The rhetoric of leading Buddhist institutions of Nichiren’s day held that the “Buddha-Dharma” (buppō) and the ruler’s dharma (ōbō) exist in mutual dependence. In practice, this generally meant providing rites of thaumaturgical protection for the emperor or sovereign (tennō), the shogun, or other officials in exchange for a guarantee of privileges and economic support. For Nichiren, however, such reciprocal arrangements were untenable where the ruler opposed or was indifferent to the Lotus Sūtra, or revered it only as one teaching among many. Until those in power embraced the True Dharma, he held, devotees of the Lotus must maintain an oppositional stance, admonishing the ruler, even at the risk of their lives, to take faith in it for the sake of the country and the people’s welfare. In this way, Nichiren’s Lotus exclusivism contained an element critical of authority and established a moral basis for defiance of worldly rule in the Dharma’s name.

However, certain Nichiren writings indicate that, when at some future point the ruler should embrace the Lotus Sūtra, a more cooperative relationship of ōbō and buppō could then be instituted. Envisioning that time, he wrote: “Of my disciples, the monks will be teachers to the sovereign and retired sovereigns, while the laymen will be ranged among the ministers of the left and right.” But the clearest statement attributed to him of a future unity of Buddhism and worldly rule appears in an essay known as the Sandai hihō shō (On the three great secret Dharmas):

When the ruler’s dharma [ōbō] becomes one with Buddha-Dharma [buppō] and the Buddha-Dharma is united with the ruler’s dharma, so that the ruler and his ministers all uphold the three great secret Dharmas of the origin teaching . . . then surely an imperial edict and a shogunal decree will be handed down, to seek out the most superlative site, resembling the Pure Land of Sacred Vulture Peak [where the Lotus Sūtra was expounded], and there to erect the ordination platform. You have only to await the time. … Not only will this be [the site of] the dharma of the precepts [kaihō] by which all people of the three countries [India, China, and Japan] and the entire world (Skt. Jambudvīpa; Jpn. Ichienbudai) will perform repentance and eradicate their offenses, but [the great protector deities] Brahmā and Indra will also descend and mount this ordination platform.