Where in the World is Ikeda Daisaku, Soka Gakkai’s Long-Missing Leader?

Ikeda Daisaku, one of the most powerful political fixers and religious leaders in Japan, hasn’t been seen in public since 2010. Where is he?

By Jake Adelstein

Where in the world is Ikeda Daisaku?

As the supreme leader of Soka Gakkai, he is one of the most powerful religious and political leaders in Japan. A power broker said to have been chummy with Nelson Mandela who hobnobbed with Gorbachev and helped select the next Prime Minister of Japan. He was a globe-trotting ambassador for peace.

But since May of 2010, he doesn’t seem to have even left his home. No one outside his inner circle knows where he is, or if he’s even capable of making a cogent statement on his own. He is in many ways reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard, the charismatic leader of Scientology who wasn’t seen in public for over a decade before the organization officially announced his death.

Even asking, “Where is Ikeda Daisaku?” is taboo. The Japanese mass media avoids the subject as deftly as they avoided covering Emperor of J-Pop Johnny Kitagawa’s long history of sexually assaulting young boys in his talent agency.