Nichiren Thought in Modern Japan:
Two Perspectives
by Hiroo Sato
Japan of the 1930s was marked by a burgeoning militarism leading to
the Pacific War. The aggressive imperatives of nationalistic expansion
were able to find congruence in 13th-century Nichiren thought. This
fostered a movement that I will refer to in this paper as Nichirenism,a movement that was ideologically linked to this rise of militarism.
Antithetically, a closer reading of the Nichiren corpus might actuallysteer clear of nationalist prerogatives and seek a broader landscape.
As I interrogate these polarities, I sketch out perspectives of two of themost prominent Nichiren thinkers of the period, Chigaku Tanaka andTsunesaburo Makiguchi. Further, I will critically question how eachof them, consulting the same doctrinal resources, arrived at suchdifferent conclusions. For Tanaka, Nichirenism justified militarism.
For Makiguchi, Nichiren thought provided a framework for aworldview in opposition to militarism and totalitarianism.
1. Introduction
The influences of Nichiren thought on modern Japan requires an
examination of the ideological and social movements that marked the
beginning of the era. Arguably the most direct connection of Nichiren
thought to prewar ideology was made by former Nichiren Shu priest
Chigaku Tanaka (1861–1939), founder of Nichirenshugi or the
Nichirenism movement. Proponents of Tanaka’s ideas included Chogyu
Takayama, the noted writer popularized as the “Nietzsche of Japan,” andKanji Ishihara, a lieutenant colonel in the Imperial Japanese Armyremembered for his notion of “Final War” between the U.S. and Japan.
In those years of renewed interest in Nichiren, the career educator
Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871–1944), a contemporary of Tanaka,
also created an ideological movement rooted in the principles
espoused by Nichiren. Makiguchi founded the lay Soka Kyoiku
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Gakkai, which, as the Soka Gakkai, figured prominently among themany new religious movements in post-war Japan. In examining thewords and actions of Tanaka and Makiguchi that related the ideas of
Nichiren during the early years of the Showa period, I would like todiscuss the placement in history of these two representative men of
Nichiren thought.
2. The Showa State and Religion
With the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan began in earnest to follow
the Western powers on the road to building a modern state and inextending its imperial reach.
The wars fought by France against her neighbors in the late 18th
century created a wave of nationalist sentiment throughout Europe,
especially in Italy and Germany, such that the modern era is known
as an era of nationalism. At the dawn of the 19th century, the Italianpeninsula was made up of a half-dozen sovereign states. European
nationalists cited the distinction of each region to claim heritage of the
Roman Empire and the Renaissance for Italian national self-identity.
Germany referred not to a nation but to a large area in Central
Europe made up of 38 independent kingdoms and smaller states.
With the rallying of peoples by ethnicity, European nationalists
succeeded in forming powerful, unified states.
A latecomer to modern nationhood, Japan set its sights on
becoming a centralized power to confront and compete with Western
influences. Pursuit of a nationalist agenda took on the pressure offoreign relations and domestic upheaval to the already weakening
cohesion of centralized feudalism. Through the pre-Meiji period, theword kuni (now used for “country”) meant a clan-domain, in which
loyalty and preservation were greatly valued. The structuraltransformation from a rigid and restrictive social hierarchy to aunified state power proved more difficult than imagined.
With the abolishment of the Tokugawa shogunate and therestoration of imperial rule, the new officials in the Meiji Government
declared the emperor the sovereign focus of national unity. To
complete the unification meant, however, that the emperor had to be
seen as more than a mere symbol of the nation. It was necessary toestablish the centrality of the emperor to the religious life of the nation
47

