THE LAND OR COUNTRY (KORU): “Country” here means a land inhabited by a specific people. From the viewpoint that the “self” at present is the concatenation of all past deeds, living beings represent primary karmic recompense (shōhō) and the land they inhabit, dependent recompense (ehō). The two are understood as nondual (eshō funi), like body and shadow. Thus, in correspondence to the capacity of their inhabitants, lands or countries may be said to have an affinity to particular teachings. Following earlier Tendai thinkers such as Saichō, Annen, and Genshin, Nichiren argued that the country of Japan is related exclusively to the Lotus Sūtra. However, such claims on the part of Annen and others were inevitably linked to the authority of their religious institution, the Enryakuji on Mt. Hiei, as a major cultic center for the rites of nation-protection. In Nichiren’s hands, the same claim served to challenge the authority of Mt. Hiei and other leading cultic centers, as well as the rulers who supported them, by arguing that they did not preserve unadulterated the teaching of the Lotus, which alone could truly protect the country, but had contaminated it with Mikkyō, Pure Land, and other “inferior” teachings. Indeed, part of Nichiren’s idea of Japan was that it had become “a country of slanderers of the Dharma”; hence one disaster was destined to follow upon another. (Page 254-255)