From Shakubuku to Dialogue, a Change in Method Not Goal

Soka Gakkai's pursuit of kosen-rufu changed its public character substantially over the movement's postwar history. Under Toda's leadership in the 1950s the movement pursued growth through shakubuku, an aggressive method of religious persuasion whose name literally means to break and subdue, targeting other religious affiliations directly and pressing converts toward rapid, decisive commitment, an approach that drew significant public criticism in Japan and that Seager's study of the movement's later globalization identifies as a major obstacle Ikeda had to address once Soka Gakkai began building an international following. From the 1970s onward the movement's own leadership shifted its public presentation of kosen-rufu decisively toward dialogue, framing the goal less as conversion achieved through confrontation and more as a shared human project pursued through education, cultural exchange and interfaith engagement, a change reflected institutionally in Ikeda's founding of secular cultural and educational organizations alongside the religious movement itself and in Soka Gakkai's formal advocacy for nuclear disarmament beginning with Toda's own 1957 declaration against nuclear weapons. The doctrinal goal named by the term kosen-rufu did not change across this period, but the movement's own account of the acceptable means of pursuing it changed considerably, from a proselytizing method its later leadership came to describe as suited to a specific and difficult postwar moment rather than as the method's own permanent form.