Good guess, but no; it was, believe it or not, one of those fundamentalist Korean "Christian" churches that are located in and around Okubo. (My girlfriend, who was raised as a Christian, told me that they refused to read anything but one section of the old testament that had to do with Tithing or something).
As far as Soka Gakkai goes; maybe you can educate me more about them, but they seem to be hated by the Uyoku (so they can't be all that bad). The real insane religious cult in Japan right now is "Happiness Science"; Kofuku Jitsugento feels much scarier than Komeito.
I was invited to join SGI by a Japanese co-worker. He told me that if I joined and simply did this chant everyday, I could get get anything I wanted. Like, anything.
This seemed like a great deal, so I actually went to a meeting with him and two of his "senpais" in the organization. Of course, I had no intention to join; I went out of (morbid?) curiosity.
Apparently I was a sort of strategic "target", so to speak. They wanted to expand in Brazil so it would be nice to teach a Brazilian (me) about SGI. They showed me a video of Ikeda (the founder) in Brazil and how a believer was cured of cancer thanks to SGI. They also talked a little about the Buddhist origins of SGI, but didn't enter into details. I'd have to join and start doing the chant thing. Only then I'd learn more. They were really friendly, but somewhat creepy.
I even toyed with the idea of joining and doing a write up to be published later under a pseudonym, but eventually decided against it.
SGI is (at least nominally) internationalist and pacifist, so it's only natural that the nationalist and militarist Uyoku don't like them.
I won't claim they are as evil as Uyoku, but they're definitely not harmless.
Only reason I was curious is that I've heard them described as a cult by a lot of people. In my experience, they seem pretty harmless, and overall pretty friendly, but religion in general makes me... edgy.
But yeah, them being hated by the right-wingers does score them points in my book. :)
Didn't know about Kofuku Jitsugento; care to enlighten me?
This explains who the asshole in the black van was.
Backstory: In Japan, it's pretty common around election season to have politicians rolling around in vans with loudspeakers, asking you to vote for them. You just get used to it after awhile.
But a few weeks ago, when I was walking to the station, a black van with illegible handwriting on the side had the loudspeakers turned up to about ten million. I could hear them literally three kilometers away, and anything less than five hundred meters was painful.
Of course, because they had the volume up so high, the distortion made whatever they had blaring out of their loudspeakers totally incomprehensible.
The other pedestrians, shop owners, and anybody blessed with the gift of hearing all looked pretty pissed.
They are quite a cult but honestly, religion in Japan is very difficult for me to grok. All the members of these "New Religions" that I've met seem to be old/facing mortality, with two exceptions.
As for Kofuku Jitsugen To, you probably know them under their English name.
The HRP is scary because they sincerely believe all of Japan is under existential threat by North Korea and that they need to remilitarize to "take them out". If that sounds normal to y'all, it's because you never read the books by the founder or how Kim Jong Il's "teacher's ghost" supposedly appeared before the founder and told him that NK would destroy Japan for its evil master China.
(On the other hand, they want to have more babies which would be good for Japan, particularly if it resulted in people getting out of the Tokyo area...)
