Libeling a Prominent Buddhist Leader

It is imperative that we change the state of the world in which good-hearted ordinary people are oppressed and forced to suffer. This is an age of democracy, an age where the people are sovereign. Those in even the most powerful positions of authority are there solely to serve the people. It must never be the other way around.

—Daisaku Ikeda, November 2003

Pictured here are a few of the nearly three dozen articles featured in Shukan Shincho in support of bogus rape charges against Daisaku Ikeda. The courts later ruled that the mere filing of the rape charges represented an abuse of plaintiffs’ legal right to sue.

This case study exposes collusion between the Japanese news media and a vengeful couple in an attempt to slander an honorable religious leader for monetary and political gain. Daisaku Ikeda is one of Japan’s most intriguing figures and the leader of the Soka Gakkai, the largest Buddhist sect in Japan. Ikeda’s efforts in support of numerous refugee causes have earned him the United Nations High Commission for Refugees Humanitarian Award. He has supported international causes such as the Earth Charter and movements for the abolition of nuclear weapons. He has written extensively on related issues in his lengthy and detailed "Peace Proposals", which he has submitted annually to the United Nations since 1983. By the summer of 2004, he had received a staggering 161 honorary degrees and professorships from colleges and universities around the world, including the University of Glasgow, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Moscow State University, the University of Delhi, the University of Denver, the City University of New York, and Morehouse College, to name but a few. Ikeda has also been named an honorary citizen of some 353 municipalities worldwide and has received dozens of international awards and citations, such as the United Nations Peace Award. More than a hundred of Ikeda’s novels, essays, collections of poetry, and children’s books have been published by a variety of publishers in books that include editions in more than twenty languages. Ikeda is also noted for having engaged in cultural dialogues with world leaders from a variety of disciplines. Thirty of these discussions have appeared as books in several languages. These include discussions with U.S. writer and philosopher Norman Cousins, two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling, British historian Arnold Toynbee, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and -- more recently -- with noted Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

The Soka Gakkai

Daisaku Ikeda is shown here meeting with U.S. civil-rights activist Rosa Parks in Los Angeles. Ikeda first met Parks in 1993. He received the Rosa Parks Humanitarian Award in 1994. (Photo courtesy of Soka Gakkai.)

The Soka Gakkai currently claims some 10 million members and has founded various institutions such as the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research, the Institute of Oriental Philosophy, and the Min-On Concert Association, to name but four.

The Soka Gakkai is also a major political force in Japan, because its membership provides the bulk of support for the New Komei Party, one of the nation’s most influential political organizations. Like other major religious institutions, the Soka Gakkai and its international arm, the SGI, are affiliated with many organizations.

During the Second World War, Soka Gakkai founder Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and the man who would succeed him as president, Josei Toda, were imprisoned for the "thought crime" of refusing to support either the militant national state Shinto religion or the war being waged under its banner. Thus, almost since its beginnings, the organization was branded as subversive by Japan’s ruling powers. In 1944, at the age of seventy-three, Makiguchi died in prison, a martyr to his beliefs. After the war, Toda took charge and rallied the few scattered individuals who were all that remained of the group. Like Makiguchi before him, Toda proved to be an outspoken leader, making a strong public stand against all atomic weapons as early as 1957.

False Accusations

Two former members of the Soka Gakkai, Nobuko Nobuhira, and her husband, Junko Nobuhira, who were active in the organization for many years, filed false rape charges against Daisaku Ikeda. In 1992, the Soka Gakkai received complaints that the couple had duped and coerced rank-and-file members into lending them substantial sums of money, which they never repaid. The organization’s rules prohibit members from borrowing money from one another, so Soka Gakkai leaders asked the Nobuhiras to resign their leadership positions. And when the couple refused, they were removed from their positions in May 1992. Eventually, Junko Nobuhira was taken to court by his victims in eight different lawsuits for his illegal money-borrowing activities, losing all eight cases and being ordered by the courts to return the substantial sum of ¥68.74 million (yen) (US$687,400) to the lenders. After he and his wife were removed from their volunteer positions, Junko Nobuhira sued Ikeda over a cemetery plot that he had purchased from the group. But, the suit was dismissed by the courts as baseless. The Nobuhiras formally resigned their membership in the group in December 1993.

