Tanaka Chigaku and Emperor Worship

Brief

Tanaka Chigaku (1861-1939) founded the Kokuchukai and the "Nichiren Shugi Movement. As mentioned elsewhere, the Nichiren Religion was founded by the Iconclastic teacher Nichiren Daishonin. Now Nichiren was a teacher who by dint of his "lowly birth" and the inconvenience of his teachings was kept outside of the mainstream. His religion is not one one would normally associate with Emperor Worship or Nationalism. And yet during the thirties, that is precisely what happened to Nichiren's teachings under the movement known as the "Nichiren Shugi" movement.1 Chigaku Tanaka was the leading "theorest of this movement.

Biographical information

Early Years

Born in Feb. 1861 in Nihonbashi as the third son of an eminent physician, Chigaku's parents passed away before he was eleven. He then came under the care of Rev. Kawase Nichiren, head of a small temple in Asakusa. In 1870 Chigaku began an in-depth study of Buddhist scriptures, Chinese poetry, and philosophy at Myoukakuji. An uncompromising character, Chigaku believed from an early age that he had a special mission in life and was seldom willing to bend his principles. In his youth, he quarreled more than once with other clergy members and felt many priests were too lax. In 1879 he decided to leave the clergy and launch his own spiritual campaign.

Nichiren Kai

For a brief period of time he worked for a German engineering company in Yokohama. However, he found it difficult to focus on mundane activities. Chigaku was far more interested in spiritual proselytizing and philosophy. In 1881 he became active in a small group devoted to spreading Nichiren's teachings known as "Nichiren-kai". That September he started lecturing on Buddhism. Gradually he developed an ardent group of supporters (and opponents) in the Kanto area. In Nov. 1881 Chigaku married a Nichiren adherent from Karuizawa named Mine Kirigaya. Three months later a child was born, only to die within fifty days. In 1883, 1888, and 1897 sons were born to their family. Between 1898 -1907 the Tanakas had four daughters. Chigaku's wife provided moral support for Chigaku and his views on marriage are summarized in a 1887 essay "On Buddhist Matrimony".

Office in Tokyo

At the age of 26 Chigaku opened an office in Tokyo. Emphasizing the need for religious reform in Japan, he came to regard the Emperor as a manifestation of Nyorai, a Buddhist-Godhead. In 1885 he founded an ultranationalistic lay Nichiren Buddhist group called Rissho Ankoku Kai (Society for Securing the Peace of the Land Through the Establishment of True Buddhism)UTH13. Chigaku viewed Christian missionaries as "foreign invaders" and encouraged Japanese to develop their national identity. He was one of the first persons in Japan to use ideological mass-marketing techniques astutely. Though he reviled Western missionaries, he nonetheless adopted many of their methods. By 1890 Chigaku was lecturing extensively throughout Honshuu. Behind the podium, however, he manifested charismatic power. Chigaku was probably one of the most skilled Japanese public speakers at the turn of the 19th century. Lecturing to small audiences at first, by the end of his life he often addressed thousands. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1895 Chigaku moved his headquarters to Osaka. Constructing a special temple, he assembled prayer groups to chant for victory over China. Chigaku creatively fused Tendai and Nichiren ceremonies with Shinto principles of Emperor worship.

Nichirenism had always been similar to Tendai in some respects, and in the early days been seen by some as a "reform movement" within Tendai seeking to purge Tendai of Mikkyo Esotericism inherited from the Shingon/Tantric schools of China. It had always taught fierce loyalty to family, country and "law." It also had always enjoyed some influence with the Emperor, and so the tendancy of it to support Imperial claims had been an old one. But it had always been first and formost Buddhist, and so these teachings were a significant distortion of its Buddhist elements.

Myoushuu

In 1897 Chigaku began publishing a magazine about Nichiren's teachings known as Myoushuu. Within ten years this became a publication with a readership in the tens of thousands. In 1912 this merged with Nichiren Shuugi [Nichiren Advocate] to become the Kokuchuukai Shinbun [National Pillar News]. The title of the publication was later changed to "Seikatsu no Reika" [Spiritualizing Daily Life]. By 1908 Chigaku moved his headquarters to Miho. Converting an area of Kaijima which was a garbage heap into a place of beauty. Later he moved again to Tokyo. He renamed his group the Kokuchukai (Pillar of the Nation Society) in 1914.

