Tanaka first addressed [his reform ideas] in detail in his 1901 essay Shūmon no ishin (Restoration of the [Nichiren] sect), a manifesto for radical sectarian reform. Tanaka excoriated the traditional Nichiren temple institutions of his day as outmoded, parochial, and indifferent to the needs of modern Japan. “Nichiren Buddhism should not exist for its own sake,” he admonished, “but for the sake of the nation. It is the doctrine that can protect the Japanese state, and to which, in the future, all humanity must inevitably convert.” Toward Buddhist practice, he urged a spirit of restoration and in particular, a return to Nichiren’s foundational emphasis on shakubuku, directly challenging the teachings of other sects. Under the Tokugawa regime (1603-1868), when Buddhism had been incorporated into the shogunate’s administrative apparatus and religious debates were prohibited by law, the practice of assertive proselytizing by shakubuku had been largely abandoned. Doctrinal interpretation had assumed an accommodationist stance, one inherited by Nichiren sectarian leaders of the Meiji period. In addition, in the wake of the brief but violent anti-Buddhist persecution (haibutsu kishaku) that had erupted in the early 1870s, Buddhist leaders saw their best chance of institutional survival in transsectarian cooperation. Tanaka despised this ecumenical move; Nichiren had taught that only the Lotus Sūtra could protect the country, and, now that Japan was struggling to assume a place among the world’s powers, refutation of inferior teachings by shakubuku was what the times demanded.