The Jou rn a l of O ri ent a l St ud i es 10 :S p ec ia l I ss u e

as well, to vest in him all manner of moral authority over the people.
Thus the achievement of national unity became synonymous with themobilization of the public to admire and serve the state.
To elevate the status of the emperor, the Meiji Government createda belief structure of myths and rites positioning the emperor as aliving descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami. The
emperor became the embodiment of absolute value, a ruler not onlyof the temporal but also of the spiritual world.
On the surface, the new nation of Japan resembled the modern
nations of the West on which it was modeled. Beneath the surface lay
a Japan with rigid connections to its past.
In the West, Christianity had been the most powerful religious
force up to the Middle Ages. Renaissance philosophy and themeteoric rise of the natural sciences mitigated some of that influence.
Its aspirations for universality inconsonant with the sweeping trend ofstate-building, Christianity was forced to abdicate its predominance innational ideology to nationalism. With the decline of its politicalinfluence at the state level, Christianity refocused its energies intosocial areas that influenced the moral life of the individual, that is, tothe realms of ethics and conscience.
While Japan may have striven to emulate the Western modern
state in certain political and economic respects, it made a radical
departure in its assignment of the role of religion in national
unification. As the European models separated church and politics,
Japan moved in the opposite direction toward unification of religion
and state powers.
By the 1880s, the whirlwind of Westernization had subsided.
There was a new movement toward reinvigorating and preserving
Japanese cultural tradition in its national identity. The emergent
kokusuishugi or cultural nationalism stressed the sacred inviolability ofthe emperor and of Japan as the “land of the gods.” It became thebreeding ground for the national absolutism, or ultranationalism, of
prewar Japan.
3. The Religious Response
The fusion of religion and government within the powers of theimperial state represented a critical challenge for religious authority.
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Every religion possessed its own most revered object of worship,
whose placement had now to be reinterpreted in relation to theemperor as a living god.
The religious response was articulated in one of two ways. One
was to cooperate with the imperial system by acquiescing to State
Shinto and the emperor as the ultimate authority in all matters ofindividual belief and morality. The other was to assign greater value
to one’s own belief system and, as a result, stand in opposition to theauthority of the emperor.
Typical of the latter response were acts of non-acceptance, as in thecase of the well-known Christian theologian and educator Kanzo
Uchimura. In 1890, the Kyoiku Chokugo or Imperial Rescript on
Education was issued, establishing educational support of theemperor system. Copies of the Rescript were distributed, and eachschool held a ceremony of acceptance. At the First Higher School
ceremony, Uchimura refused to bow before the signature of theemperor on the Rescript.
Very few people, however, took an openly critical stance forreligious or any other reasons. It should come as no surprise that
Uchimura’s defiance drew considerable public condemnation. His
disrespect was viewed as evidence of the dangerous foreign influencesof Christianity. Buddhist sects in Japan weighed the advantage of the
moment and joined in the chorus of derision.
Condemning defiance was in fact the normative response of thereligious community in Japan. There was no distancing from theimperial state and its policies. Compliance with the state’s dictates went
beyond passive acceptance to active participation in achieving national
unification by discrediting minority views. Having suffered throughthe anti-Buddhist iconoclasm of the early Meiji period, the religious
community generally moved quickly to a collaborative stance.
4. The Position of Nichirenism
Chigaku Tanaka, the principle proponent of Nichirenism as a
response to the Imperial State, was born in 1861 in Edo (modern
Tokyo), the son of a doctor. After the death of both parents at an earlyage, the young Chigaku entered a temple of the Minobu sect ofNichiren Shu. Dissatisfied with the sect’s acceptance of other49

T he Jou rn al o f Ori ent a l St ud ie s 10 :S p ec ia l Iss u ereligions, he renounced the priesthood and returned to secular life to
begin his own crusade for religious reform. He founded the
Kokuchukai [National Pillar Society] in 1914 for that reason anddevised a course of study in Japanese national polity.
Unlike the Christian theologian Uchimura, Tanaka accepted thesacred and inviolable nature of the emperor and in fact worked toreinforce the idea, as his Nichirenshugi Gairon [An Introduction to
Nichirenism] attests:
In Japan the Son of Heaven is the Path. The emperor,
embodiment of morality, monarchial authority and the Imperial
throne, and by virtue of the throne given the eternal ranking ofemperor and eternal endorsement, is the representative in thisworld of the Path. Thus as water joins water and air joins air the
Son of Heaven is of the Lotus Sutra.

