Makiguchi and Value Creation


"I am driven by the intense desire to prevent the present deplorable situation–10 million of our children and students forced to endure the agonies of cutthroat competition, the difficulty of getting into good schools, the "examination hell" and the struggle for jobs after graduation –from afflicting the next generation. I therefore have no time to be concerned with the shifting vagaries of public opinion."¹--Tsunesaburo Makiguchi

"Mr. Makiguchi advocated helping children develop the ability to chart and advance upon their own chosen course. He expressed a repugnance for cramming children's heads with knowledge of little practical value. Value-creating education, he asserted, means to cultivate the ability to create benefit and remove harm, to emphasize good and avoid evil, to create beauty and cast off the ugly, while at the same time being responsive to all environments."²--Daisaku Ikeda

When Makiguchi and his disciple Josei Toda founded the Soka Gakkai in 1930 (initially called Soka Kyoiku Gakkai), it was an organization comprised mostly of reform-minded teachers exploring through experimentation best educational practices, and guided largely by Makiguchi's ideas. The organization itself was named after Makiguchi's value-creation (soka) educational philosophy.

Several years earlier, Makiguchi had at the age of 57 embraced Nichiren Buddhism, seeing in it a philosophy of individual empowerment that could serve as a basis for the kind of educational and social reform he was envisaging. After World War II, under Toda's leadership, the idea of inner transformation or "human revolution" through the practice of Nichiren Buddhism became the prime vehicle toward the realization of these objectives.

What then is value creation? Makiguchi saw the ability to create value as a distinctively human possibility. He defined value as the triad of beauty, gain and good. "Beauty" might be defined as aesthetic enhancement; "gain" as everything that enriches a person's life in the broadest sense; and "good" as that which benefits society as a whole.

Value creation refers to ideas and actions that transform reality to generate the experience of beauty, gain and good. Ikeda has described it as "the capacity to find meaning, to enhance one's own existence and contribute to the well-being of others, under any circumstance."³

Makiguchi viewed education as the process of unfolding this ability. The ultimate purpose of education, he proposed, must coincide with the ultimate purpose of life. For him the purpose of life is "happiness," defined not as a carefree and untroubled existence but as a fully developed capacity to create beauty, gain and good in the face of life's inevitable trials.

Makiguchi's philosophy of value creation provides the underpinnings for Soka educational practice. Concretely, it takes the form of an emphasis on close teacher-student relations and unwavering faith in the limitless potential of each student.

It also places emphasis on the development of wisdom. Addressing the students of Soka University, Ikeda comments: "The font of wisdom is found in the following elements: an overarching sense of purpose, a powerful sense of responsibility and the compassionate desire to contribute to the welfare of humankind. When wisdom arises from such wellsprings, it nourishes the kind of inner strength that remains unmoved by the superficial judgments of society and can acutely discern what is of genuine value and what is, in fact, detrimental."4 - 2005, SUA