One of the earliest articulations of postwar Lotus-inspired millennial hopes for peace can be found, astonishingly enough, in the last writings of General Ishiwara Kanji. …

Purged from public life and in failing health, Ishiwara retired in 1946 with a group of disciples to the village of Nishiyama on the Japan Sea, where he devoted his remaining years to pondering how Japan and the world might be regenerated through Nichiren’s teaching.  Before his death, he arrived at a new Lotus-inspired millennial vision, one that broke utterly with the violence he had previously advocated.

Ishiwara’s new vision called for establishment of a modern agrarian society in which the tasks of production would be performed communally by village units of about a dozen families and where men and women would rank equally, a person’s work being decided on the basis of ability rather than gender. In a long tract dictated shortly before his death in 1949, Ishiwara interpreted Nichiren’s prediction of a time when “the wind will not thrash the branches nor the rain fall hard enough to break clods” in terms of a future society in which science, politics, and religion were perfectly harmonized. Science, “having obtained the Buddha wisdom,” would enable control of the weather and eliminate the ravages of storms. Homes, villages, and factories, engineered by the new science, would be pleasantly integrated into a natural environment of forests and streams. For a few hours each day, everyone, even the imperial family, would work wholeheartedly in the fields, factories, or at other tasks. Then, in the ample leisure afforded by rational social management, people would devote themselves to study, art, dance, sport, or other pursuits.  An abundance of commodities would eliminate all inequity of distribution. Acute illness would be conquered by science, and chronic disease would vanish with a way of life that had “returned to nature.” Advances in flight technology would make the world smaller, “like a single town,” and through mixed marriages based on natural affection, “all humanity will gradually become a single race” (Ishiwara 1949, 128—30).

What had not changed in Ishiwara’s thinking was the notion of a unique role for Japan:

Our vows and efforts for risshō ankoku will surely be achieved in a few decades. The time when, throughout the world, all will embrace the Wonderful Dharma is approaching before our eyes. At this time, we who once tasted the wretchedness of defeat have gained the good fortune of receiving the supreme command to lead the world in establishing a nation without armaments. … Cleansing ourselves of the dross, both material and spiritual, of humanity’s prior history, we shall create a new Japan as a literal treasure realm, an actualized Buddha land, setting a correct course for human civilization. This will not only work to atone for the crimes against humanity committed in the Pacific War; it is the one, sole way by which to live. (1949, 126)

The potential influence of one individual’s violent millennialist vision is yet more vividly illustrated by the example of Ishiwara Kanji (1889-1949). …

Nichiren, as we have seen, had accepted the traditional theory of Buddhist decline occurring over five five-hundred-year periods. This scheme provided Ishiwara with a framework for his views on the “final war,” a concept he had begun developing in the early 1920s and to which he would devote most of his life (Peattie 1975, 53-74). War, for Ishiwara, was a driving force of historical progress, in which the struggles of nations and peoples to impose their ideologies on their neighbors led to higher levels of civilization. By the present time, Ishiwara believed, these competing cultures and ideologies had aligned themselves along two polar axes: the West, led by the United States, which followed the “way of dominance,” and Asia, to be headed by Japan, which followed the “way of righteousness.” The conflict between these two was destined to end in Japanese victory ushering in everlasting peace. Ishiwara drew support for his theory from Nichiren’s statement that in the fifth five-hundred-year period following the Buddha’s nirvana—that is, at the beginning of the Final Dharma age—”a great war, unprecedented in prior ages, shall break out in the world” (Senji shō in Risshō 1988, 2:1008). Nichiren was referring to the Mongol invasion, which he saw as divine punishment for Japan’s neglect of the Lotus. For Ishiwara, however, Nichiren’s “unprecedented great war” signified the final war that would pit the imperialistic West against an East Asia united under Japanese leadership in a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. To prepare for this cataclysm, Japan would need to mobilize the resources of China and Manchuria—an argument Ishiwara used to justify Japanese military aggression on the Asian continent. Through this war to end all wars, “Our powerful enemies will be vanquished, the glorious spirit of the Japanese kokutai will come home to the hearts of the peoples of all nations, and the world will enter an era of peace under the guidance of the imperial throne” (Ishiwara 1968, 1:431; trans. from Peattie 1975, 74).

