[Nichiren] explicitly rejected the “four kinds of practice” set forth in the chapter as unsuited to the present era. Those practices had been appropriate, he said, in the preceding eras, the ages of the True Dharma and the Semblance Dharma, but they were not suited to the Final Dharma age. “The four peaceful practices [in the “Ease in Practice” chapter] correspond to shōjū,” he wrote. To carry them out now in the mappō era would be as misguided as sowing seeds in winter and expecting to reap the harvest in spring. Rather, Nichiren saw the situation in Japan in his day as demanding the shakubuku approach: “The present era is defined in the sūtras as an age of quarrels and disputes, when the pure dharma will be obscured and lost. At this point, the provisional and true teachings have become utterly confused. … When the time has come for the one vehicle to spread, the provisional teachings become enemies. If they generate confusion, they must be refuted from the standpoint of the true teaching. Of the two propagation methods, shōjū and shakubuku, this is shakubuku as it pertains to the Lotus Sūtra.”