Ikeda just plain making stuff up - the Ogasawara Incident was a HUGE crisis for the Soka Gakkai

If you look around the web, you can find numerous examples where Ikeda describes the confrontation between Toda, his YMD bullies, and the elderly priest Jimon Ogasawara with the priest "drooling at the mouth" and "howling like a rabid dog." I think this must have a Japanese source, because I can only find Engrish quotes which all appear to be from the same source (whichever one it is). You know how you can find the same quote circulating on the 'Net? Yeah O_O

Well, anyhow, I decided to see if these outrageous details were included in Ikeda's fantasy novel, "The Human Revolution". I was very surprised to see that Volume 3, which is the Engrish translation of books 5 and 6, deals almost exclusively with the Ogasawara Incident. This was no one-off or minor deal - Ikeda devotes TWO WHOLE BOOKS to railing about it! This indicates that this incident was a serious crisis that had to be majorly spun - damage control.

But nowhere is the priest (called Kasawara in his "novelization") described as "drooling at the mouth" or "howling like a rabid dog." You'd think Ikeda wouldn't have left out such details if he'd had them at the time. Ikeda changes some details - instead of the youth division thugs stripping the old man (in his 80s) down to his underwear and then carrying him virtually naked on their shoulders on a cold night while yelling and using a megaphone to humiliate him to a graveyard where they forced him to sign a confession drafted by the Soka Gakkai and apologize to the dead Makiguchi's grave, Ikeda describes the old man stripping down voluntarily, on his own intiative! Oh, yeah, THAT's likely O_O

The authorities finally appeared to break things up and rescue the poor old man from the Soka Gakkai thugs, but the damage had been done. In their zeal to publicly humiliate a helpless old man, the Gakkai showed the public their true colors. They shouldn't have expected anything good to come of this, public-opinion-wise, but Toda was so fixated on revenge that's all he could think of. Some "enlightenment" O_O

There were lawsuits filed against the Soka Gakkai; it was horrible press; and this incident solidified a lot of the distaste for and distrust of the Soka Gakkai among the Japanese.

Ikeda also leaves out the detail Murata reports: That Toda acknowledged hitting the old priest "twice". Ikeda, though, says that the old man "suddenly and deliberately kicked Toda in the shin." But the noble Toda prohibits the Gakkai thugs from "pouncing" on him. As the always-compassionate Toda is leaving, abandoning the elderly priest to a crowd of 47 young assholes, Ikeda says that the priest tried to kick Toda again.

REALLY, Daisaku? Why are you so hard to believe??

Notice that organizing this attack on an elderly, defenseless priest was one of the first tasks Toda set his mind to upon gaining the position of President of the Soka Gakkai. That tells us a lot right there.