Just at the time when I was thinking this must be the place where I would be beheaded, the soldiers began to get excited, gathering around me. Shijō Kingo began to cry saying, “The last moment has come!” Looking at this, I uttered, “How cowardly you all are! I am glad you are laughing at such a wonderful occasion as this when I am now going to present my malodorous head to the Lotus Sūtra. Why do you break the promise you had made?” Just at this moment, something shining like the moon flew like a ball from Enoshima Island from southeast to northwest. It was before daybreak, the night of the twelfth and was still too dark to see the faces of people. However, the night was brightened by the shining object for us to see our faces as clearly as on a moonlit night. The executioner who was ready to kill Nichiren fell down on the ground blinded. The soldiers became frightened. Some ran away as far as one hundred meters, others dismounted from horses and squatted down on the ground, and still others remained stiff on horseback.

I, Nichiren, shouted, “Why do you stay away from a felon like me? Come back here quickly.” None of them, however, came near me in a hurry. “Daybreak is coming very soon; what can you do if it gets light? If you have to kill me, do it right away. It would be unsightly when it gets lighted.” Thus I shouted to them, but there was no response.

Shuju Onfurumai Gosho, Reminiscences: from Tatsunokuchi to Minobu, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Biography and Disciples, Volume 5, Pages 28-29