Individual Responsibility

SGI positions itself as a movement of ‘human revolution’ – the world will only change when the people’s individual hearts change. Small-scale activities are meant to have big impacts. Individual practices become the building blocks of local discussion meetings, which in turn become the building blocks of larger-scale initiatives for community support and social change. What remains unclear, however, is the extent to which members of SGI organisations (and SG within Japan) are permitted or empowered to express dissent and disagreement. The outcome of tensions between rank-and-file Soka Gakkai members and New Komeito in Japan could provide a clue as to how this could play out in the future (Baffelli 2011; McLaughlin 2015).