Asai Yōrin‘s locating of Nichiren in opposition to medieval Tendai was explicitly extended to the other Kamakura founders by one of his disciples, Shigyō Kaishū (1907-1968). …

Where, according to Shigyō, medieval Tendai simply declared that the defilements are expressions of original enlightenment just as they are (jinen hongaku), in Dōgen’s thought, original enlightenment is mediated by practice and self-awakening, and in Shinran’s thought, by the relinquishing of egotistical reliance on one’s own efforts (jiriki). In addition, where medieval Tendai thought had taught contemplation of the mind of ordinary persons, the new Kamakura schools stressed faith in the enlightenment of the Buddha.

Similar statements have continued to emerge from the Nichiren Shū academic circle based at Risshō University and appear to represent a certain orthodoxy. Asai Endō, for example, writing twenty years after Shigyō, claims that medieval Tendai stressed only the Buddhahood inherent in ordinary people and “disregarded even [the stage of] hearing the Dharma and embracing it with faith,” which he terms “a confusion of theory and practice, a pernicious equality.” Its insistence on the identity of ordinary persons with an originally enlightened Buddha “became an empty theory divorced from the times,” unable to bring about positive spiritual results in an age of turmoil accompanying the rise of the warrior class. “The founders of the new Kamakura Buddhism left Mount Hiei, weary of this kind of Buddhist thought that gave priority to theory, being divorced from reality. Therefore, while Hōnen, Shinran, Dōgen, and Nichiren each have their own unique religious qualities, they are all alike in the point of having resolved to overthrow abstract theory.” (Page 71-72)