Conflict in Japan Affects U.S. Buddhists : Religion: The Santa Monica-based wing changes its name. Another group weighs legal action.

The conflict between Japan’s largest Buddhist sect and its powerful lay organization has reverberated through the Southern California-based U.S. wing of the Soka Gakkai, according to former and current members of the group.

Earlier this year, when the split became evident, the U.S. organization, which is based on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, distanced itself from the priests of the Nichiren Shoshu sect by changing its name from Nichiren Shoshu of America to SGI-USA (short for Soka Gakkai International-USA).

With the split have come widespread rumors within the Soka Gakkai, including reports that members are not being welcomed at the Nichiren Shoshu temples and that, in order to enter, visitors must renounce their Soka Gakkai allegiance.

But Mike Robbins, manager of the Myohoji Temple in Rancho Cucamonga, said “anyone who is practicing Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism continues to be welcome here at the temple.”

In the wake of Soka Gakkai’s excommunication by Nichiren Shoshu, a group of disgruntled Soka Gakkai members in Northern California are contemplating taking legal action against the organization for allegedly taking their money fraudulently. They maintain that they were never informed of the frictions between the religion and its lay organization. They had donated tens of thousands of dollars for a new religious cultural center and parking garage in the belief that the two would remain linked.

Some former members of the Soka Gakkai have heard that the lay organization is giving out used gohonzon, or prayer scrolls, to new members instead of returning them to the head temple in Japan for destruction or storage. That report has been denied by the SGI-USA.

The gohonzons, considered an integral part of Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism, are supposed to be bestowed on new members by Nichiren Shoshu priests at an initiation ceremony. The scrolls are normally returned to the priests when people die, marry or leave the sect.

SGI-USA spokesman Al Albergate--former spokesman for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office--said last week that he had been told by Soka Gakkai members that only those who denounce their Soka members were being issued new gohonzon.

“We’ve been preparing people to practice without the gohonzon for at least awhile,” he said.

The dispute in Japan also caused members and former members of the Soka Gakkai in this country to more openly question the motives of the organization’s various offshoots in their past attempts to disassociate themselves from the main group. Disaffected members say, and documents indicate, that the offshoots have long been clearly connected to each other and to the Soka Gakkai.

Representatives of Soka University of America, a nonprofit organization that wants to build a 4,500-student, four-year college in the Santa Monica Mountains near Calabasas, have repeatedly insisted during interviews and public hearings that the school is independent from the Soka Gakkai and its U.S. wing. The school’s expansion proposal has drawn criticism from nearby residents and state and federal parks officials, who want the land for a national park headquarters.

Similar claims of independence have been made by other Soka Gakkai-related groups, including the American branch of the group, Soka Gakkai International-USA, and the Nichiren Shoshu Sokagakkai of Canada, which has proposed a controversial educational and religious conference center outside Toronto.

Yet tax and land transaction documents filed in the United States and Canada, plus interviews and information supplied by the groups themselves, indicate that all are closely related.

George Williams, general director of Soka Gakkai International-USA--known as the Nichiren Shoshu of America (NSA) until a few months ago--is named prominently in documents filed by other groups. Williams was listed as founding director of the Nichiren Shoshu Sokagakkai of Canada (NSC) and the first chief administrative officer of Soka University of America in tax-related documents obtained from the Internal Revenue Service and from its Canadian counterpart, Revenue Canada.

Williams and NSA also are listed in Los Angeles County deeds as coordinators of the purchase of the original 248 acres of Soka University of America property. The Calabasas school now holds classes for about 100 students from Soka University in Japan, most of whom are Soka Gakkai members. During a tour last spring, gongyo, the religion’s form of chanting, was listed twice daily on a dormitory schedule.

Enclosed in tax returns filed this year was a new list of 11 Soka University officers, directors and trustees, which the school’s representatives point to as evidence of their independence.