Daisaku Ikeda

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Daisaku Ikeda
Ikeda in 2023
President of Soka Gakkai International (SGI)
In office 26 January 1975 – 15 November 2023
Honorary President of Soka Gakkai
In office 24 April 1979 – 15 November 2023
3rd President of Soka Gakkai
In office 3 May 1960 – 24 April 1979
Preceded by	Jōsei Toda Tsunesaburō Makiguchi
Succeeded by	Hiroshi Hōjō (北条浩) Einosuke Akiya Minoru Harada
Personal details
Born	(1928-01-02)2 January 1928 Ōta, Tokyo, Japan
Died	15 November 2023(2023-11-15) (aged 95) Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan
Spouse	Kaneko Ikeda (池田香峯子)
Children	3 (1 deceased)
Parents	Ichi Ikeda (mother) Nenokichi Ikeda (father)
Residence(s)	Japan, Tokyo, Shinjuku-Ku, Shinanomachi (信濃町)
Alma mater	Fuji Junior College (present-day Tokyo Fuji University)[1]
Signature
Website	daisakuikeda.org

Daisaku Ikeda (池田 大作, Ikeda Daisaku, 2 January 1928 – 15 November 2023) was a Japanese Buddhist philosopher, educator, author, and nuclear disarmament advocate.^[2][3][4] He served as the third president and then honorary president of the Soka Gakkai, the largest of Japan's new religious movements.^[5]: 5 Ikeda was the founding president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), the world's largest Buddhist lay organization, which claims a membership of 12 million practitioners in 192 countries and territories,^[6] more than 1.5 million of whom reside outside of Japan as of 2012.^[7]: 269

Ikeda was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1928, to a family of seaweed farmers. He survived the devastation of World War II as a teenager, which he said left an indelible mark on his life and fueled his quest to solve the fundamental causes of human conflict. At age 19, Ikeda began practicing Nichiren Buddhism and joined a youth group of the Soka Gakkai, which led to his lifelong work developing the global peace movement of SGI and founding dozens of institutions dedicated to fostering peace, culture and education.^{[8]: 12 [9]}

In the 1960s, Ikeda worked to reopen Japan's national relations with China and also to establish the Soka education network of schools from kindergartens through university levels, while beginning to write what would become his multi-volume historical novel, The Human Revolution, about the Soka Gakkai's development during his mentor Josei Toda's tenure. In 1975, he established the Soka Gakkai International, and throughout the 1970s initiated a series of citizen diplomacy efforts through international educational and cultural exchanges for peace. Since the 1980s, in his annual peace proposals marking the anniversary of the SGI's founding, Ikeda increasingly called for nuclear disarmament.^{[8]: 12–13, 26, 167}