Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Presented to the military leaders in Kamakura in 1260, this treatise encapsu-
lates a dialogue between an erudite Buddhist host (the Master or shujin) and
an unnamed traveller (the Visitor or kyaku). The Visitor represents the estab-
lished view of the time, while the Master represents the standpoint of Nichi-
ren. More speci
cally, the Visitor probably meant to symbolise the retired
regent H
-
j
-
Tokiyori, to whom this work was sent. Although Tokiyori had o
-
cially retired and become a Zen lay priest, he was still the most in
uential
person in the ruling H
-
j
-
clan. In this treatise, Nichiren fervently criticised
the Pure Land School (J
-
do) of H
-
nen (1133
1212). Sometime later attempts
were made on his life, probably by or in relation to government o
-
cials,
many of whom were followers of J
-
do (see Stone 1999c: 444
45 on this point).
In the Rissh
-
Ankoku Ron, Nichiren makes an impassioned call for embracing
the Lotus Sutra, whose philosophy of reverence for life he sees as the means
to avert the natural disasters and internal strife the country was experiencing.
Nichiren also warns that if people do not turn away from the worship of
Amida Buddha, in particular, the country will face foreign invasion.
Deal (1999) argues that e
-
ectively this writing sees the establishment of a
canon where certain Buddhist texts are presented as not only erroneous, but
also as detrimental to the future salvation of individuals and the nation itself.
The text establishes how the world has come to experience a material and
spiritual crisis, with the Master pointing out as evil those views about self and
others that he sees as incorrect and as degrading life. Nichiren is here fol-
lowing the Tendai classi
catory system, but he reinterprets and narrows the
canon by rejecting certain texts as provisional while embracing others as true.
By this, he modi
ect creates a new one (Deal
1999). Deal argues that canonisation is essentially political as it takes place
within the parameters of culturally speci
es the Tendai canon and in e
c religious discourse that can have
the e
ect of transforming relationships of power and authority. While that
may be the case, the more subversive aspect is that while Nichiren
is aim seems
to have been for the military leaders of Kamakura, the government of the
time, to abandon existing beliefs and embrace the Lotus Sutra, he also
asserts that for those in authority their purpose is to serve Buddhism, not the
other way round. This is notably di
'
erent from previous Tendai positions in
which embracing Buddhism was seen as having the role of protecting the
nation (cf. Sat
-
1999).
Concerning the idea of
,Sat
-
(1999)
argues that the term kokka (nation) was not so much about political power
structures as it was about the land and the people who lived there. This view
becomes more apparent in Nichiren
'
establishing peace of the nation
'
s later writings after his third remonstra-
tion with the government and subsequent exile to Sado Island in 1271 (see
WND-1, The Selection of the Time 579
'
80), where the emphasis shifts
somewhat to the importance being place on people
-
s transformation rather
than that of the rulers. However, in the early twentieth century Nichiren was
used by ultranationalist groups, particularly Tanaka Chigaku (1861
'
1939), who
actively endorsed Japan using military force for world domination (Tanaka
-
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