Two years later, in December of 1995, an intensely critical article of both the Soka Gakkai and the Komei Party appeared in a publication of one of the Komei Party’s main political rivals of the time: the Japan Communist Party organ newspaper, Akahata. The article was credited to an "anonymous former Soka Gakkai Women’s Division Leader," later revealed to be Nobuko Nobuhira. These details provide an important context for the appearance of Nobuko Nobuhira’s false memoir in Shukan Shincho entitled "A Former Women’s Leader in Hokkaido Breaks Her Silence, ‘I Was Raped by Daisaku Ikeda.’" At the time it appeared, not only was Nobuko Nobuhira’s Communist Party article hot off the presses, Junko Nobuhira had just lost three costly lawsuits for his and his wife’s illegal money-borrowing practices. He was also about to lose a fourth similar case, and would go on to lose an additional four cases in subsequent years. However, the Nobuhiras litigious and troubled past did nothing to dampen Shukan Shincho’s enthusiasm not only to feature Nobuko Nobuhira’s false claims but to work closely with her and her husband in articulating their allegations and even in encouraging the couple to initiate a civil action on the matter. Despite the Nobuhiras’ past and despite the fact that no woman had ever accused Ikeda of sexual misconduct before, not a single story ran in the leading papers, on television, or on the radio challenging, questioning, or otherwise properly contextualizing the couple’s allegations.

Indeed, even after the courts so decisively vindicated Ikeda, the mainstream Japanese news media essentially remained quiet on the matter, with but a few back-page mentions of the court-case conclusions.

Media Collusion—Shukan Shincho

The Japanese courts not only deemed the Nobuhiras’ claims specious but concluded that the two had "abused their legal right to sue" and had filed them "contrary to conduct in good faith and trust" in the first place. The Summation of the court conclusion, as written by the presiding judge and upheld by both the high court and Supreme Court, is included in this link. As indicated, the charges were littered with obvious lies and inaccuracies. For example, Nobuko Nobuhira said an alleged 1983 assault against her occurred in a specific prefabricated building at a Soka Gakkai facility, where she had been in charge of operating a coffee shop. Yet, not only was she unable to present a shred of evidence in support of this or any other of her claims (neither physical evidence, witnesses, nor medical records), the building where she claimed the event took place did not even exist in 1983. It had been dismantled the previous year, a fact corroborated by aerial land-survey photographs taken by the Japanese government’s forestry agency. (See A Public Betrayed for other examples of inaccuracies in the complaint.)

Shukan Shincho employees actively coached the Nobuhiras and encouraged them to make their false claims public in the magazine. Editorial staff at the magazine even went so far as to advise the couple on how to inflict the most damage on Ikeda. Taped conversations made just a few weeks before Nobuko Nobuhira’s "memoir" appeared in Shukan Shincho include extensive discussions about what they might publish on behalf of the Nobuhiras. In the tapes, a Shukan Shincho reporter repeatedly explains to the Nobuhiras that allegations of "sexual harassment" would not be sufficient to seriously damage the Soka Gakkai, but that full-fledged rape charges would be required. The recordings also include detailed discussions about the most effective way to hold press conferences, which type of lawsuit might be the most successful (criminal or civil), and plans for sharing the allegations with other media outlets and political rivals of the Komei Party.

Lasting Impressions

This case shows how a weekly newsmagazine (shukanshi) such as Shukan Shincho can drum up a false scandal that influences Japanese public opinion and politics in deep and critical ways. Many of the numerous articles that the magazine ran on this topic were featured in advertising campaigns on banners in trains, subways and buses, as well as in the nation’s largest and most respected daily newspapers. As these campaigns routinely reach 10 to 20 million people, it is safe to say that a large portion of the Japanese public was exposed to Shukan Shincho’s sensational take on these false charges. Indeed, thanks to a dearth of coverage of the court conclusion stating that the accusations were fabricated and had been lodged for unethical reasons, only a tiny portion of the Japanese public seems to have been informed of the truth. Indeed, anecdotal evidence indicates that while many Japanese citizens remember that Ikeda had been accused of rape, few know anything about his having been so conclusively vindicated by the courts.

