Having offered a selection of quotes from Professor Jacqueline I. Stone discussing Chigaku Tanaka’s drive to create the Honmon No Kaidan and his Millennialist vision, I am offering some insights from Edwin B. Lee, who in 1975 was a professor of History at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York. His article, “Nichiren and Nationalism: The Religious Patriotism of Tanaka Chigaku,” published in the Spring 1975 issue of Monumenta Nipponica, was referenced in Stone’s essays.

As I work my way through these descriptions of Tanaka, I want to echo Lee’s sentiment:

The man was Tanaka Chigaku (1861-1939), a name familiar now only to conscientious scholars of Nichiren Buddhism, but deserving of attention by any student of modern Japanese history who seeks to understand the part played by Buddhism in developments often regarded as Shinto-imbued, if not totally secular.