So what's Ikeda been doing in hiding, since he was last seen in April 2010?

I came across this report, from 2011 - according to this source:

• Ikeda is in a wheelchair due to cerebral infarction (the obstruction of the blood supply to an organ or region of tissue, typically by a thrombus or embolus, causing local death of the tissue; infarct: a localized area of dead tissue (necrosis) resulting from obstruction of the blood supply to that part, esp by an embolus Also called infarction.)

• Due to complications of diabetes, his feet had to be amputated.

That would explain why Ikeda is seated in all his later pictures.

• Advanced dementia

This is a real problem for the Soka Gakkai, given how often Ikeda has banged on about how it is at the very end of life that the effects of one's causes ultimately become manifest. In Japanese culture, dementia and Alzheimer's count as "head broken in seven pieces", which is the punishment for slandering the Lotus Sutra. Ikeda and his Soka Gakkai would have done a victory dance if any priests from Nichiren Shoshu had been diagnosed with dementia/Alzheimer's and would have loudly proclaimed this as evidence of their slander and grotesque wrongness. But now the shoe is on the other foot, so to speak.

So they've kept Ikeda out of sight and all those ghostwriters busy churning out articles and interviews and whatnot, all attributed to Ikeda. Then as now, it's not his own work.

Furthermore:

• Cerebral infarction in TWO places in the brain

• Can't walk

• Bizarre, violent behavior and making strange sounds

• Unable to recognize nurses or visitors

• Unable to communicate with nurses or visitors

• Difficulty chewing resulted in the insertion of a feeding tube

• It takes four-five people to help him get from his wheelchair into the bath

• Ikeda wears a gown to make diaper changes easier

• Speculation is that, when Ikeda dies, there will be no public viewing or funeral; it will be a private family-only affair.

Here is a drawing of the World's Eternal Mentoar. Too bad so sad.