About the Author - Daisaku Ikeda

Daisaku Ikeda (池田 大作, Ikeda Daisaku, 2 January 1928 – 15 November 2023) was a Japanese Buddhist leader, educator, author, and nuclear disarmament advocate. He served as the third president and then honorary president of the Soka Gakkai, the largest of Japan's new religious movements.: 5  Ikeda is the founding president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), which claims to have approximately 12 million practitioners in 192 countries and territories, more than 1.5 million of whom reside outside ...

Daisaku Ikeda (池田 大作, Ikeda Daisaku, 2 January 1928 – 15 November 2023) was a Japanese Buddhist leader, educator, author, and nuclear disarmament advocate. He served as the third president and then honorary president of the Soka Gakkai, the largest of Japan's new religious movements.: 5  Ikeda is the founding president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), which claims to have approximately 12 million practitioners in 192 countries and territories, more than 1.5 million of whom reside outside of Japan as of 2012.: 269  Ikeda was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1928, to a family of seaweed farmers. He survived the devastation of World War II as a teenager, which he said left an indelible mark on his life and fueled his quest to solve the fundamental causes of human conflict. At age 19, Ikeda began practicing Nichiren Buddhism and joined a youth group of the Soka Gakkai, which led to his lifelong work with Soka Gakkai International and founding dozens of institutions dedicated to fostering peace, culture and education.: 12  12  In Japan, and many other countries, he has been described as a "controversial figure" over several decades from the 1970s. It is due to the ambivalent reputation of the Sôka Gakkai, whose name has been linked to several political and financial scandals ; the cult of the leader that has marked the organization ; and the relation to the political party Kōmeitō, which he founded. He has been the subject of numerous articles, doubts and accusations in japanese and international medias.: 3 : 43 : 147 : 149 In the 1960s, Ikeda worked to reopen China–Japan relations and also to establish the Soka education network of schools from kindergartens through university levels, while beginning to write what would become his multi-volume historical novel, The Human Revolution, about the Soka Gakkai's development during his mentor Josei Toda's tenure. In 1975, he became founding president of the Soka Gakkai International, and throughout the 1970s initiated a series of citizen diplomacy efforts through international educational and cultural exchanges for peace. Since the 1980s, he frequently called for nuclear disarmament.: 12–13, 26, 167 

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