From that same article:
Registered religions and religious corporations are granted tax-free status and are examined by the government when they apply for official status but after that are rarely checked again. In 2008, 13,4000 religious corporation did not submit the reports that they are legally required to submit, double the number from five years earlier.
I'll bet you anything that the Soka Gakkai was one of those O_O
I'll bet it was connected with this:
In 1992, Soka Gakkai helped the LPD pass a controversial law allowing Japanese troops abroad in return for government help in ending "tax cases against the sect."
Some religious corporations are covers for organized crime schemes and other scams. One Osaka-based religious organization, for example, said it was based in temple but when investigators checked out the address given, the only thing there was a factory. The right to represent the temple was bought by a salesman who formally worked for a company accused of defrauding 29,000 people. After obtaining the right to the temple name the man hired foreigners to dress up as begging monks and collect donations in the name of the temple in busy shopping districts. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun]
What do you want to bet that Toda and Ikeda were bribing the Temple to praise the Soka Gakkai as Nichiren Shoshu's main lay organization?? With one hand washing the other? The "excommunication" appears to have been an arrangement of convenience for both, despite all the hue and cry mostly from Ikeda's camp.
The appearance of a large number of new religions after World War II has been attributed to a spiritual vacuum created by the end of emperor worship and the creation of legal system that granted tax-free status to registered religious movements.
THERE it is! Makiguchi's off the hook, but Toda changed the name and the focus from reforming the educational system to making a huge pile of money while drinking and smoking himself into an early grave.
Explaining why cults find fertile ground in Japan, Japanese cult expert Shoko Egawa told the Times of London, “When something is going on in a closed space where group psychology and religious belief work together, people’s behavior will eventually stop being led by rational thought.”
Yep, been there, done that, bought the shirt.
One of the largest religious sects in Japan is the Soka Gakkai (Value-creating Society) school of Buddhism. Between 1951 and 1980 it grew from 51,000 to 16 million members. It now has around 8 million members.
Oh, gee. How do you suppose the Soka Gakkai, the home office, lost HALF its membership??? That's not the way kosen-rufu is going to unfold, you know!