Second Soka Gakkai president Josei Toda was born in 1900. Like his mentor, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, he was a passionate and innovative educator. Disillusioned with the Japanese educational system--one that was geared toward the interests of the state and suppressed independent thought--Mr. Toda took immediate interest in Mr. Makiguchi's pedagogical theories when they met in 1920. Mr. Toda was the first to apply those theories when he began managing a private school in Tokyo.

Mr. Toda began practicing Nichiren Buddhism in 1928 and two years later, together with Mr. Makiguchi, he founded the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai (Value Creation Education Society). With the onset of World War II, however, due to their unyielding commitment to the pacifist principles of their faith and to human rights, they met with harassment and persecution. Both were arrested and jailed by the militarist government in 1943 on charges of "blasphemy" and "violating the Maintenance of Public Order Act"; the society, in effect, ceased to exist. Mr. Makiguchi died in prison in 1944 without ever having compromised his beliefs.

Mr. Toda, too, would not compromise. He was released just weeks before Japan's surrender in 1945. While imprisoned, Mr. Toda, through faith in and study of Nichiren Buddhism, had come to a profound understanding that Buddhahood, or enlightenment, is inherent in life itself, and that all people can manifest it.

That realization, coupled with his deep anger toward the military government's wanton exercise of power, became the motivation for his efforts to propagate Nichiren Buddhism for the remainder of his life. He renamed the pre-war society Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Society), thus expressing his conviction that its mission should not be confined to educators and the field of education but should extend to the whole of society. On May 3, 1951, he was inaugurated as second president of Soka Gakkai.

In 1957, Mr. Toda issued a declaration condemning the use of nuclear weapons as criminal under any circumstances, and called on the young people of the world to work for their abolition. The declaration became a cornerstone of Soka Gakkai's peace activities. Membership grew rapidly under Toda's leadership, to more than 750,000 households by the time of his death in 1958.

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