Here Tanaka’s interpretation of the emperor affirms the state’s
promulgation of an unbroken imperial lineage of divinity, and heborrows the terminology of Nichiren Buddhism to lend it credence.
In his study of national polity, Tanaka accomplished the fusion of
Nichiren Buddhism and the emperor system by identifying theemperor as both descended from the gods and the embodiment of thetruth of the Lotus Sutra.
Furthermore, the role of the emperor had to be seen to extend
beyond Japan. That is, it was necessary that the emperor be the moral
axis around which the entire world revolved. For Tanaka, only
Nichiren Buddhism had the breadth of moral suasion to bestow
legitimacy on such a postulation.
If the entire world could be rallied around a single god, theworld then would become one family. Tanaka found useful thebirth myth of Japan. Beyond that, the foundation of Japan could bearticulated in religious terms as the true honzon or object of worshipof the Three Great Secret Laws in the Nichiren canon. This honzon
provided the fundamental principle underlying the idea andachievement of “all mankind as one and the world as one family”(Nichirenshugi Gairon).
We must not lose sight of, however, that this reference by Tanaka
to the “world” by no means arises from any notion of universality. As
this next extract shows, Tanaka’s view of the world as one was
50

NICHIREN THOUGHT IN MODERN JAPANgrounded in a belief of special status accorded to the imperial family
and Japan and to the discrimination of other nations. He writes:
When you observe the ancestral deities and gods of Japan in thecenter of “the mandala of the whole world,” the “ancestralmausoleum of Japan” becomes the “ancestral mausoleum of theworld” and the sacred will forming the center of the world andthe universe clearly the emperor of Japan and national polity ofJapan. (Nichirenshugi Gairon)To Tanaka, who believed in the supremacy of the emperor and inJapan as the center of the universe, Nichiren was the “great holy manof Japan” precisely because he “demonstrated to the world thenobility of the great nation of Japan, disclosing its truth and deep
significance, and was a powerful advocate on a grand scale of Japan’s
mission to unite the world.”
The years during which Tanaka was active, from the Taisho
through to the early Showa period, were years when Japan was
becoming increasingly democratic relative to the old daimyo system. At
the same time, the nation was unabashedly revealing its imperialist
nature as it embarked in earnest on overseas aggression. Tanaka’sview of a world united around the emperor is clearly empathetic with,and provided a justification for, calls in Japan at the time for militaryventures overseas. The simple patriotism of a people excited by theircountry’s victories in the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95) and RussoJapanese (1904–05) campaigns and its rise in status to the rank ofgreat power via participation in the First World War was exploited ina drive for further aggression. At the same time, fanning the flames ofthis patriotic fervor covered up anomalies in society that only
increased in gravity as modernization progressed – the oligarchy ofthe zaibatsu conglomerates, the growing gap between rich and poor,and the desolation of rural villages are but a few examples of theailments of Japanese society as it struggled to join the modern world.
To project the image of Nichiren as an ideologue who supported
the view of Japan “as a nation” as promulgated by Tanaka, required
Tanaka and other Nichirenist propagandists to cover up or expunge
those passages in Nichiren’s writings that went counter to their cause.
In other words they manipulated Nichiren’s teaching to their own
advantage. Many of Nichiren’s heirs sought ways to reconcile51

Th e Jo ur na l o f O ri en t a l St u d ie s 1 0 :Sp ec i al I ss ue

themselves and be able to coexist with earthly authority, as they
toned down or outrightly abandoned the radical aspects ofNichiren’s thought. As the process of accommodation took place, thereligious perspective that Nichiren opened up for his followers —emphasizing belief in a transcendent power above all earthly
authority, on the basis of which one could level criticism against
political rulers — was inherited and maintained not by the religious
professionals, such as Tanaka or the Buddhist priests ensconced intheir established temples, but rather by communities of lay devotees.
One example of this was the lay educator Tsunesaburo Makiguchi, a
man who would honor the spirit of the Nichiren canon, thus finding
not the person or being of the Emperor as the ultimate end in itself
but rather as an obstacle to the national polity.
5. The Position of Tsunesaburo Makiguchi
Tsunesaburo Makiguchi was born in 1871 in Kashiwazaki, Niigata
Prefecture. He left Niigata for Hokkaido at the age of fourteen. After
studying in conditions of poverty he graduated from the normal
school in Sapporo and became a teacher at the affiliated elementary
school, at the same time continuing his own studies in geography.
Eventually he passed the required examination to become a teacher
of geography at middle school level, and took up a post at the same
normal school.
In 1900 Makiguchi left Hokkaido for Tokyo where he continued
his studies while working as secretary to the Meikeikai, the alumni
association of the Tokyo Higher Normal School. The results of these
personal studies were published in two important books — Jinsei
Chirigaku [Geography of Human Life] (1903) and Kyoka no Togo Chushin
Toshite no Kyodoka Kenkyu [Studies in Folklore As an Integration of
Subjects] (1912).
After his work was published, Makiguchi participated in a folk
culture study group known as the Kyodokai, led by personalities suchas Kunio Yanagida, and edited geography textbooks for the Ministryof Education. In 1913 he returned to teaching as principal of Tosei
Elementary School.
There is evidence that Makiguchi attended a number of Tanaka’s
lectures around the year 1916. He could not, however, agree with52

