I, Nichiren, am a child of a fisherman at the edge of the sea in the Tōjō District of Nagasa, in Awa Province, which is the 12th of the 15 provinces in the circuit of Tōkaidō. At the age of 12, I went to the Kiyosumidera Temple in the same Tōjō District to study. However, since this was a remote place, even though it was called a temple, there were no scholars there. That’s why I visited other provinces as a part of my training and study. Because I was a nobody and had no one who could teach me, it was difficult to learn about the origin of the ten schools and the comparative superiority among them; so I earnestly prayed, beseeching Buddhas and the bodhisattvas for assistance, and pondered the teachings in all the sutras.

Honzon Mondō Shō, Questions and Answers on the Honzon, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 2, Page 267