Wakatta1....thanks for sharing secret tidbits from the Japanese WD! It's been commented over the years that SGI sure has a lot of women, and the men's numbers always trail behind. We used to discuss why this was so. One thought was that women, in general, are more inclined to want peace and harmony, having mother genes and all. Pretty rudimentary, yes, but it was one of the ones we came up with.

You're right. If it wasn't for these Japanese firecrackers with that Shining Gakkai Spirit, SGI would have floundered long ago...I have to say that a number of them did inspire me in the practice. And the food rocked. It's funny how they would comment between themselves on members' conditions...not the most stellar quality of humanity, but human all the same.

Anti-Cult, thanks for providing the link to Barbara O'Brien. Once again, another example of someone (who is a journalist, yes) who has legitimate questions and doesn't back down. It's a mantra for me: You cannot corral an inquiring mind, no matter how solid the "frames" are.

Let's not forget -- Japanese wives also decide how the household's money is spent, an important consideration in an organization as money-focused as SGI. I'm told that even senior executives who broker billion-dollar deals, turn their paychecks over to their wives. The wife then gives them an allowance, the money that the man can spend for his fun that month.

Bingo, Tsukimoto! Now the pieces are really coming together...And the Japanese SGI wives are more than happy to donate a chunka-chunka hubby's change to the organization. Bingo!

And hubby gets an allowance!

When P.I. talks of the precious value of women, he ain't Whistlin' Dixie....They have fueled the fires.

Tsulimoto, as always, made an excellent point. I found two articles online, in the first one Japanese housewives are called "invisible puppet-masters of Japan's economy", and the second one says "Because they’re charged with household finances, housewives can tell where Japan’s economy is going.”
[www.timesonline.co.uk]
[www.bloomberg.com]
Both articles refer to "hesokuri", the cash and investments that housewives stash without telling their husbands.
Another interesting quote: "The Sompo survey also reveals alarming insights into why the housewives are so attached to their secret money: a good proportion are hiving-off the funds in the hope that they can secure a divorce at about the age of 50 and enjoy their late middle age in financial comfort and away from their husbands."
An average Japanese housewife has $37 700 hesokuri.
Japan has a total population of 126,475,664 people. Age structure:
0-14 years: 13.1% (male 8,521,571/female 8,076,173)
15-64 years: 64% (male 40,815,840/female 40,128,235)
65 years and over: 22.9% (male 12,275,829/female 16,658,016) (2011 est.)
[www.cia.gov]
Number of women of marital age is roughly 50 million. Even if only half of them are married, that's 25 million. 25 million multiplied by 37 thousand we will have close to 1 trillion dollars. 1 trillion dollars of hesokuri!

How much money do Japanese housewives give to SGI without telling their husbands? Are the husbands in Japan aware that their wives finance the world's richest cult?
I bet all SGI Japan leaders of all levels from city to district leaders have a directive to give Japanese housewives guidance to sacrifice some part of their hesokuri money for SGI.

Quote
bobze39
Tsulimoto, as always, made an excellent point. I found two articles online, in the first one Japanese housewives are called "invisible puppet-masters of Japan's economy", and the second one says "Because they’re charged with household finances, housewives can tell where Japan’s economy is going.”
[www.timesonline.co.uk]
[www.bloomberg.com]
Both articles refer to "hesokuri", the cash and investments that housewives stash without telling their husbands.
Another interesting quote: "The Sompo survey also reveals alarming insights into why the housewives are so attached to their secret money: a good proportion are hiving-off the funds in the hope that they can secure a divorce at about the age of 50 and enjoy their late middle age in financial comfort and away from their husbands."
An average Japanese housewife has $37 700 hesokuri.

[snip...]

How much money do Japanese housewives give to SGI without telling their husbands? Are the husbands in Japan aware that their wives finance the world's richest cult?
I bet all SGI Japan leaders of all levels from city to district leaders have a directive to give Japanese housewives guidance to sacrifice some part of their hesokuri money for SGI.

@bobze39, @shavoy, @tsukimoto

The point of my previous comment about "WD getting guidance" is this: To the WD, NSA (SGI) was more about recreating a "japan away from japan" society in the US and of course it centered around the WD. To the point that the WD were pretty much the underlying force behind things that went on. In particular the Japanese WD had their own little club or clique - a shadow society that absorbed, interpreted and pushed the local organizational agenda. You never saw a senior WD leader get "corrected" and yet it was an everyday occurance for american leaders to "need guidance" and get "straightened out" because they didn't understand right from wrong. If a Japanese WD leader went afoul (which happened too) the whole thing got hushed up and american members were told (by Japanese MD leadership) to "Gamman" (be strong and endure).

The judgemental and controlling WD "leadership" revolved around their own little political and emotional drama's - of which gossip and petty jealousy played a big part and like the practice of keeping Hesokuri from hubby, it operated in relative secrecy.

American members only saw brief snippets of what was really going on behind the scenes, all of which was quickly denied and hidden. Speaking the language allowed a view inside this key inner group and at times it wasn't very pretty. On top of it, many of these wives seemed to truly hate their husbands and they "acted out" in various passive-aggressive ways. For some, NSA was a place where they could compensate for being subjugated by their husbands and with a little power in their hands they became almost tyrannical in the way they tried to dominate.

During my active NSA years I also traveled on business and visited kaikan's in other cities during those trips - San Francisco, Los Angeles and one other I don't recall and essentially saw the same sort of goings on by the WD, which causes me to think that their influence was a common thing.

