[T]he Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight, fascicle 1, states: “Those who listen without revering the perfect and sudden true teaching are influenced by the recent academic tradition of ‘mixing up’ expedient and true teachings among those who study Mahāyāna Buddhism.” Those who do not know the difference between the expedient and true teachings of the Mahāyāna are referred to as “mixed up.” As a result those who believe in the Lotus Sūtra, the true Mahāyāna teaching, are as rare as the soil on a fingernail while those who do not believe in the sūtra and are diverted to expedient teachings are as immeasurable as the dust in the worlds throughout the universe.

Regretting this, Grand Master Miao-lê laments in his Annotations on the Great Concentration and Insight, fascicle 1: “In the Age of the Semblance Dharma and the Latter Age of Degeneration, people are so heartless and impious that they don’t even try to contemplate the perfect and sudden true teaching, scriptures of which are overflowing the libraries and chests, to the very end. They are born and die in vain. How pathetic their lives are!” This remark in the Annotations by Grand Master Miao-lê, an avatar of a bodhisattva, I believe, is his long-range prediction on the state of Japan today, in the Latter Age of Degeneration.

Shugo Kokka-ron, Treatise on Protecting the Nation, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Doctrine 1, Page 55