One might well argue that Tanaka Chigaku’s principal importance lies not so much in what he said but in whom he influenced. Although most of his followers were humble folk, rather far down on the ladder of success, however it might be measured, a fairly large, and surprisingly varied, group of important people counted themselves among his disciples: Takayama Chogyū, who though tragically short-lived is now reckoned to have been one of the Meiji period’s pre-eminent scholars; Anesaki Masaharu, perhaps Japan’s most influential interpreter of Buddhism to Western readers; Miyazawa Kenji, a farmer-poet of sublime genius; Inoue Nisshō, a radical terrorist active in a number of ultranationalist plots in the 1930s; and Ishiwara Kanji, an army officer who regarded the Mukden Incident, which he helped plan, as the first stage in the spreading of the Kingly Way throughout the world.

But what inspired these people and led to the achievements in which Tanaka took pride was Nichirenism, and so we return to the paradoxical fact that what makes Tanaka, basically anti-intellectual, important derives from his scholarship. Like other Buddhists, Tanaka was able to find in the teachings of Nichiren, with their chauvinistic overtones, ample support for the secular government of Japan. But he went beyond this, and it was in his ideas of syncretism, his reinterpretation of Nichiren Buddhism in Shinto terms, that he made his unique contribution to modern Japanese life. He imbued Buddhism with a nationalistic bias that made it possible not only for an individual believer to support his political leaders unswervingly, but for the Buddhist church itself, as a vehicle to facilitate the achievement of political ends, to assert itself positively in the secular world from which it had long been excluded. The impact of Nichirenism upon mainstream Nichiren Buddhism cannot be accurately measured, but it was certainly felt.

What is Nippon Kokutai? It is the national substance, national principles, the national form. It is a fundamental social idea, a Gemeinschaft, on which the political state and the social system depend for ultimate authority. It is the moral path which enables Japan alone to transmit universal justice to posterity. It is not a form of government. A country without kokutai is an unfinished country; it is founded on no principles, its basis is military or industrial power, and its people live parasitic lives which are totally dependent upon arms and money. But the case of Japan is quite different. Japan is a unique country, for alone among the nations it is based upon kokutai. It exemplifies ideal peace, and its heavenly task is to spread the truth of kokutai.

The substance of kokutai, Tanaka asserted, could be divided into three constituents: 1. Happiness (the sum of national blessing accumulated by ancestors); 2. Wisdom (the sum of national wisdom amassed by ancestors); and 3. Right (the sum of national loyalty cultivated by the imperial descendants). (‘Glory’ is sometimes used in place of ‘wisdom’, ‘righteousness’ in place of ‘right’.) These ideas, amplifications of Tanaka’s interpretation of the Nihongi, suggest that by and large his basic nationalistic inclinations were probably fixed as early as the 1903 speech in which he alluded to the same three principles.

Japan’s “heavenly task” was, Tanaka declared, from the outset not limited to the islands of Japan alone; the departure of Emperor Jimmu for the east marked the beginning of Japan’s movement into the world at large. The country was, indeed, founded for the benefit of the whole world, and it was not too much to say that Perry’s arrival was a call upon Japan to distribute abroad the blessings of its unique moral qualities. The world began and ended with Japan, and if the country were truly understood, mankind would exist in peace and harmony. …

The actual work of bringing the nations of the world to the day of peace involved two stages: the first, “spiritual absorption” (the extension of kokutai in order to enlighten the minds of men) ; and the second, “military pacification” (a sort of negative guarantee of justice through Japan’s control of the “lawless and disobedient” people of the world). The peace which was the final goal called for the submission of the entire planet to the beneficent overlordship of the Emperor of Japan. To this end, every country save Japan should be disarmed, and only the exemplar, the one region already enjoying the sublimity which was the Way of the Emperor, could be allowed to make decisions affecting the rest of mankind.

