Jr. Pioneers = $oka Gakkai Cult Pseudo-Buddhist Camp.It looks all warm and fuzzy at first glance, but it is essentially taking little people who have not yet developed their own mental faculties and downloading the cult software into their heads from the get-go. Many will not ever be able to completely delete this software, because growing up in the gakkai cult ensures that it gets upgraded automatically (ironically, downgraded in reality) every year that you remain a "member."
Jr. Pioneers is usually run by ultra-zealot parent volunteers (usually a mother, but I have also seen rare fathers involved) and uber-ignorant ultra-zealot-to-be crazy brainwashed, "YOUTH!" division who have taken it up as their own personal idealized mission to "devolop" more "capable 'YOUTH!'" (actual cult-speak here) for Cousin Rufus' Bodhisattva Soldier Corps.
You attend meetings regularly where you learn to do gongyo (morning & evening prayers), with longer and longer daimoku (marathon magic words, NMRK, chanting sessions). You also get monthly "daimoku charts", which are little un-colored diagrams (usually gakkai cult themed) made up of hundreds of tiny little squares. You get to fill in ONE square for every 5 minutes of the magic chant you do. These forms had to be signed by your parents and turned in for inspection every month. If you filled it all in (or multiples), you got a prize in return (some Japanese or gakkai trinket). If you didn't manage to complete it, then you'd get scolded and a promise extracted from you to to better next time.
They also drill into you gosho quotes, to rote memorize and recite back at later meetings. It might be Ikeda-isms now, but when I was in, it was stuff like the "Kaimoku Sho", that had to be recited in both Japanese and English. (For those that don't know, the "Kaimoku-Sho" is the "Opening of the Eyes" or "Liberation from Blindness" passages that basically say don't ever forget your promise to never go 'taiten', or abandon your faith, in which case you will be 'foolish', abandoned by the buddhist gods, etc.) It's a recurring theme in the cult org., a veiled threat, that if you abandon the $oka cult, you will fall into the depths of hell and evil influences and your life will ultimately fall apart someday. As you grow up, they take commemorative photos using this same passage theme (as in this example, [
crossandlotus.files.wordpress.com], look at the inscription in the left corner), give you little bookmarks or laminated signs with the same threats (errr, I mean message). It's manipulative fear, or at least that's how the gakkai cult worked it.
Here is some more wonderful Jr. Pioneer cult paraphernalia that is destined for the kiddies' physical and mental lifetime memory box, [
www.post1.net].
IMO, it is the essentially the equivalent of this [
www.youtube.com] and this [
www.youtube.com]. The second clip, by the way, isn't too far off base, because fast forward in some of these Jr. Pioneers' members' lives and you'll later see them with regular or salaried cult leadership positions in the cult org., preaching just as falsely confident and ignorantly arrogant messages to the membership masses.
This is not an innocent cute kiddy club playtime get together. It has real consequences in the lives of these innocent kids. They are victims of both the cult org. and (inadvertently, of course) their parents' misguided and ignorant intentions.