Indeed, Japanese legal and media institutions are so poor at enforcing accountability for members of the press that Shukan Shincho was able to exploit and misrepresent the case for years without consequence. In the end, the weekly newsmagazine benefited significantly from the financial rewards of exploiting and encouraging false accusations. By featuring thirty-four sensational articles on the subject between 1996 and 2001, they greatly benefited in selling their magazines on this one topic alone. Had this happened in a Western country, such as United States or Great Britain, Ikeda and the Soka Gakkai could have brought suit against the magazines, seeking compensation for the media-inflicted damages to Ikeda’s reputation and their organization. But in Japan such a suit simply would not have made sense. Due to week compensatory libel laws and fines, victory in such a suit probably would not have even covered their legal costs. Moreover, such a suit would not have hurt Shukan Shincho in the least. On the contrary, it would have almost certainly have been a boon to the magazine, as the court proceeding would have provided an even greater opportunity for the magazine to run sensational coverage of the case and of the false accusations. Thus, although Japanese libel awards increased somewhat in 2003, they still remain so low and ineffectual that newsmagazines such as Shukan Shincho are essentially left free to exploit and slander Japanese citizens with impunity.

In the end, the Japanese public was thoroughly inculcated with the false idea that the Nobuhiras were innocent victims of a terrible crime perpetrated by Ikeda. This belief endures despite the fact that no credible evidence was ever provided that anything ever took place and despite a preponderance of evidence that the Nobuhiras concocted their claims.

In November 2003, for instance, an international paper with a reputation for reliability no less than the Financial Times brought up the claims without any reasonable contextualization or explanation. The English-language Japan edition of the paper included an article entitled "Japan’s LDP Puts Faith in Religious Partner: New Komeito, a Party Backed by Buddhists, Is a Key Element of the Coalition’s Re-Election Strategy."

In the article, journalist Michiyo Nakamoto questions the long-term viability of the coalition. Emphasizing that in recent elections Komeito played a linchpin role in keeping the coalition in power, the article notes that LDP supporters "seemed unconcerned about media claims of sexual harassment and even rape against Daisaku Ikeda, the spiritual leader of Soka Gakkai" (quoted in A Public Betrayed 250). Sadly, the elite, international readers of the paper are very likely to assume that there must be some substance behind such "media claims" of sexual harassment and rape against Ikeda -- after all, these claims are being referenced in a serious political article in the staid and respectable Financial Times. No mention is made in the piece that only one woman (Nobuhira) has ever made a claim of sexual misconduct against Ikeda or that her claims were rejected by Japanese courts to be so "seriously lacking factual foundation" that they constituted an "abuse of the right to sue." Nor is there any note of the unreliable reputation of the "media" that initiated coverage of the claims and that are responsible for the vast majority of the coverage of those claims, namely, Japan’s infamous weekly newsmagazines (shukanshi).

This instance highlights the often-underestimated influence of shukanshi, not just in Japan but throughout the world. In this case, Shukan Shincho was able to exploit fabricated claims -- without fear of any serious legal repercussions -- to the point that more than six and half years after its initial coverage and more than two years after they were judged by the Supreme Court as false, they are still referred to without qualification in a powerful Western newspaper.

This example also raises the question of just how easy and effective it might be to intentionally plant similarly inaccurate stories in the Japanese news media -- or, for that matter, how easily one might stir up similar scandals in other modern democratic nations. Indeed, the Nobuhiras’ false accusations are also still commonly put forth as fact on the Internet in Japanese as well as in English and other languages -- another illustration of what has been described as the media’s "the shout of guilty and the whisper of innocent."

Quite simply, there can be no true democracy unless the citizens of a country realize that they are sovereign, that they are the main protagonists, and then with wisdom and a strong sense of responsibility take action based on that realization. Democracy cannot be successful in its mission unless the people rouse themselves to become more informed and involved, unless they unite, unless they establish an unshakable force for justice and keep a strict eye on the activities of the powerful.

—Daisaku Ikeda