Thanksgiving on the 4th of July

July 4, 2019

Thanksgiving and the 4th of July have long been my favorite holidays. Both days are secular occasions, and both are about gratitude. Oddly, it took a Japanese religious zealot to help me to regain a sense of appreciation for this country and its founding fathers and original ideals.

When I was growing up, all of the holidays of our extended family were held at the Berkeley home of my grandmother, Emma Flanagan Kenney. Easter, Mother’s Day, the 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve were all at Gram’s house. Every 4th of July she would hang a 48 star American flag from the second story of her house, overlooking the backyard where my numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins would sing It’s A Grand Old Flag and other patriotic songs. In the 1950’s and early 1960’s, in the aftermath of World War II, none of us questioned the value of allegiance to our country.

But as I got older and learned about our genocide against American Indians, slavery, and the Vietnam war, I became cynical about this country and its history. The 4th of July became a hollow festival commemorating slave-holding founding fathers, and I had no desire to fight in a war promoted by lying politicians.

And then, at 17 I became a Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist.

At first I was amused by the anti-drug, clean-cut, all-American image advocated by our Japanese leaders. They believed that a wholesome appearance would be appealing to middle America, and if we were going to replace Christianity as the dominant religion of the United States, we had to be acceptable to the mainstream. While most of our leaders were Japanese immigrants, some of them were Japanese Americans who had been imprisoned in internment camps during World War II, and they didn’t want to be perceived as the Other again. I later learned that Nichiren Shoshu of America (now Soka Gakkai International-USA) and its Japanese parent organization Soka Gakkai were being monitored in the U.S by the FBI and in Japan by the CIA as a potential threat to American security. So the paranoia about potential persecution was at least partially understandable.

Our General Director, Masayasu Sadanaga, loved to watch old movies late at night, and one evening he saw James Cagney portray Broadway producer/actor/dancer George M. Cohan in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy. Inspired by the patriotism of the song and dance man, Sadanaga changed his name to George M. Williams, and around 1972 he began to infuse our Buddhist gatherings with red white and blue fervor. For our 1976 convention in New York we even took the Cohan song I’m a Yankee Doodle Boy and changed the words for our convention theme song:

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, kosen rufu do or die, the Gakkai spirit that’s for all the world, was born on the 4th of July. Doing human revolution is my Yankee Doodle joy. To have a happy country we need lots of shakubuku, let’s go and fill the world with joy.

Kosen rufu means world peace based upon spreading our Buddhist teachings, Gakkai means our society of Nichiren Buddhists, human revolution refers to elevating one’s character through Buddhist practice, and shakubuku means to convert people to true Buddhism (our brand of Buddhism, as opposed to every other kind of Buddhism).

But George M. Williams didn’t stop there. He really believed that the ideals of the American Revolution were humanistic values totally aligned with Soka Gakkai beliefs, so he had our publications praise George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and others. He even let it be known among a select few of us that he was probably the reincarnation of George Washington.

Here was a Japanese Buddhist immigrant using the music and story of the son of Irish Catholic immigrants, George M. Cohan, to sell us Americans on our own history. And Williams, like Cohan, was a great showman, using our annual conventions to celebrate both Nichiren Buddhism and American culture through large Broadway musical-style productions. To this day I must say that the shows were uplifting, exciting, and educational, as well as professionally produced. Williams was jokingly referred to by a friend of mine as Cecil B. DeBuddha because he loved to create spectacular extravaganzas. Our 1975 convention on a Buddhist-built floating island off of Waikiki Beach in Honolulu had a Bicentennial theme that honored American democracy, and I was moved to tears by the show.

I began to understand that, as imperfect as our founding fathers were, they were political geniuses who created a society where freedom of religion, the press, speech, assembly, and other rights are enshrined in the Constitution. Granted, our society is deeply flawed and always will be. But the more I travel around the world, the more I appreciate the opportunities that we Americans enjoy.

In retrospect, it may have been overly simplistic to conflate American democracy with Nichiren Buddhism. And eventually I became disillusioned with George M. Williams and Soka Gakkai International, as well as our current highly partisan political atmosphere in Washington and nationwide.

But while I believe that my American identity is temporary, limited to my current incarnation, I still appreciate the sacrifices made by our founders and by subsequent generations to create the kind of country that people all over the world are sometimes desperate to get to. And if I’m not reborn here in my next lifetime, I still hope that others are able to enjoy what George M. Cohan and George M. Williams recognized as a special oasis of freedom for humanity.

On this 4th of July, I give thanks to all those who have contributed to this American experiment in liberty and self-determination.