🇯🇵 Soka Gakkai, Japan’s most beloved “cult”?
A Buddhist movement that helped put a party in government, gave Japan an entire genre of internet remixes, and counted Legolas among its members. How is this only two pages in a Japanese English textbook?
Soka Gakkai started in 1930 as a group of educators. It claims 8.27 million member households in Japan. An older survey put the share of people who identified as followers at roughly 1 in 50.
How did it get political power? At the ballot box. Its longtime ally Komeito joined the LDP-led government in 1999. The parties spent 2009–2012 in opposition, then returned to power together.
Meanwhile, on Niconico, users were chopping up a Soka Gakkai video of comedian Masami Hisamoto. She said her head went “pop” after Daisaku Ikeda praised her comedy. The clip became remix material. Whether any of those views turned into sign-ups is anybody’s guess.
And yes, Orlando Bloom is a longtime member. He and Katy Perry rang in 2025 in Tokyo, and he shared a photo of them together outside a Buddhist temple. He said he’d spent New Year’s with his Buddhist family.
🇯🇵 Japan, which Soka Gakkai clip do you still hear in your head?
🇺🇸 U.S. readers, what’s your closest equivalent to a religious video becoming internet folklore?
Nissin once turned Jamiroquai’s “Virtual Insanity” into a commercial about being hungry enough to eat FIVE cups of ramen.
In 2010, the company behind Cup Noodles took footage from the original 1996 music video for a Japanese TV ad. They kept Jay Kay’s giant hat and that famously sliding room, rewrote the lyrics in Japanese, and used CGI to make his mouth match the new words.
The best part? Japan was already part of the song’s story. Jay Kay says the lyrics came to him on tour in snowy Sendai. The streets looked deserted, and when he asked where everyone was, someone told him they were underground.
Fourteen years after the song came out, it was back in Japan selling instant ramen. The commercial even won bronze at Japan’s ACC CM Festival. And Nissin gave Freddie Mercury and Bon Jovi the Cup Noodle treatment in the same campaign.
This deserves two pages in a Japanese English textbook.
If Nissin brought the campaign to American TV, what ’90s hit would you pick for the next ad?
@AbsolutelyVexed@Fidias0 I totally agree. It’s literally working as a buffer zone for both sides. But this Fidias is too busy to gather the votes for next election. He doesn’t care about ultimate solution after all.
Japan turned the Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” into a yogurt commercial. Four cows. One bathroom.
How would you teach this in a Japanese English textbook?
🇺🇸 US fans, would you still sing along?
🇯🇵 Japan, what other ad jingle lives rent-free in your head?
https://t.co/rxQjZQcNua