Jōsei Toda

Who was Jōsei Toda?

Jōsei Toda was an educator, peace activist and second president of Soka Gakkai from 1951 to 1958. Like his mentor, Tsunesaburō Makiguchi, he was disillusioned with the Japanese educational system — which he thought of as suppressive of individual thought and as geared toward the interests of the state — Toda took immediate interest in Makiguchi's pedagogical theories when they met in 1920. Toda was the first to apply those theories when he began managing a private school in Tokyo.

Toda began practising Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism in 1928 and two years later, together with Makiguchi, he founded the Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai. With the onset of World War II, however, they met with harassment and prosecution. Both were arrested and jailed by the government in 1943 on charges of blasphemy against the deified emperor and violating the Maintenance of Public Order Act; the society, in effect, ceased to exist. Makiguchi died in prison in 1944. Toda was released just weeks before Japan's surrender in 1945.