In his 1903-04 explications of the Nihongi, Tanaka made certain other analyses deserving of some comment. In the same paragraph in which the phrase ‘heavenly task’ appears, the Nihongi says:

In this gloom, therefore, he fostered justice, and so governed this western border. Our Imperial ancestors, and Imperial parent, like gods, like sages, accumulated happiness and amassed glory.

The casual reader will find little meaning in the phrases “accumulated happiness,” “amassed glory,” and, from the penultimate sentence in the paragraph, “foster rightmindedness.” Tanaka, however, chose to regard them as essential actions in the primordial establishment of kokutai, an ethnocentric concept meaning something like ‘national essence’, ‘national polity’, or ‘national structure’. Kokutai, in turn, was the fundamental principle upon which Emperor Jimmu accomplished the founding of Japan.

The founding of Japan, however, was not the ‘heavenly task’ (tengyō) mentioned in the Nihongi. The ‘heavenly task’, i.e., the Emperor’s task, was to spread and unite, as noted above, toward the goal of peace in a world devoid of national boundaries. Peace was impossible as long as the world remained fragmented, and the first step toward the achievement of peace should be the unification of the world.

As Tanaka’s explanation continued, he suggested for the first time the connections between Buddhism and the ‘heavenly task’ described in the Nihongi. The analogy, he said, was similar to the role of the historical Buddha in India. Just as Buddha was a manifestation of the Chakravardin, the ‘Wheel-turner’, sent to earth to ‘set the wheel of the Law in motion’, so was the imperial line of Japan established to lead the world into the unity that is peace. That the imperial line of Japan should be the instrument of unification was part of the whole world scheme in which the process of unification moved in a general easterly direction. And the fact that the ruling family of a small country at the far reaches of civilization should be so designated only emphasized that unity was to be realized without aggression, without pillage, theft, and robbery that it was, indeed, to be unification by righteousness. Tanaka’s reasoning at this point may be questioned in light of earlier comments about “aggression” and the impossibility of any action of a Japanese emperor being anything other than righteous. It is well, nevertheless, to understand that at the very outset of Tanaka’s espousal of nationalism he specifically rejected aggression, whatever its meaning to him, as a means of accomplishing unity and therefore peace.

All the same, Tanaka maintained, it was necessary for Japan to be armed in order to preserve the righteousness which would be the principal weapon of unification.