NICHIREN THOUGHT IN MODERN JAPANTanaka’s ideas of Nichirenism. Makiguchi therefore did not embrace
the teachings of Nichiren until 1928, some twelve years later, when hemet Sokei Mitani (1878–1932), a follower of Nichiren Shoshu.
Mitani had become a follower of Nichiren Shoshu, literally the“Nichiren orthodox sect,” in the early Taisho years and was at thetime a central figure in the group of leaders known as Taisekiko or“Taiseki group” at the Nichiren Shoshu Jozai-ji temple. Beyond
conducting his own studies of Nichiren Buddhism, Mitani founded apublishing company, Danshosha, with the aim of publishing his work.
Makiguchi’s acceptance of Nichiren Buddhism may well have been
influenced by writings such as the following from Mitani’s only
published work, Rissho Ankokuron Seishaku [A Detailed Interpretation of‘A Treatise on Pacifying the State by Establishing Orthodoxy’]:
The history fabricated for the sake of flattery by scholars
patronized by the government is of a kind seen nowhere else.
People of good sense and understanding can only feel shame, as
these sycophants turn a history we can all be proud off on its
head while wrongly insisting that the emperor of Japan isdescended from someone who came down from the heavens.
This fiction only embarrasses the 70 million of us enormously,
but even more egregiously, would have all 70 million of us think
as one, and this will only desecrate the sacred stature of theImperial family that is the center of it all.

Mitani is not denying here the validity of the emperor system nor ishe criticizing it. However in the early years of Showa, whennationalist ideology was growing in influence, it is noteworthy thatsomeone would so forcefully challenge the prevailing historical viewof Japan as a land ruled by an emperor descended from the sun
goddess.
At the root of Mitani’s position was a much more rational
interpretation of Buddhism, as may be deduced from statements inthe same work, such as: “Even the Buddha is human, but where theBuddha differs from ordinary humans is in the way in which his spirit
is composed of the most noble law, namely the Lotus Sutra.”Therefore discrimination among humans due to their intrinsic nature,that is, on the grounds of race or origin, is not recognized, and thedifference between the Buddha and an ordinary person depended on
only one thing – whether that person followed the teachings of the53

T he Jou rn a l of Or i ent a l St ud ie s 10 :S p ec ia l Iss u e

Lotus Sutra, the highest “law.” In terms of the concept of equality
under this law, the emperor could be no exception.
Makiguchi agreed with Mitani’s idea that the law is supreme. He
opposed the idea of giving anyone preferential treatment, whether a
god or an emperor just because of their status. To that point,
Makiguchi writes:
As people today have become more knowledgeable, they areaware that law takes precedence over personal status. What’smore Japan now has a constitution, the main point of which is thatthe monarch must respect it and the law it represents equally withevery other citizen. (The System of Value-Creating Pedagogy)

