CategoryOn the Cover

Bryggen is a historic harbor district in Bergen, one of North Europe’s oldest port cities on Norway’s west coast. It was a trade hub of the Hanseatic League—a medieval commercial and defense guild that controlled maritime trade in the North and Baltic Seas from the 14th to the mid-16th century. The old wharf is characterized

The city of Potosí is located at an altitude of more than 13,000 feet, making it one of the world’s highest. Founded in the mid-16th century when silver was discovered in the Potosí Mountain, it soon became the largest city in the New World and the world’s largest industrial complex for its silver mining industry.

On the morning of October 9, 1960, Ikeda Sensei took a walk in Chicago’s Lincoln Park during his first visit to the United States. He looked on as a group of young boys played with a ball. When a Black child came along, the others ignored him. When one of them missed the ball and

Rising 12,388 feet, Mount Fuji is Japan’s highest peak. Though still classified as active, the stratovolcano has lain dormant since 1707. Its cultural and spiritual influence extends far beyond Japan’s borders. Mount Fuji is known as a beloved symbol of Japan, featured in art and poetry through the ages, including the famous Hokusai woodblock print

Located in northern Cambodia, the city of Angkor was the center of the Khmer Kingdom, which thrived from the 9th to the 14th centuries. In that time, the Khmer erected architectural masterpieces in the city, including Angkor Wat, the world’s largest religious structure, and other temples like the Bayon, Preah Khan and Ta Prohm. Many

Lord Howe Island was uninhabited until the late 1700s when the British navy claimed it and other nearby islands. The remote island’s thriving ecosystem includes rare endemic species such as the Lord Howe Woodhen, a flightless bird, and the Lord Howe Island Phasmid, the world’s largest stick insect. Soaring mountain peaks formed by an underwater

In the spring of 1992, the world’s eyes were on Los Angeles, as the verdict in the Rodney King trial sparked massive social unrest and a national debate about police brutality, racial discrimination and economic inequality. In its aftermath, Ikeda Sensei delivered his poem “The Sun of Jiyu Over a New Land” on January 27,

For almost 25 centuries, the Acropolis of Athens has survived wars, earthquakes and fires, adapting to different uses and civilizations. Original fortifications on the hilltop site date back to the 13th century BCE. The Acropolis—which stands as the most complete monument of Greek antiquity—was built in the 5th century BCE alongside other great architectural achievements,

Koutammakou is home to the Batammariba people of northeastern Togo. This living cultural landscape is characterized by takienta—tower-shaped houses built out of mud and straw. The site’s outstanding architecture and its integration of the forests, sacred rocks, springs and other elements of the environment in its construction express the close relationship that the Batammariba have

Tenochtitlàn, the capital of the Aztec Empire, was founded on an island in Lake Texcoco around the year 1325. The location was chosen when the ancient people found an eagle eating a snake atop a cactus, a scene believed to be a sign from the god Huitzilopochtli. It became the center of the most powerful

The previous SGI-USA Las Vegas center didn’t provide enough space for the growing membership. As members formed a committee to search for a new castle of kosen-rufu, there were many false starts and dead ends. But the members weren’t defeated. They refreshed and deepened their resolve each time and took action by conducting chanting sessions

The medieval town of Carcassonne, located in the Occitania region of France, was originally a Gaulish settlement that the Romans transformed into a fortified town in the third century. It is most famous for its nearly two miles of walls interspersed with 52 towers that surround the area, making it the largest walled city in

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial, also known as the Genbaku Dome, was almost completely destroyed by the heat waves and blast wind of the atomic bomb dropped on Aug. 6, 1945. It was one of the only structures left standing near the hypocenter of the explosion.  An exact figure of casualties of the bomb is unknowable,

Located in Northern New Mexico, Taos Pueblo is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. Parts of the adobe settlement have been dated back more than a thousand years. The Taos people still use the adobe structures for religious ceremonies and rites, with about 150 people living in the Pueblo

Ikeda Sensei visited the former SGI-USA Boston Center in 1991—a much smaller center on Harcourt Street—and noticed a large clock in the main Gohonzon room. He encouraged the members to develop the fortune to have a big community center befitting the clock. Three decades later, that clock is now displayed prominently in the main Gohonzon

Gunung Mulu lies just below the equator on the Malaysian island of Borneo.  Covered by thousands of miles of tropical rainforest, the park teems with life and unique natural phenomena. Several millenia of heavy rain have carved formations in the park’s limestone. Jagged spires called the Pinnacles of Gunung Mulu jut out from Borneo’s jungles.

The ancient city of Petra was the capital of the Nabatean kingdom, a desert oasis and nomadic epicenter along major trade routes between Arabia, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. Its elaborate structures were carved by hand directly into sandstone cliffs. Rock-cut channels, webbed throughout the surrounding mountainous desert, connected natural springs to the city’s canals

For more than three millennia, people have inhabited the magnificent natural landscape of Salzkammergut, taking advantage of its salt deposits. Iron Age trade routes across Europe testify to the flourishing society that became known as Hallstatt Culture. After a fire destroyed the town in 1750, it was rebuilt in Baroque style. The landscape has escaped

Ikeda Sensei once gave this guidance at the opening of a new SGI center: Soka Gakkai culture centers are not idle palaces of luxury; they are bastions of kosen-rufu. Bastions are a base from which a struggle is carried out. So the most fitting way to mark the completion of a new bastion is with

The Amphitheatre of El Jem, located in central Tunisia rivals the Colosseum in Rome. Composed of stone bricks and supported on a flat plain by a complex system of arches, the amphitheatre is an impressive display of Roman architecture. It was constructed around 238 BCE in the small city of Thysdrus, present day El Jem.