TOKYO (Kyodo) — Daisaku Ikeda, the longtime leader of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai, one of the largest religious groups in Japan, died of old age at his home in Tokyo on Wednesday, the group said. He was 95.
Ikeda became the third president of Soka Gakkai in 1960, which is said to have over 8.27 million households. The group supports Komeito, the junior coalition partner of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party.
Ikeda founded Komeito’s predecessor party in 1961 and founded Komeito in 1964. In the wake of a controversy over the separation of politics and religion, he focused on the activities of Soka Gakkai, but remained influential in politics.
Ikeda took over as honorary president of the group in 1979, four years after founding Soka Gakkai International, which has 2.8 million members in over 190 countries and territories.
Ikeda adhered to the “humanistic philosophy” of Nichiren Buddhism and engaged in dialogue with world leaders and intellectuals, including the late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, on measures to build global peace, it said on the Soka Gakkai website.
Ikeda was born in Tokyo in 1928 to a family of seaweed manufacturers. His life experience during World War II drove him to work for peace, the website says.