Reiyūkai ［霊友会］: Literally, “Society of Friends of the Spirits.” A Buddhist lay organization in Japan founded in 1925 by Kakutarō Kubo (1892–1944), an employee of the Imperial Household Ministry, his elder brother Yasukichi Kotani (1885–1929), and Kotani’s wife, Kimi (1901–1971). The Reiyūkai stresses ancestor veneration and Buddhist tradition centering on the Lotus Sutra. The group has no clergy and no formal affiliation with any Buddhist school but relies on lay teachers who lead small group meetings. Kubo devised an ancestral ritual to be performed twice daily by reciting a selection of the Lotus Sutra and the repeated chanting of its name. During the years before and after the Second World War, several groups split off from the Reiyūkai, of which the Risshō Kōseikai, founded in 1938, became the most prominent.