[For Tanaka t]he world was in the period of the Latter Days of the Law, and it was already fully evident that the only faith suitable for the times was that of the Lotus Sutra, that is, Nichiren Buddhism. But not, it should be understood, the religion of the Nichiren temples. What the times demanded, and what Tanaka had already called for, was a reformed Nichiren church. Now, for the first time, Tanaka suggested that the new faith should be Nichirenism (Nichiren shugi)—the principles of Nichiren Buddhism in the context of Japanese nationalism.

This phrase is of great importance, for it became the accepted identification for Tanaka’s religio-political theories. Nichiren shugi has a somewhat more “scientific” ring to it than the phrase generally used to designate the established Nichiren order, with its overtones of faith and piety, and it conveys fairly accurately Tanaka’s interpretations of the teachings of Nichiren in a context of nationalism. If the nuances are appreciated, Nihiren shugi can be said to epitomize Tanaka’s thought. The word appears constantly in all of his works after about 1906, and it continues in use today as the official definition of the religion of the Kokuchūkai. Nichirenism, then, was the means of binding Tanaka’s patriotism and religion into a logical entity. When Nichiren spoke of Japan’s role as the savior of the world (through assertive proselytization of the true faith), he was amplifying and clarifying goals and methods already set forth in the Nihongi; his call for an aggressive policy of expansion was a reverberation of the earlier rallying cry of Emperor Jimmu as he headed eastward to subdue the barbarians and spread the culture of the Yamato civilization.

These pronouncements of 1903-4, and especially the first use of ‘Nichirenism’ to define Tanaka’s thought, mark the dividing line, according to the late Satomi Kishio, son of Tanaka Chigaku by his second wife and head of the Satomi Research Institute, between his father’s career as an advocate of religion with strong nationalistic emphases and his career as a devotee of a nationalism rooted firmly in religious principles.

In his 1903-04 explications of the Nihongi, Tanaka made certain other analyses deserving of some comment. In the same paragraph in which the phrase ‘heavenly task’ appears, the Nihongi says:

In this gloom, therefore, he fostered justice, and so governed this western border. Our Imperial ancestors, and Imperial parent, like gods, like sages, accumulated happiness and amassed glory.

The casual reader will find little meaning in the phrases “accumulated happiness,” “amassed glory,” and, from the penultimate sentence in the paragraph, “foster rightmindedness.” Tanaka, however, chose to regard them as essential actions in the primordial establishment of kokutai, an ethnocentric concept meaning something like ‘national essence’, ‘national polity’, or ‘national structure’. Kokutai, in turn, was the fundamental principle upon which Emperor Jimmu accomplished the founding of Japan.

The founding of Japan, however, was not the ‘heavenly task’ (tengyō) mentioned in the Nihongi. The ‘heavenly task’, i.e., the Emperor’s task, was to spread and unite, as noted above, toward the goal of peace in a world devoid of national boundaries. Peace was impossible as long as the world remained fragmented, and the first step toward the achievement of peace should be the unification of the world.

As Tanaka’s explanation continued, he suggested for the first time the connections between Buddhism and the ‘heavenly task’ described in the Nihongi. The analogy, he said, was similar to the role of the historical Buddha in India. Just as Buddha was a manifestation of the Chakravardin, the ‘Wheel-turner’, sent to earth to ‘set the wheel of the Law in motion’, so was the imperial line of Japan established to lead the world into the unity that is peace. That the imperial line of Japan should be the instrument of unification was part of the whole world scheme in which the process of unification moved in a general easterly direction. And the fact that the ruling family of a small country at the far reaches of civilization should be so designated only emphasized that unity was to be realized without aggression, without pillage, theft, and robbery that it was, indeed, to be unification by righteousness. Tanaka’s reasoning at this point may be questioned in light of earlier comments about “aggression” and the impossibility of any action of a Japanese emperor being anything other than righteous. It is well, nevertheless, to understand that at the very outset of Tanaka’s espousal of nationalism he specifically rejected aggression, whatever its meaning to him, as a means of accomplishing unity and therefore peace.