[Among those individuals, for whom imperialist aspirations, inflated to the proportion of millennial visions, inspired and legitimated violence], an important example is the revolutionary Kita Ikki (1883-1937), who advocated national socialism and strong imperial rule. …

Japan’s destiny, in Kita’s view, was to lead the rest of Asia in throwing off the yoke of Western imperialism and to spearhead a  world socialist revolution.

In making this proposal, Kita clearly saw himself as a second Nichiren, remonstrating with government leaders in an attempt to save the country from disaster. Both the Gaishi’s introduction and final chapter—titled “The Mongol Invasion by Britain and Germany,” a reference to European interests in China—speak of the Gaishi as the “Taishō ankoku ron”: Just as Nichiren had risked his life to warn the authorities of foreign invasion in the thirteenth century, Kita now sought to protect the nation by warning against the threat posed by Western imperialism in the Taishō era (1912-26) (1959a, 4, 203). By the 1930s variations on the theme of a Japan-led Pan-Asianism had gained wide support; Kita was among the first to connect it with the new Lotus millennialism.

Kita’s vision also entailed aggressive military conquest culminating in world peace, with Japan presiding over a union of nations. Like Tanaka Chigaku, who may briefly have influenced him, Kita equated Nichiren’s teaching of shakubuku with the forcible extension of empire. The specifically Nichirenist elements in Kita’s vision had less to do with the ideal world that would be achieved under Japanese rule than with the new Nichirenshugi rhetoric of shakubuku as legitimating the violence necessary to accomplish it. The Buddha, Kita said, had manifested himself as the Meiji emperor, and “clasping the eight volumes of the Lotus Sutra of compassion and shakubuku,” waged the Russo-Japanese War. Now China, too, was “clearly thirsting for salvation by shakubuku” (161, 154).

Just as the Lord Śākyamuni [Buddha] prophesied of old, the flag  bearing the sun, of the nation of the rising sun, is now truly about to illuminate the darkness of the entire world. … What do I have to hide? I am a disciple of the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren, my elder brother in the teachings, taught the Koran of compassionate shakubuku, but the sword has not been drawn. He preached the doctrine of world unification but it has yet to reach China or India. … Without the  Lotus Sutra, China will remain in everlasting darkness; India will in the end be unable to achieve her independence, and Japan too will perish. … Drawing the sword of the Dharma, who in the Final Dharma age will vindicate [the prediction of] Śākyamuni? (201, 203, 204)

… In 1936, leading some fourteen hundred men, [Kita] attempted a coup d’état, assassinating several government officials and seizing the center of Tokyo. … Along with the insurrectionist leaders, Kita was arrested for complicity and executed the following year.

Tanaka and the Kokuchūkai endorsed war in a “righteous” cause— extending the sacred Japanese kokutai to all peoples. There were also individuals, not necessarily affiliated with religious bodies, for whom imperialist aspirations, inflated to the proportion of millennial visions, inspired and legitimated violence. This was especially evident in the 1930s, a time of economic depression, affecting especially agrarian workers, and of a perceived inability of bureaucrats to deal with problems at home and abroad. This period saw a number of political assassinations and attempted coups d’état led by disaffected military officers and other right-wing elements seeking to remove “corrupt” officials intervening between the emperor and his people and “restore” direct imperial rule. Ultimately unsuccessful, their actions nonetheless had the effect of increasing the political power of the military and of right-wing influence in government. Some of these insurrectionists drew selective inspiration from the new Nichirenist millennialism, such as Tanaka’s equation of shakubuku with territorial conquest, as well as from Nichiren’s own emphasis on readiness to sacrifice one’s life if needed for the spread of Dharma (on Nichirenist-inspired terrorism, see Tokoro 1972, 174-88).

