Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the life and thought of the Nichirenist Buddhist, pan-Asianist, and feminist Koizumi Kikue (1904-1992), a central figure in the East-Asia League, and the implications for Nichirenism in modern Japan.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the life, thought and social activism of the Nichirenist Buddhist, pan-Asianist, and feminist Koizumi Kikue (1904-1992). After joining the Pillar of the Nation Society (Kokuchūkai) in 1932 and feeling dissatisfied with the role of women in the movement, she started her own women's Nichirenist study group. She was greatly inspired by the story of the daughter of the Dragon King in the Lotus Sutra, who attained Buddhahood, as well as Nichiren's endorsement of the potential for the enlightenment of women. She rose to fame for her bestselling A Manchurian Girl (Manshūjin no shōjo) of 1936-1938, a colonial story in which Koizumi related her struggles with the worldviews of a local Chinese girl employed in her household. After returning to Japan, she became a key organizer, activist, and thinker in the Pan-Asianist and Nichirenist movement of the East-Asia League Movement (Tōarenmei kyōkai). The figurehead of the East-Asia League was the military thinker and Nichirenist Ishiwara Kanji. Her activism spurred in turn other women's branches in the movement, in both urban and rural settings, and she remained active after war's end in 1945. Koizumi Kikue also developed her own original Nichirenist ideas, including a religious and feminist history of Japan, The Revelation of Women's History (Josei shi kaiken) of 1941. While gaining a key role in the East-Asian League Movement, she was also criticized by other members and surveilled by the Higher Special Police. Koizumi's thought combined feminist ideas with Nichirenist millenarianism, science and technology, Pan-Asianism, anti-communism, and an unshakeable belief in the divine mission of the Japanese nation. Koizumi's life and ideas therefore straddle dichotomies of empowerment and suppression, nature and modernity, and center and periphery in the wartime Japanese empire.