the only valid answer to that question is the free individual conscience—indeed, that true love of country involves criticism as well as praise, for mere acquiescence may be mindless indifference. The Essence of Americanism
Chaotic—or even anarchic—as that answer may seem, it is the base of U.S. patriotism. At the end of the 18th century, nothing was more quixotic than trying to nationalize 13 hostile colonies, assorted religious sects, and 2,500,000 individualists. The colonists were so unimpressed by the Revolution that one-third of them sided with Britain. At Valley Forge, George Washington wrote that patriotic idealism could not inspire his ragged, ill-trained army, that it must be toughened by "a prospect of interest or some reward." He meant cash. Only well after victory did the shaky American nation burst forth with an optimistic self-image based on the idea that the humane spirit of 18th century enlightenment could be fully realized for the first time anywhere. General Washington called himself "a citizen of the great republic of humanity at large," and countless divines proclaimed Americans to be God's chosen people. "We are acting for all mankind," said Thomas Jefferson. Beneficent fate "imposed on us the duty of proving what is the degree of self-government in which a society may venture to leave its individual members." The very fact that the U.S. was a nation only in name produced a fervent drive to create national symbols that sometimes obscured Jefferson's aspirations. The drive was fueled by waves of immigrants rushing to a virgin continent that offered fabulous opportunities for self-advancement. The gold-rush spirit animated Americanism, the country's unestablished religion. The whole public-school system was aimed at Americanization. Noah Webster's spelling book taught American English to Germans, Poles, Swedes, Italians—and declared that "Europe is grown old in folly, corruption and tyranny." Geography was American, and America was bigger than the universe, the finest, happiest and soon to be the strongest nation on earth. Parson Weems's biography beatified Washington; Fourth of July speeches were gravely heeded. Even arithmetic books instilled patriotism. Symbols burgeoned—Old Glory, the Liberty Bell, the bald eagle, Uncle Sam. Everyone memorized militant songs, such as Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean ("Three cheers for the Red, White and Blue"). And McGuffey readers—hardly a child alive could not recite Longfellow's verse:
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! Sail on, O Union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, With all the hopes of future years, Is hanging breathless on thy fate! The symbolism, the national heroes, the sacred founding documents, the optimistic faith in progress—all these unified and inspired millions of uprooted immigrants in an often frighteningly free society. The mood filled a basic human need: never do men so long to belong as when they give up one fatherland for another. Conversely, the U.S. proposition was freedom from orthodoxy. There was not—and is not—any one perfect Americanism. Not in a country that cherishes diversity as a national virtue. But if diversity is a condition of freedom, it is also a recipe for self-interest—and a patriotism that sometimes reaches no deeper than symbols. Over the years, peacetime patriotism in the U.S. was expressed as a wealth of other emotions; how Americans feel about America is clearly linked to how they feel about themselves functioning in America. Thus in the 19th century every imaginable interest group claimed superior nativity. Businessmen denounced unionists as alien anarchists; each generation of naturalized immigrants scorned each later wave of "foreigners," notably Roman Catholics, victims of outrageous persecution by the nativist Know-Nothings of the 1850s. Just before the Civil War, slavery apologists attributed to themselves the one true Americanism; some Southerners wanted to claim the Stars and Stripes as their own flag. |
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Freedom
I am free right where I am. Sunday, April 19, 2015
http://www.dailyword.com/dailyword/freedom-sunday-april-19-2015 While on my daily walk, I enjoy the freedom of the outdoors. I see freedom in a robin’s flight. I hear freedom in the rhythm of the rain. I feel freedom in the wind’s warm caress. It occurs to me that like the robin, rain, and wind, I am an expression of freedom. Regardless of my circumstances, I choose to affirm freedom. I experience freedom with my mind, body, and soul. My unlimited spirit can never be bound by outer conditions. One cannot bind peace, joy, or love. I express my spiritual gifts with every thought of forgiveness, every moment spent with a friend, and every word of kindness. As I share my gifts, I experience liberation. I am free right where I am. For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters.—Galatians 5:13 |
 Masahiro Tanaka pitches like an ace again as Yanks pound Rays
By George A. King III April 18, 2015 | 10:46pm ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Questions about Masahiro Tanaka’s elbow never will end because he pitches for a living and the risk of the hinge coming apart is high for any hurler at all levels. Yet, the way Tanaka dominated the Rays Saturday night in a 9-0 Yankees victory, witnessed by an announced Tropicana Field gathering of 20,824, the decision to rehab a small tear in the ulnar collateral ligament instead of having Tommy John surgery last summer was a wise one for one night. After two subpar starts that resulted in a 7.00 ERA and a 1-1 record, Tanaka smothered the Rays and watched a late-game hitting orgy led by Chris Young’s seventh-inning grand slam turn an early pitching duel between Jake Odorizzi and Tanaka into a laugher. The 5-6 Yankees’ second straight victory avoided them losing the season’s initial four series for the first time since 1966 and put them in position to sweep three from the Rays Sunday. In seven shutout innings, the longest outing of the young season for Tanaka, gave up two hits, fanned eighth, didn’t issue a walk and faced four batters with runners in scoring position. He is 2-1. |
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TIME 100 2015
By Robin Wright April 16, 2015 Iran's dealmaker Mohammad Javad Zarif is the happy face of Iran’s stern revolution. I’ve known him three decades, as he helped end the Iran-Iraq War, free American hostages in Lebanon and broker a new Afghan government after the Taliban’s defeat. Now, as Foreign Minister, he’s the pivot in nuclear diplomacy. For 18 months, the world’s six major powers have courted him as they have no other foreign official. The goal is to formalize the blueprint of a nuclear deal by June 30. Educated at two American universities, Zarif is well qualified to reconcile the revolutionaries and the world. As Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., he engaged many in Congress. In March, an Iranian poll picked Zarif as man of the year. When he returned from the talks, he was mobbed. After a deal, Zarif would be the natural go-to guy for broader détente with the world too. Wright is a joint fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center |
