We left Echi on the tenth of the tenth month and arrived at the province of Sado on the 28th of the same month. On the first of the eleventh month I entered the Sammaidō Hall in the wilderness called Tsukahara located behind the residence of Homma Rokurōzaemon. This place was a run-down hut, about six foot square in size and without a statue of the Buddha, built in a place where dead bodies were abandoned like Rendaino in Kyoto.

The roof was full of holes and the four walls had fallen off so that snow which piled up in the room never disappeared. I had to stay here day and night, sitting on a piece of fur and wearing a raincoat made of straws. At night it snowed, hailed and thundered continuously. In the daytime no rays of sunshine penetrated the heavy clouds. It was such a discouraging life there. In ancient China Li-ling (Su-wu) was sent to the land of Hsiung-nu as an emissary and was captured and confined in a cave for years. Tripitaka Master Fa-tao who remonstrated with Emperor Hui-tsung of Sung in vain was exiled to Southern China, having his face branded with a red-hot iron. They must have felt just like I felt then.

However, this is in fact delightful. In ancient times King Suzudan abandoned the throne to seek the True Dharma and devoted himself to austerities under a prophet called Asita for as long as one thousand years. As a result of such intense training, he finally obtained the great merit of the Lotus Sūtra. Struck by self-conceited monks with sticks, Never-Despising Bodhisattva could become a practicer of the Lotus Sūtra.

Now it is Nichiren who, born in the Latter Age of Degeneration, is encountering these great difficulties for having propagated the five Chinese characters of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō.

Shuju Onfurumai Gosho, Reminiscences: from Tatsunokuchi to Minobu, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Biography and Disciples, Volume 5, Pages 31-32