From about the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), the Lotus Sutra became increasingly fused in Tanaka’s thought with the idea of the Japanese kokutai, or national essence, the ideological pillar of Meiji nationalism, said by many nationalist thinkers to have descended in an unbroken line from the Sun Goddess and her divine grandson, Emperor Jinmu, legendary founder of Japan. “The truth of the Lotus Sutra and the Japanese national essence form one another, like front and back, and are mutually dependent, like essence and function. Truly, this is the Great Way of nonduality,” he declared (Tanaka 1936, 163). Tanaka developed a Japan-centered hermeneutic by which he read the Lotus Sutra as a revelation of national destiny. For example, the word “thus” of “Thus have I heard” in the sutra’s opening passage he interpreted as the Japanese national essence; the “heavenly drums [that] resound of their own accord” when the Buddha preaches, as Japan’s mission of world unification; and the Buddha’s supernatural powers, as Japan’s military victories against China and Russia (102, 103, 107; Tanabe 1989, 199-206). Tanaka began to invoke the rhetoric of the mythic origins of the Japanese state—also prominent in the discourse of state Shinto—when he spoke of Japan’s “heavenly task” of world unification as a mandate inherited from Emperor Jinmu, whom he saw as reincarnated in the Meiji emperor. Though he urged the revival of Nichiren’s spirit of shakubuku, in making these ideological moves, Tanaka radically departed from Nichiren, who had strictly subordinated to the Lotus Sutra both the Japanese deities and the ruler’s authority. Tanaka’s identification of the Lotus Sutra with the Japanese national essence raised the latter to a status of universal significance and in effect equated the spread of Nichiren Buddhism with the extension of Japanese empire. It also served to justify militarism and aggression on the Asian continent (Lee 1975, 28-33; Nakano 1977, 165-72, 189-95; Tokoro 1966, 78-79).