[Following the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)] Tanaka consciously shifted his efforts from internal reform of the Nichiren sect to “study of the national essence” (kokutaigaku), by which name he termed his attempt to interpret the Japanese kokutai from the standpoint of Nichirenshugi. The notion of Japan’s unique national essence formed the ideological pillar of the modern state; its key elements included the myth of an unbroken imperial line, descended directly from the Sun Goddess and her grandson, Emperor Jinmu, and the concept of the emperor as benevolent father to the “family” of his subjects. …

Tanaka first seriously addressed this issue in a lecture delivered in Nara in 1904, shortly before the war’s outbreak, to some two hundred participants in a study training session whom he had taken on a visit to Emperor Jinmu’s tomb. It was published as a pamphlet titled Seikai tōitsu no tengyō (The divine task of world unification), and several thousand copies distributed to soldiers departing for the front. Its central argument, in Buddhist terms, was that the kokutai is the truth to be interpreted (shoshaku), and Nichirenshugi, that which interprets it (nōshaku). Tanaka’s hermeneutical strategy, here and in later writings, was to homologize the Lotus Sūtra, or, more specifically, Nichirenshugi, with the Japanese national essence through a logic of analogy and numerical correspondence. From the legendary account of Emperor Jinmu’s founding of the Yamato kingdom, as related in the eighth-century chronicle Nihon Shoki, Tanaka drew three phrases describing Jinmu’s achievements—”fostering righteousness, accumulating happiness, and increasing glory”—which he identified as the three original acts that had established the Japanese kokutai. These he in turn equated with the three imperial regalia—the sword, mirror and jewel—and with Nichiren’s three great secret Dharmas: the daimoku, the object of worship, and the ordination platform. The mission of Japan was the divine task of world unification inherited from Emperor Jinmu, to extend the blessings of the kokutai to all people. It would be spearheaded by the emperor, who was at once both Jinmu’s lineal heir and also the “wheel-turning monarch” of Buddhist tradition, who supports and protects the Dharma. At the same time, its fulfillment required the spiritual basis provided by Nichirenshugi; incomplete religions, such as Christianity or other forms of Buddhism, could never supply it. “Nichirenism is precisely Japanism,” Tanaka wrote. “Nichiren Shōnin appeared in order to interpret Japan’s spiritual essence as Buddhist doctrine, providing all humanity throughout the ten thousands years of the Final Dharma age with the ultimate refuge. The great teaching of Nichiren is the religion for Japan, and the religion for Japan is the religion for the world.”

From this point, Tanaka’s writings increasingly suggest that the underlying purpose of the Lotus Sūtra and Nichiren’s teaching was to explicate the Japanese national essence.