Take a look at the Japanese monoethnicity of SGI-USA

This is from "Arcadia", wherever THAT is (Washington State, maybe?) but there's a US flag on the stage, so it's SGI-USA. I love the woman at 0:30, in the front snerk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aproYlhBQo

But srsly - look how disproportionately Asian those faces are. Note: There's nothing wrong with Asians. Asians are fine people, wherever in the world one encounters them. My only point here is that, for SGI-USA to be a truly American organization, it needs to be able to attract Americans across all ethnicities, not just be an Asian club for Asians. From the US 2010 census, white people account for 56.4% of the population (non-Latino/Hispanic), while black people account for 12.6%, Latino/Hispanic at 16.3%, and Asians 4.8%. Whites are the majority in every region of the US except Hawaii.

In the different places I've practiced, there were mostly white and black people, but there was always a sizable Asian contingent, disproportionately large compared to the ratio of Asians in society. In the early days, the 1960s and before, the Soka Gakkai in the US was mostly Japanese war brides seeking out other Japanese people. While their American GI husbands often converted, they didn't do bunches of shakubuku - that was the Japanese women's responsibility. It was their religion, after all. Eventually, the movement got off the ground and started gaining American members who didn't have an Asian connection, but especially since the excommunication of Ikeda in 1991, with the subsequent changes in doctrine and focus, membership has dropped off sharply. For example, SGI national leader Bill Aiken stated that the SGI-USA had added an average of 1,000 people per year between 1991 and 1999 O_O

No comment on how many left SGI-USA, of course, but 1000 per year for the ENTIRE US? Wow. That's an average of just 20 new people per state in an entire year! As Toda once drily remarked: "At this rate, we can reach an enormous number in ten thousand years."

In WHY THE GODS ARE NOT WINNING, researchers Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman note that "no major faith is proving able to grow as they break out of their ancestral lands via mass conversion" and that "securely prosperous democracies appear immune to mass devotion". The reasons for this are twofold:

• 1. Religions tend to conform themselves to their culture of origin, meaning that they often feel foreign and strange to people of other cultures. When I joined the SGI-USA (then still called "NSA" - Nichiren Shoshu of America/Academy) in 1987, the members were still segregated for meetings, with women on one side and men on the other and an aisle down the middle between them. That "custom" was tossed in late 1987 or early 1988 where I was. When we got our first community center in 1988, people were still expected to take their shoes off, and woe betide the poor Byakuren who was in charge of the administration of the stinky shoe room for KRG! It wasn't until a year or two later that we were told we could wear our shoes inside the building O_O There were many other weirdnesses, like the pervasive usage of Japanese words, even using "Hai!" instead of "Okay" or "Yes", but you get the picture.

Also, Japanese people are notoriously group-oriented, putting the group ahead of themselves as individuals; that's quite different from the hyper-individualistic Americans. So the emphasis on obedience and following isn't a good fit, to put it lightly:

“Even if the General Director is wrong, you must also follow.”

To the American mind, all that "itai doshin" (many in body, one in mind) and "never breaking unity" feels very much like crushing dissent and not allowing individuality or freedom of choice.

• 2. We throughout the world now frown upon coercion in religion. Christianity spread widely because "missionaries" (with their soldier escorts) basically enslaved local populations and killed everyone who wouldn't go along. That left behind only the members of the group who were amenable to being "remade in the Christians' image". Now that there's no more "colonizing" going on, now that enslaving and torturing and killing are no longer allowed as means of converting others to your faith, there's no more religious growth. Christianity cannot survive without coercion; neither can any other religion. In the Muslim theocracies, it's "Be Muslim or die." There are 13 countries in the world where being an atheist is a "crime" that carries the death penalty! In Japan, Soka Gakkai members can pressure others into joining - this was so commonplace during the Soka Gakkai's formative years, and so egregiously over-the-line, that 2nd President Josei Toda was called into the police department to sign a statement guaranteeing that Soka Gakkai members would no longer use violence and threats in conducting shakubuku! It was a BAD problem if it had come to that!

In the wake of the excommunication, Soka Gakkai members have attacked Nichiren Shoshu priests, vandalized temples, and rented sound trucks to harass temples with loud broadcasts of criticism and insults.

Here are the original goals of the Soka Gakkai:

1. Spritually : Make all the Japanese belong to Soka Gakkai.

2. Politically : Have the Komei Party take the rein of the Japanese government.

3. Economically : Have business enterprises affiliated with Soka Gakkai control Japanese financial circles.

4. Have Soka Gakkai members slip into key positions of Japanese society, including administrative organs, the Ministry of Justice, the media, educational organizations, cultural organizations, etc., then take control of Japan.

5. Then finally, Daisaku Ikeda will become a man of absolute power to rule Japan.

Ikeda gave each satellite SGI colony a goal of converting 1% of each country's population in order to begin the same takeover process there, but even that modest goal proved entirely out of reach. In no country outside of Japan has the SGI come anywhere CLOSE to even a paltry 1% of the populace joining.

And what we're seeing here in the US, now that we're no longer in the throes of the culture-changing societal upheaval of the 1960s' Civil Rights Movement and the conflict over the Vietnam War, there aren't any more hippies who are willing to try some weird magic chant to get stuff. That was a particular moment in American history; the Soka Gakkai managed to get in on the tail end of that, and now that it's over, the SGI is reverting to its origins: A Japanese religion for Japanese people.