Cultivating Chrysanthemums: Dewey, Makiguchi, Ikeda, and Dialogue as Growth

• In Event: 52.063 - The Dewey–Soka Heritage: Dialogue, Reconstruction, and Value-Creative Democracy as Justice

Abstract

This chair’s introduction has two objectives: First, it introduces the session by providing an historical and contemporary context of engaging Dewey in dialogue with the heritage of Soka education. Albeit limited, the extant scholarship on Dewey’s influence on Japanese education (e.g., Feuer, 1969; Kobayashi, 1964; Nolte, 1984; Saito, 2003; Sun, 2007) has not considered the long and consistent history of the Dewey-Soka dialogue. Using bilingual-bicultural, critical discourse analysis (Rogers, 2004) of the complete works of Soka progenitor, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1981-1988), and its heir and Soka schools founder, Daisaku Ikeda (1991-2014), alongside original and translated works by Dewey, this paper provides an authoritative treatment of the Dewey-Soka transactional relationship.
2015 marks the 85th anniversary of Makiguchi’s most characteristic work, Soka kyoikugaku taikei (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy, [1930] 1981-1988, Vols. 5 & 6). Although Makiguchi’s first reference to Dewey (before Dewey was translated into Japanese) appeared in his earliest known essay, on apperception, in 1897 (Makiguchi, 1981-1988, Vol. 7, pp. 143-149), this paper takes its title and thematic focus from a lesser-known lecture on soka pedagogy that Makiguchi published in 1936, “Kyoiku no taido wo ronzu” (“On the attitude of education,” 1981-1988, Vol. 9). In this lecture, Makiguchi identifies with Dewey’s extensive treatment of the need for educators to engage students as individuals to foster their growth and social self-actualization. Makiguchi likens such an attitude to the difficult and time-consuming work of cultivating chrysanthemums, captured in the 1774 Buson haiku about chrysanthemum growers (ibid). Given the time (1936) of this lecture and context of Japan’s increasing nationalism and militaristic education policies, Makiguchi’s focus, and shared commitment with Dewey, on the need for teachers to cultivate individual human beings rather than imperial subjects can be read as subversive resistance in favor of democratic and just education. Makiguchi was arrested and imprisoned as a thought criminal in 1943; he died in prison in 1944.
Makiguchi’s pedagogy is currently enacted through the educational philosophy and practice of Daisaku Ikeda (b. 1928). In addition to the network of 14 kindergartens, elementary and secondary schools, and colleges and universities he founded in seven countries across Asia and the Americas, Ikeda has continued Makiguchi’s engagement with Deweyan philosophy in numerous essays and dialogues, including most recently with Dewey scholars Larry Hickman and Jim Garrison (Ikeda et al., 2014). This paper introduces Ikeda’s translated and un-translated essays on Dewey (and Hickman and Garrison), wherein he also champions the need for educators to invest fully in cultivating each individual’s growth and happiness. Further, taking Hickman and Garrison as exemplars, Ikeda asserts that such volitional engagement—transaction—is necessary also for the teacher’s unlimited growth as a process of what he calls “human education” (Ikeda, 1991-2014, Vol. 55; 2012; also Hougoku, 2001).
Second, this paper concludes and anticipates ensuing papers with consideration of zuiho-bini (随方毘尼), the Buddhist principle of “adopting to local culture,” as a lens to explore future scholarship on Dewey’s democratic and just education that might emerge from the heritage of the Dewey-Soka dialogue.

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University