In Nichiren’s case, the single-practice orientation was connected at least in part with the social composition of his following. He himself was a person of common origins, from a remote part of eastern Japan, without powerful backers, and whose followers were chiefly middle- and lower-ranking samurai – persons on the periphery, if not altogether outside, the “influential parties system” or kenmon taisei. At the same time, Nichiren’s criticisms of leading religious figures and institutions, and of the rulers and officials who were their patrons, resulted in sanctions and suppressions that further marginalized him and his followers and prompted increasing self-definition in opposition to existing religious and political authority. In this process, Nichiren’s assimilation of the new paradigm of enlightenment to an exclusive practice became, in effect, a challenge to the establishment. In his reading of the paradigm, direct access to enlightenment was possible only by the teaching of which he and his disciples were the bearers – a Dharma received directly from Śākyamuni Buddha for the Final Dharma age and alone capable of saving the country from disaster. Thus, in his reading, the locus of authority and legitimacy was made to shift, and it was not the court, nor the bakufu, nor the clerics of the leading shrines and temples, but Nichiren and his disciples who held the center stage of their historical moment. (Page 298-299)