The primary benefactor of Soka U is a controversial offshoot of Japanese Buddhism called Soka Gakkai, headed for 44 years by the sometimes messianic and persistently self-aggrandizing Daisaku Ikeda. But significant secondary support comes from favorable tax treatment in Japan, the U.S. and around the globe, just as enjoyed by other philanthropies big and small. In the U.S. the nonprofit sector is spending $875 billion a year and employs 9% of the work force yet has precious little accountability, other than the public financial statements required of most charities. Religious entities don't even have that degree of accountability. They enjoy all the benefits of tax exemption without any requirement that they say what they are up to.
Soka Gakkai is a shadowy case in point. Ikeda, now 76 and president of Soka Gakkai International, the sect's global umbrella, claims 12 million followers and has amassed an empire that was put at $100 billion by a Japanese parliamentarian a decade ago. (The sect says that's wrong but otherwise won't comment on its finances.) A nasty split from Nichiren Buddhists set off a cycle of alleged violence, blackmail and intimidation. Soka Gakkai members in Japan have been charged with illegal wiretapping and breaking into private databases. The sect says it has nothing to do with those activities, noting that its ranks include nearly 10% of all Japanese. But yet-darker allegations have been made (see box, p. 130).
Soka Gakkai (literally, "value-creating society") brings in, conservatively, $1.5 billion a year to the top line, according to our best estimates of its membership, its tithing demands and its commercial activities. Most of that revenue is collected in Japan, where the sect sells its flock funeral plots, assorted religious paraphernalia and a newspaper (5.5 million subscribers).
Forbes.com: Sensei's World
Don't miss the sidebar article about Asaki Akiyo, a female politician who died under mysterious circumstances linked to Soka Gakkai.
In 1995 Akiyo Asaki, a politician in the Tokyo suburb of Higashi Murayama, complained vociferously that all city garbage collection contracts were going to Soka Gakkai-affiliated companies.
After receiving death threats, Asaki plunged off a building. When police arrived at the scene, they recognized her and, even though she was still alive, kept her from getting medical help, according to her daughter, Naoko Asaki. She says that when her mother died, the police tried to have her body immediately cremated.
The prosecutor's initial investigator, Masao Nobuta, and the officer in charge of assigning him, Hiroshi Yoshimura, were both members of the sect. They said Asaki's death was a suicide and linked it to her being questioned about the shoplifting of an item of women's clothing.
Forbes.com: Death Watch