Tanaka, on the one hand, inherited the totalizing vision of his medieval Nichiren Buddhist forebears, in which temporal government, and indeed, all worldly activities, would someday be based on the Lotus Sūtra. On the other hand, Tanaka’s reinterpretation was innovative, in being indissolubly linked to the modern imperial state. In the latter part of his career, he increasingly identified “the Lotus Sūtra” with the Japanese national essence, an interpretive move that raised the Japanese kokutai to the status of universal truth and served to legitimate the armed extension of Japanese empire.