From about the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), the Lotus Sutra became increasingly fused in Tanaka’s thought with the idea of the Japanese kokutai, or national essence, the ideological pillar of Meiji nationalism, said by many nationalist thinkers to have descended in an unbroken line from the Sun Goddess and her divine grandson, Emperor Jinmu, legendary founder of Japan. “The truth of the Lotus Sutra and the Japanese national essence form one another, like front and back, and are mutually dependent, like essence and function. Truly, this is the Great Way of nonduality,” he declared (Tanaka 1936, 163). Tanaka developed a Japan-centered hermeneutic by which he read the Lotus Sutra as a revelation of national destiny. For example, the word “thus” of “Thus have I heard” in the sutra’s opening passage he interpreted as the Japanese national essence; the “heavenly drums [that] resound of their own accord” when the Buddha preaches, as Japan’s mission of world unification; and the Buddha’s supernatural powers, as Japan’s military victories against China and Russia (102, 103, 107; Tanabe 1989, 199-206). Tanaka began to invoke the rhetoric of the mythic origins of the Japanese state—also prominent in the discourse of state Shinto—when he spoke of Japan’s “heavenly task” of world unification as a mandate inherited from Emperor Jinmu, whom he saw as reincarnated in the Meiji emperor. Though he urged the revival of Nichiren’s spirit of shakubuku, in making these ideological moves, Tanaka radically departed from Nichiren, who had strictly subordinated to the Lotus Sutra both the Japanese deities and the ruler’s authority. Tanaka’s identification of the Lotus Sutra with the Japanese national essence raised the latter to a status of universal significance and in effect equated the spread of Nichiren Buddhism with the extension of Japanese empire. It also served to justify militarism and aggression on the Asian continent (Lee 1975, 28-33; Nakano 1977, 165-72, 189-95; Tokoro 1966, 78-79).

In 1901 Tanaka published a tract called Shimon no ishin (Restoration of the [Nichiren] sect), a blueprint for radical sectarian reform. Here was the first Nichirenist millennial vision of modern times, combining shrewd plans for innovative evangelizing with a wildly improbable agenda. Shimon no ishin outlined a detailed fifty-year plan for converting Japan and the world to Nichirenshugi. Tanaka envisioned proselytizing throughout the country: by the roads, in halls and auditoriums, at hot-spring resorts. Lay women would be organized into nursing corps and charitable hospitals established, winning the sect both public respect and converts by its works of practical compassion. The sect would publish a daily newspaper and evangelical materials in colloquial Japanese. Passengers on ships operated by the sect would also be proselytized; eventually, thousands of such vessels would fill the international shipping lanes with the sound of voices preaching the Dharma. Colonies of Nichiren adherents would be established in Hokkaido, Taiwan, and overseas countries as bases for evangelizing abroad. The growing financial capital of the sect, conscientiously invested, would make Nichiren Buddhism a significant economic force and contribute to the nation’s wealth and power. Tanaka worked out detailed projections over ten five-year periods of the number of converts, income, and expenditures required by this colossal undertaking. In twenty to thirty years, he predicted, Nichirenshugi sympathizers would dominate both houses of the Diet. Realizing the fusion of Buddhism and secular law, Nichiren Buddhism would assist the imperial court in its enlightened rule. Other nations, coming to revere Japan’s example of justice and benevolence, would abandon their barbaric quarrels. The righteousness of Nichiren Buddhism being made clear, other religious bodies would announce their own dissolution (Tanaka 1931, 93-134; 1975, 26-27).

