The potential influence of one individual’s violent millennialist vision is yet more vividly illustrated by the example of Ishiwara Kanji (1889-1949). …

Nichiren, as we have seen, had accepted the traditional theory of Buddhist decline occurring over five five-hundred-year periods. This scheme provided Ishiwara with a framework for his views on the “final war,” a concept he had begun developing in the early 1920s and to which he would devote most of his life (Peattie 1975, 53-74). War, for Ishiwara, was a driving force of historical progress, in which the struggles of nations and peoples to impose their ideologies on their neighbors led to higher levels of civilization. By the present time, Ishiwara believed, these competing cultures and ideologies had aligned themselves along two polar axes: the West, led by the United States, which followed the “way of dominance,” and Asia, to be headed by Japan, which followed the “way of righteousness.” The conflict between these two was destined to end in Japanese victory ushering in everlasting peace. Ishiwara drew support for his theory from Nichiren’s statement that in the fifth five-hundred-year period following the Buddha’s nirvana—that is, at the beginning of the Final Dharma age—”a great war, unprecedented in prior ages, shall break out in the world” (Senji shō in Risshō 1988, 2:1008). Nichiren was referring to the Mongol invasion, which he saw as divine punishment for Japan’s neglect of the Lotus. For Ishiwara, however, Nichiren’s “unprecedented great war” signified the final war that would pit the imperialistic West against an East Asia united under Japanese leadership in a conflict of apocalyptic proportions. To prepare for this cataclysm, Japan would need to mobilize the resources of China and Manchuria—an argument Ishiwara used to justify Japanese military aggression on the Asian continent. Through this war to end all wars, “Our powerful enemies will be vanquished, the glorious spirit of the Japanese kokutai will come home to the hearts of the peoples of all nations, and the world will enter an era of peace under the guidance of the imperial throne” (Ishiwara 1968, 1:431; trans. from Peattie 1975, 74).