In the Hōon-jō, he wrote, “If a sage makes three attempts to warn the rulers of the nation and they still refuse to heed his advice, then he should retire to a mountain forest. This is the custom from ages past.” This moved him to action. However, it seems that at the start there was no specific plan for his place of retirement.

A month after his meeting with Yoritsuna, Nichiren Shōnin left Kamakura on May 12, heading towards Hakii Village in the Province of Kai. Since the believer Hakii (Nambu) Sanenaga was the steward of Hakii Village, it seems that Nichiren Shōnin accepted an invitation from him. Traveling west on the Tōkaidō Road, on that day he went as far as Sakawa, present day Odawara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, traversing the Ashigara Pass until reaching Takenoshita, present day
Koyama-chō, Shizuoka Prefecture, on the 13th, and stopping at Numazu City, Shizuoka Prefecture on the 14th. From here he headed towards Kai, reaching Ōmiya, present day Fujinomiya City, Shizuoka Prefecture, on the 15th, Nambu, present day Nambu-chō, Yamanashi Prefecture, on the 16th. Then on the 17th, he arrived at Sanenaga’s villa in Hakii Village present day Minobu-chō. Along the way resided the lay believers Takahashi Nyūdō and Nishiyama Nyūdō, but Nichiren Shōnin did not stop to see them, so as not to draw the attention of the Hōjō clan.

Nichiren Shōnin had not planned from the beginning to live at Minobu, but after remaining there for a while, life in the mountains appealed to him. He moved into a lodging prepared by Lord Hakii on June 16, 1274, where he remained living until September of 1282, when he was forced to come down from the mountain due to illness.