In its positive form, the WD influence at times would short circuit the bureaucratic aspects of the NSA leadership to show "a heart" and mercy, sometimes nurturing members, sometimes being an organizational "conscience". In its negative form it was a corrosive and an almost hateful breeding ground for some of the most negative human emotions and behaviors - in part because the WD members were not disposed to practice Buddhism but to practice self involvement and clique-ism revolving around their little "in crowd", culturally segregated from the rest of the organization.

Wakatta1

Now we can really see why the primary weapons of SGI are slander and defamation. SGI is dominated by housewives's mentality. So, another positive side of SGI being run by WD is that SGI doesn't kill its enemies. For example, yakuza is run by men, and they don't defame enemies, they kill them. I don't think men even understand in general the concept of defamation. For them it's waste of time. But for housewives, who are acting out in various passive-aggressive ways, and hate their hubbies, slandering others becomes a way to compensate for being subjugated by their husbands. To some extent it is positive: for example, if SGI was dominated by men's mentality, George Williams would not be slandered and defamed, he would probably just disappear. For housewives slandering others is probably a favorite sport, they like negative gossip.

Quote
bobze39
Now we can really see why the primary weapons of SGI are slander and defamation. SGI is dominated by housewives's mentality. So, another positive side of SGI being run by WD is that SGI doesn't kill its enemies. For example, yakuza is run by men, and they don't defame enemies, they kill them. I don't think men even understand in general the concept of defamation. For them it's waste of time. But for housewives, who are acting out in various passive-aggressive ways, and hate their hubbies, slandering others becomes a way to compensate for being subjugated by their husbands. To some extent it is positive: for example, if SGI was dominated by men's mentality, George Williams would not be slandered and defamed, he would probably just disappear. For housewives slandering others is probably a favorite sport, they like negative gossip.

If they did kill anyone, and I have no absolute proof that they do, I have read and heard that both the police and the media are in their pocket. Even in America, there are communities where people who are connected can get away with murder while, if you are not connected and get on the wrong side of the powers that be, you will either do time on trumped up charges, get killed, or disappear. It is not only often futile to go up against these powers [for example, the families of the murder victim against the constable, sheriff, or judge], it can be downright dangerous. Since, for example, in some of the communities in America of which I speak, I have neither absolute proof nor a horse in the race, it isn't worth it to me to make allegations and stir the pot when I could get jailed or killed. Regarding the SGI or one of my own family members, if I had any hard data, I would persue it in a heartbeat. I only know for a fact that there are those in Japan who are afraid of the Soka Gakkai and where there is smoke, there is fire.

Nichijew



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2011 10:32PM by Nichijew.

So, as we established that Japanese housewives are the driving force behind SGI, I've decided to do more research on them. I went to Google and Yahoo and just typed "Japanese housewives". I got a stream of articles about them. Japanese housewives is a hot topic on the Internet. Apparently not only SGI, but everybody now reconizes this phenomenon.
Japanese Housewives, Online Gaming Addicts
[kotaku.com]
Japanese Housewives Flock To Thailand for Sex - Japan Forum
[www.jref.com]
Japanese housewives & American debt
[www.japanprobe.com]
The kimono traders - Times Online
[women.timesonline.co.uk]
Japanese housewives are becoming very big in online trading!
And plenty of other articles.

When a sect gets so rich, and is localized in an area, they can have massive influence over the local government and law enforcement.

Sai Baba [forum.culteducation.com] is an example of that. They have over 9 billion in wealth, and have all of the politicians, media, judges, police in their pocket. To the point where murders in the ashram were not investigated, and sexual abuse reports of children were not investigated.
Its obvious they even timed Sai Baba's recent death to happen on Easter Sunday, by pulling the plug, or announcing it on that day, as Sai Baba was in his own private hospital.

Japan is different than India certainly. But since SGI apparently has their own SGI "town" they can wield enormous influence using the wealth and other methods. It seems whenever a sect get big and rich, and then localizes itself in one area, then it comes extremely dangerous, as it can pretty much take over local law enforcement and local judges and politicians.

Something has to be done, as these groups are getting worse every year.
They are tax-free, like Sai Baba and SGI, so they just get richer and richer.
If the trend keeps up, these mega-sects are going to become some of the most powerful organizations in the world, using their wealth and power to do whatever they want, tax-free.
And using local influence peddling to avoid justice.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2011 06:32AM by The Anticult.

Even so, fortunately they can be beaten:

176 lawsuits filed between the temple and Soka Gakkai from 1991 to 2005:

The temple filed 41
Soka Gakkai filed 135
The temple won 116
Soka Gakkai won 22
38 cases reconciled
[Re. Temple - Soka Gakkai trials index]

Lets do some simple math and analysis:

176 lawsuits filed minus 38 that were reconciled = 138 contested lawsuits. The temple won 116. This means that SGI, with all their "sincere" Daimoku and 50x more revenue and assets and 50x the lawyer fees of the Nichiren Shoshu, won only 16% of the lawsuits [SIXTEEN PERCENT folks] and with all the cards stacked in their favor. What we have here is: Actual proof of the ABSOLUTE POWERLESSNESS of the SGI faith and practice; and/or the incompetance of the very best and expensive lawyers money could buy; and/or SGI is cheap and hired terrible lawyers; and/or SGI hired SGI member lawyers who are terrible lawyers; and/or SGI's terrible member lawyers worked on the case for free. The bottom line is the result of LOSS not GAIN, the most important doctrine of the SOKA "Beauty, Goodness, and Gain" philosophy.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2011 10:30AM by Nichijew.