All the same, Tanaka maintained, it was necessary for Japan to be armed in order to preserve the righteousness which would be the principal weapon of unification.

[I]n the summer of 1889, as the result of research into Buddhist traditions during the Latter Days of the Law, Tanaka managed to lay to rest any final misgivings he may have had about his role as a lay religious leader. While monastic discipline remained a hard and fast rule for every branch of Buddhism, he said, in the Latter Days of the Law this was a moot point, for in effect there was no monastic order. Priests and monks were no longer set apart from the citizenry at large; they were all laymen. Hence, inhibitions against meat-eating, marriage, and the like did not apply, for there were no priests. Tanaka’s own status was thus justified. He was a layman who pretended to be nothing else, while those who called themselves priests and monks were involved in deception.

It was not until the spring of 1901, however, that Tanaka formulated a complete picture of what he had in mind, when, in a monograph entitled Shūmon no Ishin (Reform of Religion), he advocated the transformation and, by implication, unification of Japanese Buddhism into a great Nichiren organization a kind of state church. In the Latter Days at hand, said Tanaka, Buddhism was in a sad way, the result of its long subservience to the Tokugawa regime and the subsequent doleful influence of Westernization on Japanese life. Buddhism, indeed, had sunk to so low a condition that its sole function was to bury the dead.

But Buddhism, on the contrary, should be a militant, revolutionary force, a staunch ally as Japan went about its task of uniting the world for righteousness’ sake.

Nichiren is the general of the army that will unite the world. Japan is his headquarters. The people of Japan are his troops; teachers and scholars of Nichiren Buddhism are his officers. The Nichiren creed is a declaration of war, and shakubuku is the plan of attack. Faith provides courage; doctrine provides logistic support. The army to unify all the nations of the world is to be set up in such a way. … The faith of the Lotus will prepare those going into battle. Japan truly has a heavenly mandate to unite the world.

Tanaka continued:

Army regulations must be strictly enforced. Civil war really began in 1253 and is not yet finished. … No matter what the circumstances, war is aggressive. War should not be leisurely; it should be swift as the wind. War should not be rash and noisy; it should be quiet as a forest. War should not be frivolous; it should be firm as a mountain. … Aggressively believe! Aggressively preach! Agitate! When you feel weak and tired, say, ‘The Lotus Sutra is my sword.’ Do not pray for righteousness. Do not pray for yourself. Do not pray for your father and mother. Do not pray for your teacher. Pray only for conquest!

In what may be its most salient chapter, as far as Tanaka’s developing nationalism was concerned, the Shūmon no Ishin said of Aggression:

Everything is aggressive. Animals are aggressive by nature. If one is aggressed upon, one will be aggressive in return. The cat is the aggressor of the mouse; it is aggressed upon by the dog. Men, too, are aggressive or aggressed upon according to their strength or weakness, their wealth or penury, their wisdom or stupidity. Saints, models of virtue, legalists, scholars—all possess such a contrary aggressor/aggressee spirit. Aggression is the way of the world.

However, there is good aggression, inferior and superior aggression, mundane and spiritual aggression. What we have termed “Lotus Sutra aggression” is superior, good, spiritual aggression. This kind of aggression will irrigate the fields of the spirit and nurture the seedlings implanted therein; it is medicinal, not poisonous. It is universal justice, religious righteousness.

While it is probably too much to say that Tanaka here sanctioned military aggression, it is easy to understand how such an inference could be made, especially in light of his ideas concerning cooperation between state and religion in modern Japan. As long as aggression could be rationalized as ‘good’, it was acceptable, and all aggression on behalf of the Lotus Sutra, it seems, was ‘good’.

[C]onsideration of Tanaka’s steady move from purely religious to mostly secular themes should probably begin with a speech he made in 1886.

