Thank you very much for your donation of 90 rice cakes and 50 Japanese yams which you took the trouble of sending from the Ueno District of Fuji County, Suruga Province, to me in a valley of Mt. Minobu in the Hakiri District of Kai Province through your messenger.
To begin with, wood is precious at the seashore while salt is treasured in the mountain. Water is valuable at the time of a drought and a lamplight is a treasure in the darkness. The husband is a fortune to his wife while the wife is the life of her husband. The king respects the subjects as his parents while the people value their food as the heavens.
Nevertheless, an epidemic has been rampant throughout Japan in the last few years, reducing the population in half. Moreover, as we are in the midst of a severe famine that began on the seventh month of last year, making it difficult for those who live far from where other people are or for a priest who has retreated into a mountain (like myself) to stay alive.
What is more, as I was born in a country of slanderers of the Lotus Sūtra, I have been persecuted as Never Despising Bodhisattva in the Latter Age of Degeneration after the passing of Powerful Voice King Buddha or Monk Virtue Consciousness after Kangi Zoyaku Buddha. Both the king and the people of this country detest me and treat me with contempt. My clothing is worn, and the supply of food is getting scarce. As a result, even a piece of padded cotton cloth is as precious to me as brocade. Even weed leaves taste as sweet to me as nectar.
Furthermore, the snow lies thick on the ground since the 11th month of last year, blocking the mountain path. Although a new year is here, nobody visits us except chattering birds. As the lonely days passed, I was expecting no visitors as I do not have any close friends, when 90 pieces of steamed rice cake arrived within the first three days of the New Year. They looked like the wonderful full moon, illuminating our minds with clarity and banishing the darkness of life and death.
Ueno-dono Gohenji, Reply to Lord Ueno, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Followers II, Volume 7, Page 29-30