For the past 26 days I’ve been reviewing and commenting on the adaptation of Nichiren Buddhism by Chigaku Tanaka. As described by Tanaka’s son, Kishio Satomi, the most significant difference between traditional Nichiren Buddhist doctrine and Tanaka’s Nichirenism was the focus on the “Holy Altar,” the kaidan or precepts platform. This is one of the Three Great Secret Dharmas.

In 2003, Jacqueline I. Stone, at the time a professor of Japanese Religions in the Religion Department of Princeton University, wrote a paper entitled, “By Imperial Edict and Shogunal Decree: Politics and the Issue of the Ordination Platform in Modern Lay Buddhism.” You can download a PDF copy here. The paper became a chapter in “Buddhism in the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition” edited by Steven Heine and Charles S. Prevish.

As Stone explains:

One aspect of the medieval Nichiren Buddhist vision … has proved difficult for modern practitioners. This is the tradition that, someday, a great ordination platform (kaidan) would be erected “by imperial edict and shogunal decree,” symbolizing the fusion of Buddhism and worldly rule and the conversion of the sovereign and his people to Nichiren’s teaching. One might expect that this ideal, framed in such obviously medieval terms, might be allowed to lapse into obscurity, or be interpreted in purely symbolic fashion. Such has, indeed, been the mainstream tendency within the various Nichiren Buddhist temple denominations. Nonetheless, there have also been two significant attempts within the last century to reframe the goal of establishing the kaidan in a literal sense, in the context of political milieus that Nichiren’s medieval followers never imagined: the militant imperialism of the first part of the twentieth century and the parliamentary democracy instituted after the Pacific War.

Beginning today and running through Aug. 7 I will publish quotes from Stone’s article illustrating the background and nature of Tanaka’s Nichirenshugi and the importance of Manifesting This World as an Ideal Realm.