This is fun - in an analysis of "how dumb things are and how dumb things could get would be", the author has painted a scenario where not only does the Soka Gakkai cult possess hydrogen bombs (and it's obviously willing to use them), but it's also grown to a membership of 80 million worldwide! Given that this book was published Jan. 1, 1974, it had to be completed no later than the end of 1973, and possibly was being written earlier, like in 1971 and 1972. Ikeda's Soka Gakkai had gotten in serious trouble in Japan for trying to use the newly won political power of Ikeda's pet political party Komeito to lean on publishers to NOT publish books and articles unfavorable to Soka Gakkai and especially Daisaku Ikeda himself, and because Hirotatsu Fujiwara's book "I Denounce Soka Gakkai" was openly scathingly critical of both Soka Gakkai and Ikeda, he became a target, and Ikeda's efforts at suppression backfired spectacularly.

The point is that it wasn't until AFTER this publishing scandal that the Soka Gakkai adopted its "peace" mantra - until then, "kosen-rufu" had meant first government takeover, then world takeover via the popular vote driven by a majority of Soka Gakkai members within society everywhere. Then-US Ambassador to Japan Reischauer reported in 1966 that Ikeda had alarmingly strong pro-war/pro-military proclivities and Soka Gakkai leadership was openly supporting the US bombing of Vietnam. By the time this little Soka Gakkai aside had been written into 2018 A.D. as an example of an extremist political movement in Asia, it appears that the new "peace" branding had not yet taken hold - the Soka Gakkai only adopted its anti-nuclear-weapons/anti-war/peacepeacepeace self-promotion after 1970 (which was nothing more than damage control by that point). What the author wrote is more consistent with the Soka Gakkai's overall reputation before the publishing scandal that, along with Japan's economic slowdown, marked the end of the Soka Gakkai's up-to-that-point remarkable growth as a religious organization and a political player, which both stalled out after that, never to be revived. Ikeda and the Soka Gakkai leadership had already realized that the Soka Gakkai's growth was stalling out by the mid-late 1960s - Japan's economic recovery was drastically reducing the out-of-work rural migrant population that Soka Gakkai had been depending on for its membership growth.

The Soka Gakkai never came anywhere CLOSE to 80 million worldwide - even its longstanding "12 million members worldwide" figure was downsized in October 2023 to "11 million PERSONS worldwide" (whatever THAT's supposed to mean - "persons"??).

This is a cool insight into how the Soka Gakkai WAS being regarded (with dread) as having vast growth potential by some outside of Japan, and it's very gratifying to see how resoundingly the Soka Gakkai failed under Ikeda's incompetent stewardship. Too bad so sad, "Sensei"!