Makiguchi is not writing of religious law here, but of constitutionallaw. Nevertheless, this extract does illustrate the idea Makiguchi hadof transcending the arbitrary nature of the individual in his search foruniversal truth. Makiguchi was adamant in his stance against
accepting anti-scientific views.
It was therefore impossible for Makiguchi to accept the imperial mythof “unbroken lineage” in which all religious authority is concentrated in
the single person of the emperor. Later, when arrested on suspicion of
blasphemy, and asked by the Public Security Preservation authorities, “Ifthe emperor came to believe in the Gohonzon of Nichiren Daishonin,
would his freedom to express his opinions not be hindered in terms ofruling the nation?” Makiguchi replied:“I do not think so. During discussions at study meetings etc. andin individual conversations among members, we have often said
that the emperor is an ordinary man, who went to school ascrown prince and learned how to be emperor. The emperor
makes mistakes like anyone else. In the early years of the Meiji
Period the emperor was apparently often cautioned by Tesshu
Yamaoka and had his mistakes pointed out to him. And it’s true.
(“Tokko Geppo” [Monthly Report of the Special Higher Police] 58)

This statement speaks to Makiguchi’s character and the conviction withwhich he held to his ideals. It is significant after all that he made thisstatement while under arrest, charged with blasphemy. Here Makiguchi
personally resists the authority of the state in its attempt to force upon
the Japanese the idea that the emperor is a “living god.” In the face ofstate authority he articulates his belief that the emperor is an ordinary
54

NICHIREN THOUGHT IN MODERN JAPANman who like other men must learn in order not to make mistakes.
Makiguchi was well aware of the universal and international nature of
the ideas of Nichiren, and adopted them as the basis for his own beliefs.
The Imperial Rescript on Education mentioned earlier in thispaper, instructed Japanese subjects to cultivate loyalty and filial piety
toward the imperial household. It portrayed Japan as a unique polity
based on the historical bonds of its benevolent rulers and loyal
subjects. Just as Uchimura disdained it, so too was it anathema to
Makiguchi who described the Rescript as providing only “a minimal
moral principle.” During the war Makiguchi went even further byburning the paper amulets from the Kotai Jingu (shrine of the sun
goddess at the Ise Shrine) distributed to each household, calling thisaction “purging the slander of Buddhism.” He also prohibited
members of his educator’s discussion group, the Soka Kyoiku Gakkai,from visiting Shinto shrines.
6. Fragmentation among the Followers of Nichiren
In this paper we have briefly examined the lives of two men —Chigaku Tanaka and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi — both adherents ofNichiren Buddhism, both of whom founded ideological movementsin the name of his teachings. Hopefully some light has been shed on
the ideas these men embraced in relation to the imperial state. We
have seen how those of the religious world in Japan displayed two
different responses to the idea of the emperor as the sole temporal andreligious authority: acceptance and a distancing of oneself from thesystem. The respective positions of Tanaka and Makiguchi typify
these two responses.
The historical record tells us that Tanaka had a much greater
influence on prewar society than did Makiguchi. We also know that
Makiguchi was not completely alone among devotees of Nichiren in
the attitude he adopted, as the quote from Makiguchi’s mentor Mitaniand the following words of Chogyu Takayama indicate.
Nichiren recognizes the state for the sake of truth, not truth forthe sake of the state. To him, the truth is always greater than thestate. Therefore he approves of the fall of the state for the sakeof truth. (Nichiren Shonin to Nihonkoku [Leading figures in
Nichiren and Japan])55