In November of that year Tanaka delivered a lecture on Buddhist married life which included comments somewhat different from his usual exegetical remarks. Edited and refocused somewhat, the speech became the basis of the treatise which Tanaka presented to the Emperor and Empress on their silver anniversary in 1894.

While Tanaka’s principal theme was the Buddhist context for the male-female relationship that imbues the entire realm of existence, he introduced a new element: the role of Nichiren Buddhism in Japan’s destiny. His sources are the pronouncements of Nichiren, and he reiterated the founder’s warning that Japan must be remade according to the tenets he proclaimed. Indeed, Nichiren came to earth and established his church for the sake of Japan; Japan must, accordingly, spread the faith for the sake of the world. The two, Nichiren Buddhism and Japan, were inseparably linked (in the same manner as man and wife), each essential to the other; and it was the combination of the two, each acting through the other, that would cause the whole world to become a vast Buddhaland.

Although Tanaka did not in this document explain precisely, as he did later, the connections between Nichiren Buddhism and Japan’s traditional cosmogony, he suggested that there were such ties. He argued that world unification was both a Japanese and a Buddhist goal; he noted that Nichiren’s appearance in Japan was a step in the process of world unification; and he implied that, inasmuch as the goal had not yet been reached, it was the duty of modern-day Nichiren Buddhists and the state, working together, to bring this about. This may be interpreted to mean that if the reigning Emperor Meiji were to adopt such a course his task would be hallowed not only by tradition (mainly Shinto), but by Nichiren Buddhism as well. There was, in short, at least a hint as early as 1886 of the Buddhist apologetics for the imperial mission to unify the world which ultimately became Tanaka’s major theme. It is significant that Tanaka concluded the 1894 essay with two valedictions, both the Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō (Hail to the Sutra of the Lotus of Perfect Truth) of Nichiren Buddhism and a patriotic rallying cry, Nippon Teikoku Ban-banzai (Imperial Japan Forever and Ever!).

In 1884, Tanaka shifted his operations to Tokyo… . Once in Tokyo, he began to lecture frequently, sometimes twice a day, on topics then of great concern to Nichiren Buddhism, often exegeses of the Lotus Sutra, but also, and increasingly, on the life and doctrines of Nichiren himself. Symbolic of this shift was Tanaka’s decision in 1885 to rename his group the Risshō Ankokukai, the embodiment of Nichiren’s admonitions to the governemnt of Japan concerning the “establishment of righteousness” (risshō) and the “security of the country” (ankoku). Some of the lectures were delivered at temples, but as Tanaka became ever more outspoken in his denunciation of the established Nichiren order, his meetings were frequently held in rented halls. His audiences varied in size, but were often large, sometimes numbering over a thousand. And when a printing enterprise was begun in 1886, Tanaka’s fame spread beyond the immediate Tokyo area. September 1887 found him in Ibaraki prefecture, north of Tokyo, speaking on topics such as the stupidity of Amidism, the evils of Christianity, and the true faith of Nichiren. From then until 1893, Tanaka’s activities, while still based in Tokyo, spread throughout a good portion of the country, and long lecture tours became routine.

For reasons which remain somewhat obscure, Tanaka decided in 1893 to move his headquarters to Osaka. Perhaps the success of his meetings there and in cities such as Nagoya and Nara suggested a center closer at hand. By this time, furthermore, the Risshō Ankokukai was solidly established in Tokyo, and the districts west of the capital may have looked more challenging to this zealous evangelist. In any event, Tanaka moved to the Kansai area in late 1891, living first in Kyoto and later, from 1893 on, in Osaka.

