In his 1903-04 explications of the Nihongi, Tanaka made certain other analyses deserving of some comment. In the same paragraph in which the phrase ‘heavenly task’ appears, the Nihongi says:

In this gloom, therefore, he fostered justice, and so governed this western border. Our Imperial ancestors, and Imperial parent, like gods, like sages, accumulated happiness and amassed glory.

The casual reader will find little meaning in the phrases “accumulated happiness,” “amassed glory,” and, from the penultimate sentence in the paragraph, “foster rightmindedness.” Tanaka, however, chose to regard them as essential actions in the primordial establishment of kokutai, an ethnocentric concept meaning something like ‘national essence’, ‘national polity’, or ‘national structure’. Kokutai, in turn, was the fundamental principle upon which Emperor Jimmu accomplished the founding of Japan.

The founding of Japan, however, was not the ‘heavenly task’ (tengyō) mentioned in the Nihongi. The ‘heavenly task’, i.e., the Emperor’s task, was to spread and unite, as noted above, toward the goal of peace in a world devoid of national boundaries. Peace was impossible as long as the world remained fragmented, and the first step toward the achievement of peace should be the unification of the world.

As Tanaka’s explanation continued, he suggested for the first time the connections between Buddhism and the ‘heavenly task’ described in the Nihongi. The analogy, he said, was similar to the role of the historical Buddha in India. Just as Buddha was a manifestation of the Chakravardin, the ‘Wheel-turner’, sent to earth to ‘set the wheel of the Law in motion’, so was the imperial line of Japan established to lead the world into the unity that is peace. That the imperial line of Japan should be the instrument of unification was part of the whole world scheme in which the process of unification moved in a general easterly direction. And the fact that the ruling family of a small country at the far reaches of civilization should be so designated only emphasized that unity was to be realized without aggression, without pillage, theft, and robbery that it was, indeed, to be unification by righteousness. Tanaka’s reasoning at this point may be questioned in light of earlier comments about “aggression” and the impossibility of any action of a Japanese emperor being anything other than righteous. It is well, nevertheless, to understand that at the very outset of Tanaka’s espousal of nationalism he specifically rejected aggression, whatever its meaning to him, as a means of accomplishing unity and therefore peace.

All the same, Tanaka maintained, it was necessary for Japan to be armed in order to preserve the righteousness which would be the principal weapon of unification.

[I]n the summer of 1889, as the result of research into Buddhist traditions during the Latter Days of the Law, Tanaka managed to lay to rest any final misgivings he may have had about his role as a lay religious leader. While monastic discipline remained a hard and fast rule for every branch of Buddhism, he said, in the Latter Days of the Law this was a moot point, for in effect there was no monastic order. Priests and monks were no longer set apart from the citizenry at large; they were all laymen. Hence, inhibitions against meat-eating, marriage, and the like did not apply, for there were no priests. Tanaka’s own status was thus justified. He was a layman who pretended to be nothing else, while those who called themselves priests and monks were involved in deception.

It was not until the spring of 1901, however, that Tanaka formulated a complete picture of what he had in mind, when, in a monograph entitled Shūmon no Ishin (Reform of Religion), he advocated the transformation and, by implication, unification of Japanese Buddhism into a great Nichiren organization a kind of state church. In the Latter Days at hand, said Tanaka, Buddhism was in a sad way, the result of its long subservience to the Tokugawa regime and the subsequent doleful influence of Westernization on Japanese life. Buddhism, indeed, had sunk to so low a condition that its sole function was to bury the dead.

But Buddhism, on the contrary, should be a militant, revolutionary force, a staunch ally as Japan went about its task of uniting the world for righteousness’ sake.

Nichiren is the general of the army that will unite the world. Japan is his headquarters. The people of Japan are his troops; teachers and scholars of Nichiren Buddhism are his officers. The Nichiren creed is a declaration of war, and shakubuku is the plan of attack. Faith provides courage; doctrine provides logistic support. The army to unify all the nations of the world is to be set up in such a way. … The faith of the Lotus will prepare those going into battle. Japan truly has a heavenly mandate to unite the world.