The Journal of Oriental Studies 10:Special Issue

There were others during this time who turned to Nichiren
Buddhism as the ideology that supported their world view. Giro
Senoo, for example, took the view that Nichiren Buddhism was theideology that could bring about the international liberation ofpeoples.
The question that remains is this. How could Nichiren thought beappropriated by two such disparate thinkers as Makiguchi andTanaka, at polar opposites of their understanding of the role of groups
in the imperial state in modern Japan?
I find one reason in the nature of Nichiren’s ideas themselves. It
however cannot be the sole reason. Were there not perhaps factors in
the modern Japan that “discovered” and reevaluated Nichiren thatcaused this fragmentation of the image of Nichiren?
Keeping this question in mind, let us examine further the reception
accorded the ideas of Nichiren in modern Japan and the reasons forthe schism among the followers of Nichiren.
7. Between Nichiren and Nichirenism
When considering the relationship between the ideas of Nichiren andthe power of the state, what we must first remember is that Nichiren
was not the narrow-minded nationalist the Tanaka’s of modern Japan
would have us to believe.
There is no evidence that Nichiren actually opposed the rulingorder of his time, of which the emperor was the pinnacle. Nor
however do we know that he viewed the specific political structure of
the emperor system as the only possible system of government.
Nichiren’s ultimate aim was the realization of a religious ideal, andpower was only a means to achieve this. The legitimacy of power
depended solely on whether those in authority obeyed the true laws,
and whether this power contributed to the creation of a better society
bringing happiness to the common people.
In the works of his final years, including Shijo Kingo-dono
Motoonfumi [Great Bodhisattva Hachiman], Nichiren examines thereigns of five emperors from the 81st to the 85th, and powerful
figures of the same period Minamoto no Yoritomo and Yoshitoki
Hojo, and describes how Yoritomo and his associates received theprotection of the gods as rulers because the emperor did not conduct
politics correctly. In Nichiren’s view, emperors in the past had
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actually fallen from their rank as ruler of the nation, and could do soagain at any time. In the Middle Ages Nichiren was the only thinker
in Japan who publicly denied the authority of the emperor as adescendant of the gods, and in fact, the only person to publicly
endorse the revolutionary notion of a shift of the post of monarchfrom the imperial family.
Continuing in this vein, Kanzo Uchimura also made the followinginteresting comment about Nichiren. He writes:
Of all the Japanese who saw receiving the endorsement of thegovernment as the greatest privilege, Nichiren was the only one
to dismiss it lightly. Emperor of emperors, watchman ofwatchmen, this was the position of a sacred man of religion.
(Nichiren Shonin o Ronzu [Discussing Nichiren], 61)

Looking back over Japanese history, Uchimura, who believed in thesupremacy of religious truth over temporal authority, found in
Nichiren, a religious personality of the Kamakura Period, a man cut
from the same cloth as himself.
On the other hand, as the words, “Of the fifteen kuni [domains]
along the Tokaido, Nichiren is of the twelfth, Awa, of the county ofNagasa and the village of Tojo — a child of a fisherman from the edgeof the sea,” indicate, it would be true to say that Nichiren felt a strong
sense of belonging and attachment to his birthplace. Furthermore hebelieved that a world of international truth could only be attained byfacing up directly to the tragic situation in Japan at the time andchanging it for the better. On this point Nichiren, by relinquishing
any interest in society and preaching that we should return directly
to the world of religious truth, was different from other priests of the
Kamakura era such as Shinran and Dogen, neither of whom
included any elements of nationalism in their religious tradition. In
the doctrine of Nichiren, universal salvation is not attained byspiritual exile from the land of one’s home, but instead is structured
in such a way as to only become possible following a proper
grappling with the national reality.
In the religion of Nichiren, a national sense of crisis andinternational goal of salvation were intimately connected. One’s
image of Nichiren can therefore depend upon which of these elements
one chooses to focus.
57Th e Jo ur na l o f O ri en t al St u d ie s 1 0: Sp ec ia l I ss ue