For the next several years Tanaka’s activities were centered in Osaka, and they were, to say the least, prodigious. Speeches, often two hours or more in length, were almost daily occurrences, their themes increasingly concerned with what was to become Tanaka’s most important contribution to Japanese thought: the Buddhist-Shinto synthesis which provided a basis for nationalism. Publications, ranging from tracts to newspapers to full-length books, rolled off presses in Osaka and Tokyo, and, at least among the Buddhist reading public, Tanaka Chigaku became a well-known figure. …

He was constantly on the move. Lectures, ceremonial observances, instructional classes and the like took him back and forth from western to eastern Japan, until, every now and then, sheer exhaustion or illness would send him to bed. Eye trouble and neuralgia, bothersome since young manhood, became increasingly debilitating as Tanaka grew older, and from time to time he was forced to cease his travels and speech-making for periods of two or three months. Even so, he continued to write for his various publications at such times, and the result was an ever mounting bibliography of monographs and articles on Nichiren Buddhism and, increasingly, as time went on, on nationalistic themes as well. …

Advancing age slowed Tanaka down a little, but in the summer of 1935, at the invitation of the Commandant of the Kwantung Army, he embarked on a lecture tour of Manchukuo and Korea, his only journey overseas. Not long afterward, he fell ill. Able occasionally to give speeches and to write, he carried on reduced activity until the spring of 1938 when he suffered a stroke. Death came, finally, on 17 November 1939.

Born [December 14, 1861] in Edo just seven years before the transfer of the imperial capital from Kyoto was to change the city’s name to Tokyo, Tanaka Chigaku was the third son of a physician named Tada Genryū and his second wife. Tada Genryū died in February 1870, a few months after the death of his wife, but his influence upon his youngest child seems to have been considerable. He was a Buddhist, in early life a devotee of the Amidist Pure Land sect and later a convert to Nichiren, and he is reputed to have instilled in his children a deep commitment to Nichiren doctrine and, concomitantly, an ingrained distrust of the established church. Apparently an enthusiastic tippler, Genryū, in his cups, once exclaimed, ‘If you want to write good poems, don’t become a poet; if you want to understand Buddhism, don’t become a priest. Miso that smells like miso is not good miso.’ Yet the Nichiren priesthood seemed precisely the career for which Genryū’s third son was destined when young Tanaka, in a move presumably viewed by his half-brothers as a means of obtaining an eductaion, was enrolled, two months after his father’s death, as a novice in a Nichiren temple in northeastern Tokyo. What was to be a relatively short academic career thus began in the spring of 1870, and during its course Tanaka moved successively from scholar to scholar and from temple to temple, mostly in the northern part of Tokyo and nearby Chiba prefecture, until finally, in 1874, he entered the Daikyō-in, the newly opened Nichiren academy, a predecessor of Risshō University.

By this time he had adopted the name Tanaka Chigaku, the surname as a result of government order (Tada Genryū’s original family name had been Tanaka) and the sobriquet “Chigaku” (‘Wisdom and learning’) in honor of an early teacher, Chikyō-in Nisshin. According to his biographers, within two years of his enrollment in the academy, Tanaka became disillusioned by what he regarded as the discrepancies between the accommodating views of Nichiren sectarian leaders, caught up in the problem of preserving their institutions in the midst of the government’s support of Shinto, and the absolutist doctrines of Nichiren himself. It is not inconceivable, however, that Tanaka, like many other students, simply became frustrated with the stiff requirements of formal education and, consciously or not, began to seek an excuse for dropping out. At any rate, he fell victim to pneumonia in December 1876 as he began to prepare for his graduation examinations, and the next two years were marked by recurrences of illness whenever he seemed ready to resume his studies.

These were not, however, years of idleness. Tanaka continued to study on his own the Lotus Sutra, the works of Nichiren, and some of the ancient texts of Japanese history. He read voraciously, and by the time he finally determined to renounce his priestly vows early in 1879, he had most likely acquired an understanding of Buddhist fundamentals deeper than that of students whose education followed the ordinary course. A short, unsuccessful venture as an adoptive son of the Tanuma family then followed, at the instigation of his half-brothers, but by the late spring of 1880 Tanaka had determined to embark upon a career as a lay propagandist of ‘true’ Nichiren Buddhism.