Tanaka continued:

Army regulations must be strictly enforced. Civil war really began in 1253 and is not yet finished. … No matter what the circumstances, war is aggressive. War should not be leisurely; it should be swift as the wind. War should not be rash and noisy; it should be quiet as a forest. War should not be frivolous; it should be firm as a mountain. … Aggressively believe! Aggressively preach! Agitate! When you feel weak and tired, say, ‘The Lotus Sutra is my sword.’ Do not pray for righteousness. Do not pray for yourself. Do not pray for your father and mother. Do not pray for your teacher. Pray only for conquest!

In what may be its most salient chapter, as far as Tanaka’s developing nationalism was concerned, the Shūmon no Ishin said of Aggression:

Everything is aggressive. Animals are aggressive by nature. If one is aggressed upon, one will be aggressive in return. The cat is the aggressor of the mouse; it is aggressed upon by the dog. Men, too, are aggressive or aggressed upon according to their strength or weakness, their wealth or penury, their wisdom or stupidity. Saints, models of virtue, legalists, scholars—all possess such a contrary aggressor/aggressee spirit. Aggression is the way of the world.

However, there is good aggression, inferior and superior aggression, mundane and spiritual aggression. What we have termed “Lotus Sutra aggression” is superior, good, spiritual aggression. This kind of aggression will irrigate the fields of the spirit and nurture the seedlings implanted therein; it is medicinal, not poisonous. It is universal justice, religious righteousness.

While it is probably too much to say that Tanaka here sanctioned military aggression, it is easy to understand how such an inference could be made, especially in light of his ideas concerning cooperation between state and religion in modern Japan. As long as aggression could be rationalized as ‘good’, it was acceptable, and all aggression on behalf of the Lotus Sutra, it seems, was ‘good’.

[C]onsideration of Tanaka’s steady move from purely religious to mostly secular themes should probably begin with a speech he made in 1886.

In November of that year Tanaka delivered a lecture on Buddhist married life which included comments somewhat different from his usual exegetical remarks. Edited and refocused somewhat, the speech became the basis of the treatise which Tanaka presented to the Emperor and Empress on their silver anniversary in 1894.

While Tanaka’s principal theme was the Buddhist context for the male-female relationship that imbues the entire realm of existence, he introduced a new element: the role of Nichiren Buddhism in Japan’s destiny. His sources are the pronouncements of Nichiren, and he reiterated the founder’s warning that Japan must be remade according to the tenets he proclaimed. Indeed, Nichiren came to earth and established his church for the sake of Japan; Japan must, accordingly, spread the faith for the sake of the world. The two, Nichiren Buddhism and Japan, were inseparably linked (in the same manner as man and wife), each essential to the other; and it was the combination of the two, each acting through the other, that would cause the whole world to become a vast Buddhaland.

Although Tanaka did not in this document explain precisely, as he did later, the connections between Nichiren Buddhism and Japan’s traditional cosmogony, he suggested that there were such ties. He argued that world unification was both a Japanese and a Buddhist goal; he noted that Nichiren’s appearance in Japan was a step in the process of world unification; and he implied that, inasmuch as the goal had not yet been reached, it was the duty of modern-day Nichiren Buddhists and the state, working together, to bring this about. This may be interpreted to mean that if the reigning Emperor Meiji were to adopt such a course his task would be hallowed not only by tradition (mainly Shinto), but by Nichiren Buddhism as well. There was, in short, at least a hint as early as 1886 of the Buddhist apologetics for the imperial mission to unify the world which ultimately became Tanaka’s major theme. It is significant that Tanaka concluded the 1894 essay with two valedictions, both the Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō (Hail to the Sutra of the Lotus of Perfect Truth) of Nichiren Buddhism and a patriotic rallying cry, Nippon Teikoku Ban-banzai (Imperial Japan Forever and Ever!).