While chronologies differed, in Japan, widespread opinion held that the Final Dharma had begun in 1052. Thus, the bodhisattvas who emerged from underground could be expected to appear at any time. Indeed, were they not overdue? “Should they fail to appear in the Final Dharma age, they would be great liars, and the prophecies made by Śākyamuni, Prabhūtaratna, and the buddhas of the ten directions would prove as empty as foam on the waters,” Nichiren wrote. In observing that no one other than himself was enduring the great trials predicted in the Lotus Sūtra, Nichiren concluded that he himself must be the representative of the bodhisattvas of the earth, or might even be one of them, a conviction that sustained him through years of danger and privation. Usually he referred to himself only in modest terms as a forerunner or emissary of their leader, the bodhisattva Viśiṣṭacaritra [J. Jōgyō, Superior Conduct], but there is little doubt that he identified his efforts with the work of this bodhisattva. Much of the later Nichiren tradition identifies him as a manifestation of Viśiṣṭacaritra in this world.

Nichiren observed that these four bodhisattvas [who are leaders of the Bodhisattvas from beneath the earth] were not present at the Buddha’s first sermon nor at the last. They appear in no sūtra other than the Lotus, and even there, they are present only to receive the Buddha’s transmission of the sūtra and his charge to propagate it after his parinirvāṇa. Based on his understanding of the Buddha’s teaching process, Nichiren argued that these bodhisattvas could only appear in the Final Dharma age. During the two thousand years following the Buddha’s passing, that is, the True Dharma and Semblance Dharma ages, persons who had received the seed of buddhahood from Sakyamuni Buddha were led to the stages of maturation and harvesting through provisional teachings. Had the bodhisattvas from beneath the earth appeared and spread the daimoku during that time, many of those people would have reviled it, thereby destroying the merit gained through the maturing of the seeds that they had already received. During those two thousand years, Nichiren said, some of the bodhisattvas from other worlds remained to teach the Lotus Sūtra in this world. Specifically, Zhiyi and his teacher Huisi, long revered as manifestations of the bodhisattvas Bhaiṣajyarāja (J. Yakuō; Medicine King) and Avalokiteśvara (Kannon), respectively, had taught the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment from the abstract perspective of the trace teaching. But by the beginning of the Final Dharma age, those able to achieve liberation through the provisional teachings had vanished, and the bodhisattvas from other worlds had all returned to their original lands. Now, in the present, mappō era, “Hinayāna is employed to attack Mahāyāna, and the provisional used to destroy the true. East and west are confused, and heaven and earth turned upside down. … At this time, the bodhisattvas who emerged from the earth will make their first appearance in the world, solely to have the children drink the medicine of the five characters Myōhō-renge-kyō.”

Willingness to give even one’s life if need be took on deep soteriological meaning for Nichiren over the course of his career. By persevering for the Lotus Sūtra’s sake, he taught, one could expiate in a single lifetime one’s evil karma from countless past lifetimes; repay one’s obligations to the Buddha and to all living beings; fulfill the bodhisattva path; and be assured of fully realizing buddhahood in this lifetime. On this theme, he wrote to his followers: “Life flashes by in but a moment. No matter how many powerful enemies may oppose us, never think of retreating or give way to fear. Even if they should cut off our heads with a saw, impale our bodies with lances, or bind our feet and bore them through with a gimlet, so long as we have life, we must chant Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō, Namu Myōhō-renge-kyō. And if we chant up until the very moment of death, Śākyamuni, Prabhūtaratna, and the buddhas of the ten directions will come to us instantly … and surely escort us to the jeweled land of Tranquil Light.”

[The verses] in the “Perseverance” chapter coincided eerily with Nichiren’s own ordeals. He himself had been “disparaged with evil words” and “attacked with sticks and swords.” He had been slandered to the high officials of the shogunate by monks revered as holy by the people at large and been “repeatedly expelled.” Especially during the ordeals of his Sado Island exile, Nichiren wrestled with self-doubts. Had the protective deities abandoned him? Was he, after all, not correctly practicing the Lotus Sūtra? By his own account, however, on recalling the verse section of the “Perseverance” chapter, he realized that he was living out the sūtra’s prophecies in a way unlike any other Lotus devotee. “Without me,” he concluded, “the predictions in these verses would all be lies.” One modern interpreter of Nichiren has termed this a “circular hermeneutic” in which text and reader simultaneously mirror and bear witness to one another. Nichiren validated the truth of the Lotus Sūtra’s words by undergoing in his own person the very trials that it predicted. Yet at the same time, the Lotus Sūtra now validated Nichiren’s practice, as the persecutions he encountered were predicted in the Lotus itself.

Nichiren termed his practice “bodily reading” of the Lotus Sūtra, meaning that he had fulfilled its predictions in his own person and was “not attached to body or life” in his efforts to propagate it. The same applied, he said, to those disciples who shared his commitment. On the eve of his banishment to Sado Island, he wrote to his disciple Nichirō who had also been seized and imprisoned, praising his dedication. “Others read the Lotus Sūtra with their mouths alone, reading only the words, but they do not read it with their mind. And even if they read it with their mind, they do not read it with their body. To read the sūtra as you are doing with both body and mind is truly admirable.”