Editing SG31SBT-T (section)

== Translation ==

<!-- Editorial paragraph 1; paragraph numbers not printed -->
The times are in constant flux. Everything is subjected to merciless selection. Any claim to continued existence is possible only in a form suited to the times; what fails to take such a form will sooner or later be entered on the list of things destined to collapse. Thus, [the wise?]<ref>Corresponds to 賢明, an unusual grammatical subject in the provisional Japanese transcription.</ref> constantly look squarely at the direction of the age, never neglecting to [reckon fully?]<ref>The Japanese includes an undeciphered character or characters: 自らを[?]よく清算.</ref> with themselves and respond appropriately to the new era. This is not accommodation to the times but a principle of self-regulation belonging to a healthy living organism.

<!-- Editorial paragraph 2; paragraph numbers not printed -->
We have now dissolved the Greater Japan Nichirenist Youth League and formed the Youth League for Revitalizing Buddhism. We have also renamed the magazine Wakōdo (“Young People”)<ref>The source prints 若人; its reading and the exact subsequent magazine title should be verified bibliographically.</ref> “Under the Banner of Revitalizing Buddhism” and resolved to launch a new movement under the following platform.

<!-- Editorial paragraph 3; paragraph numbers not printed -->
1. We venerate Śākyamuni Buddha as the highest personality known to humanity and, in accordance with the guiding principle of fellowship, faith, and love, seek to realize the establishment of a Buddha land.

2. We regard all established Buddhist denominations as the vestigial remnants of institutions that have desecrated the Buddhist spirit. We reject them and seek a renewed proclamation of Buddhism appropriate to the present age.

3. We regard the existing capitalist economic system as contrary to the Buddhist spirit and an obstacle to the welfare of the masses. We seek to reform it and bring about the society to come.

<!-- Editorial paragraph 4; paragraph numbers not printed -->
Looking back, our youth organization was founded in the autumn of 1919. In the following year we launched Wakōdo; over the ensuing thirteen years we published 127 issues. Of course, in the Buddhist world as a whole we were a Nichirenist organization hardly worth mentioning. Yet I believe that within Nichirenist circles we may have represented something epoch-making. At any rate, we fought single-mindedly, as a crystallization of sincere devotion and a great surge of ardor, taking the practice of Nichirenism as our watchword.

<!-- Editorial paragraph 5; paragraph numbers not printed -->
But historical circumstances eventually compelled the self-reckoning and abrupt change of direction described above. Saint Nichiren taught: “In studying the Buddha Dharma, one must first learn to discern the times,”<ref>The two Nichiren quotations retain Seno’o’s 1931 wording; compare, but do not silently replace it with, the transmitted Senji shō 選時抄.</ref> and “To say that one should preach the Dharma according to people’s capacities is a grave error.” What penetrating insight! He transcended the individually oriented, “medicine prescribed according to the illness” model of salvation and adopted methods of social salvation directed beyond the individual toward the objective conditions of society. Indeed, what would Saint Nichiren do were he to appear in our own day? And Shinran? Dōgen?

<!-- Editorial paragraph 6; paragraph numbers not printed -->
Self-reckoning demands the utmost accuracy. Its standard must be determined in the concrete realities of lived experience; otherwise it is a lie. Thus we came to recognize the error of conventional religious movements distorted by individualism and idealism, and became convinced that advancing religious activity through concrete social methods was precisely what an age-appropriate religious movement required. At the same time, we clearly recognized the worldwide historical necessity of a Buddhist revival through a movement uniting all Buddhists under the Buddha’s name, rather than remaining indefinitely attached to denominational forms.

<!-- Editorial paragraph 7; paragraph numbers not printed -->
As for the three articles of the platform set out above, I believe that any Buddhist who rejects the notion of religion as a merely private affair, sees its value as a social movement, and advocates Buddhist unity as an important means of social concord would naturally support the first two articles when seeking to reform established denominations that have reached the limits of disorder. With regard to the third article, as our predecessors have repeatedly demonstrated in essays in Chūgai Nippō, social movements that leave untouched the transformation of the existing capitalist system—whose economic arrangements underlie the basic conditions of life—are, ultimately, merely palliative.<ref>The Japanese compound 彌縫 is a consequential but provisional transcription requiring image confirmation.</ref> That hardly needs saying at this point. We are watching closely how this issue will be handled by the All-Japan Buddhist Youth Federation now being formed, and expect it to be the decisive test of that federation’s reason for existing.

<!-- Editorial paragraph 8; paragraph numbers not printed -->
After all, is not the Buddhist spirit upheld by the thirteen denominations and fifty-six branches, in brief, a recognition of impermanence and an affirmation of a life grounded in faith and love? Indeed, love gives rise to right understanding and heeds humanity’s demand for mutual love rather than merely inherited forms. A movement to unite all Buddhists under the Buddha’s name should therefore be possible so long as even a trace of aspiration to the Way remains. And in the difficult undertaking of transforming capitalism, should not Buddhists above all be the ones to exert themselves to the utmost in the construction of a Buddha land?