8. Modern Japan Rediscovers Nichiren
Here I have identified certain characteristic of Nichiren as I compare
him to his contemporaries Shinran and Dogen in the context of his
attempt to rebuild the Japan of Mappo or the Final Dharma Age froman objective point of view. His aim, I think, was to construct the ideal
Buddhist domain. Nichiren clearly indicated who were to be theinitiators of this revolution. It made his religious beliefs even more
powerful. I am referring here to the “bodhisattvas springing from theearth” described in the Lotus Sutra.
There is a scene in the Lotus Sutra when an enormous number ofbodhisattvas appear from below the earth and are charged withspreading the true teachings to the evil world after the demise of the
Buddha. By likening himself and his disciples to these bodhisattvas
springing from the earth, Nichiren attempted to justify the actions of
his disciples in religious terms.
If they are indeed bodhisattvas springing from the earth, theiractions must be sacred actions for the purpose of making theprophecies of the Buddha reality. This is the supreme mission, to be
carried out even at the risk of death. Thus Nichiren provides us withspecific initiators of change in the land, and by assigning religious
meaning to their actions, the religion of Nichiren came to incorporate
into its own structure the will to change current circumstances. A rare
event for the times. In modern times, particularly since the beginningof the Showa period, this aspect of Nichiren ideology has been thefocus of particular interest.
Policies of Westernization handed down from the Meiji years
onward dramatically changed the face of Japanese society. Such rapid
modernization brought about major distortions and contradictions
that permeated the society. Under capitalist monopolies, for instance,
factory workers were forced to labor long hours in inferior conditions,and the poverty of tenant farmers in the villages, left behind in therush toward modernization, grew more serious every year.
No matter how adamantly one might proclaim Japan to be thesacred land of the emperor, or the authority of the living god, of
itself it provided not a single solution at the grass-roots level. If
reality was to be seriously confronted, it would require bold new
ideas that would close the gap between reality and the ideal. A
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NICHIREN THO UGHT IN MODE RN JAPANmethodology would also be needed to put these ideas into action.
The ideology of Nichiren was rediscovered and embraced inmodern Japan as a response.
Earlier in this paper I discussed how the aim of Nichiren ideology
was to create a land of the Buddha in the present. Nichiren had theordinary masses in mind, that is, the bodhisattvas springing from theearth, as the ones who would bring about this change. His logic wassound. Here were ordinary people, liberated from a class system that
had been maintained by a clan structure, now being tossed upon the
waves of modernization, unable to find guidelines and principles forbehavior. These would be the very leaders of a revolution initiatedand fomented, not from the top, but from “the earth.” Ikki Kita, in
Shina Kakumei Gaishi [Unofficial History of the Chinese Revolution]
demonstrates in plain terms his understanding of the ideas of
Nichiren from this perspective:
Bodhisattvas springing from the earth refers to the group ofsaviors buried beneath the earth, in other words the heroes of the
fields and marshes, the righteous and great of the lower classes.

In addition, as a precondition for carrying out the act of salvation,
Nichiren demanded a total empathy for the one being saved. He
believed that without dealing with people on their own level andsharing their pain, the energy of life-risking actions could not be
generated. Nichiren Buddhism, which appropriated Buddhist
terminology familiar to Japanese people for centuries, while declaring
its mission as one of saving of the masses, was more likely to win thehearts of people of the time than any imported revolutionary theory.
9. Legacy of Nichirenism
Thus the ideas of Nichiren were reevaluated in the modern era as ananswer to the contradictions and problems of the period. Both Chigaku
Tanaka and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi advocated a lay-oriented religion,
and were equally vocal about the role they thought religion ought toplay in daily life. They also stressed how the ideas Nichiren espoused
were not limited to seekers of spiritual peace and enlightenment andsalvation at a personal level, but were in fact principles that could
inform society overall, and prove efficacious as the foundation of mass59Th e Jo ur na l of O ri en t al St u d ie s 1 0: Sp ec ia l I ss ue

movements. This tells us that the views of Nichiren held by these twomen were filtered through the lens of the modern age.
However while they may have had these points in common, there
was one definitive difference between Tanaka and Makiguchi. This
was their respective views on what constituted the ideal society — that
is, a Buddhist land — as the ultimate goal. While Tanaka saw it as theimperial state in its ideal form, Makiguchi separated his view of theperfect society from any connections with nationhood such as theemperor or Japan.
As a result, Tanaka’s perspective saw in Nichirenism the conceptof Japan as the center of the universe. His aim therefore was for
Nichirenism to bridge the gap between the ideal and reality in anation centered on a divine emperor. From an international
perspective, Nichiren thought could then be the basis for justifying
Japan’s overseas aggression.
In contrast, Makiguchi saw Japan as having the potential to be theideal Buddhist land in a different dimension from that of the national
polity. He was opposed to any notion of an imperial state in aninternational context.
Makiguchi’s attitude toward State Shinto and the notion that Japan
was the land of the divine emperor had its roots in his religious beliefs.
It was not directly linked to any criticism of the authorities in thepolitical sphere. However, in the eyes of the authorities of a state thatwas trying to make the emperor a “living god” with his “unbroken
lineage” the foundation of national unity, Makiguchi represented adangerous threat, a person dismantling the national myth at its mostfundamental level. In 1943 as Japan’s fortunes in war gradually took aturn for the worse, Makiguchi was arrested and charged withblasphemy toward shrines and infringement of the Public Security
Preservation Law. He would die of old age and malnutrition, in prison.

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