It was not, however, in this extravagant, narrowly sectarian form as the worldwide propagation of Nichiren Buddhism per se that Tanaka’s millennialist vision was to exert wide appeal. Rather, its attraction would lie in his increasing identification of this goal with the spread of Japanese empire. The beginnings of this identification are already evident in Shimon no ishin:

Nichiren is the general of the army that will unite the world. Japan is his headquarters. The people of Japan are his troops; the teachers and scholars of Nichiren Buddhism are his officers. The Nichiren creed is a declaration of war, and shakubuku is the plan of attack. … The faith of the Lotus will prepare those going into battle. Japan truly has a heavenly mandate to unite the world. (Tanaka 1931, 16; trans. from Lee 1975, 26)

Tanaka Chigaku (1861-1939) is known for initiating the ideological movement known as Nichirenshugi (“Nichirenism”)—not the traditional Nichiren Buddhism of temples and priests, but a popular Nichiren doctrine welded to lay Buddhist practice and modern national aspirations. As a youth in training for the Nichiren priesthood, Tanaka was disturbed by the accommodating attitude displayed by sectarian leaders toward other Buddhist denominations. In the time of mappō, Nichiren had taught, only the Lotus Sutra could protect the country; Tanaka became convinced that it was now time to revive the founder’s strict spirit of shakubuku and declare the exclusive truth of the Lotus. Abandoning his priestly training in 1879, Tanaka embarked on a lifetime career as a lay evangelist. In 1881 he founded the Rengekai (Lotus Blossom Society) to propagate Nichirenshugi ideals. It was reorganized in 1885 as the Risshō Ankokukai, and again in 1914 as the Kokuchūkai or “Pillar of the Nation Society” (after Nichiren’s words, “I will be the pillar of Japan.”) The Kokuchūkai would in time win the support of ranking government officials, army officers, leading intellectuals, and large numbers of the public.

The first fully developed modern millennial visions claiming inspiration in the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren’s teachings emerged around the turn of the [20th] century and persisted until the end of World War II. With various permutations, these visions identified faith in the Lotus Sutra with Japanese nationalistic aspirations and looked forward to a world harmoniously unified under Japanese rule. This imperialist Lotus millennialism had its roots in the historical pressures of the Meiji period (1868-1912). First was the acute need for Japan to gain economic and political parity with Western powers if it was not to be exploited by them. Educators, opinionmakers, and spokesmen of the new Meiji government sought to rally citizens to the cause of transforming Japan into a modern industrial country by promoting a strong sense of national identity. Growing nationalistic sentiment in turn placed strain on the Buddhist community. For some time, Shinto and Confucian ideologues had criticized Buddhism as institutionally corrupt, a superstitious relic of the past, a drain on public resources, and a noxious foreign import that had oppressed the indigenous Japanese spirit. The Meiji Restoration also brought an end to the state patronage that Buddhism had enjoyed under the previous Tokugawa regime (1600-1868); the authority of the Buddhist establishment was further undermined by a brief but violent anti-Buddhist movement (1868-71) and by the institution of state Shinto as a national creed. Buddhism faced the need both to reform internally and prove its relevance to an emerging modern nation (Ketelaar 1990). Throughout the modern imperial period, virtually all Buddhist institutions, of all denominations, supported nationalistic and militaristic aims, sending chaplains abroad to minister to Japanese troops, missionizing in subjugated territories, and promoting patriotism and loyalty to government among their followers. Within Nichiren Buddhist circles, however, Nichiren’s mandate to spread the Lotus Sutra and thus realize the Buddha land in this present world was assimilated to imperialist aspirations in a way that inflated the latter to millennialist proportions.

Nichiren’s writtings reflect considerable ambivalence about his country. On the one hand, he saw Japan as an evil place, full of people who slandered the Dharma by placing other teachings above the Lotus Sutra, and who were therefore destined to suffer great miseries such as attack by the Mongols. On the other hand, the Tendai tradition had long postulated a unique karmic connection between Japan and the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren carried this further in regarding Japan as the very place where—in his own person, as the Buddha’s messenger—the Great Pure Dharma for the time of mappō had first appeared. Thus far, he said, the Buddha-Dharma of India had spread from west to east. But its light was feeble; it could never dispel the darkness of the degenerate Final Dharma age. In the time of mappō, the Buddha-Dharma of Japan would rise like the sun, moving from east to west, and illuminate the world (Kangyō Hachiman shō in Risshō 1988, 2:1850). This image of a new Buddhism emanating from Japan like a resplendent sun was to prove compelling when, six centuries later, Japan began the struggle of defining its place in the modern international community.