This group, a nationalist group concerned with a range of moral and spiritual issues, grew to become an influential movement in Japan whose repercussions are felt even today. For one thing, Chigaku believed in Nichiren's prophecy of the ultimate spiritual unification of Japan. For another, he took seriously the admonition of the "Three Great Secret Laws" Gosho that a National High Sanctuary be built. This was to influence both Nichiren Schools, The Fuji School, through the Myoshinko, and Soka Gakkai, and also the Reiyukai and its offshoot the Koseikei. In the Fuji School these ideas were to play a role in controversies related to the building of a main building at Taisekiji named the Sho Hondo

By 1905 he went further, asserting that Japan had an important role in unifying the world. His message was received by many members of the discontented urban middle class and his followers included Ishiwara Kanji, Kita Ikki, Takayama Chogyuu, and Anesaki Choufuu. He even influenced the 55th High Priest Nippo Shonin of Nichiren Shoshu, and Their Myoshinko laygroup . Tsunesuburu Makiguchi attended one of his lectures but was unimpressed. Makiguchi and his disciple Josei Toda were both arrested years later precisely due to their opposition to these crazy notions of the Emperor being divine. Such irrationalism pits itself against a more rationalistic interpretation of what Nichiren taught. Since both groups were in the same religious group, this was a seed of many controversies that were to come to a head when Nichiren Shoshu tried to build a special building(the Sho Hondo to hold its Dai-Gohonzon

He is quoted in "Rebuking Enemies of the Sutra as follows:

Nichiren is the general of the army that will unite the world. Japan is his headquarters. The people of Japan are his troops; teachers and scholars of Nichiren Buddhism are his officers. The Nichiren creed is a declaration of war, and shakubuku is the plan of attack�. Japan truly has a heavenly mandate to unite the world. (translation from LEE 1975, p. 26)

Chigaku Tanaka was the inspiration for some of the bloodiest events of the 1920's as various military people took his ideas to heart and tried to restore the Emperor to complete power through force of arms. His nationalistic ideas led to such anomalies as young men wearing Daimoku Banners as they flew their kamakaze missions and assassins who thought they were doing the work of Kosenrufu.

Not all those influences were negative. He also so inspired the teacher Nichidatsu Fujii that he led a mission to propagate Nichirenism in Korea. Nichidatsu soon found the discrepancy between Japanese behavior and ideology so great that he denounced Japanese war efforts, travelled to India, and became a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi in his non-violent efforts -- even teaching Gandhi to chant at one point.

Tanaka's errors

As Sato Hiro writes in his Nichiren�s View of Nation and Religion, Tanaka wrote:

�The Most Holy Tenn�, descendant of the kami, is the embodiment of the right path, and is the very truth of the Lotus S�tra itself� (TANAKA 1936)."

Ruben Habito and Jacqueline Stone, writing together in their Nanzen Article translate Sato Hiro who says:

"For Tanaka, the Tenn� is the holy and inviolable Being itself. Thus for Tanaka, to protect this divine Tenn� was a most important duty. For Nichiren, the Tenn� is no more than the means to realize �peace of the nation.� The Tenn� is an entity that is at the service of a higher and more sublime religious ideal (the Buddha Dharma) and, as such, comes to be affirmed and recognized as the nation�s sovereign. But in Tanaka�s schema, the person or being of the Tenn� had come to be regarded as an ultimate end in itself."

As you can see from reading Nichiren's writings, he sometimes even questioned whether all countries would even see the "Gods" and "Goddesses" the same way, noting in one Gosho that Buddhism could be spread in a land of "Gods" or in a Godless land such as China. Tanaka was deeply mistaken to try to subordinate Nichiren's teachings to the xenophobic and superstitious notions of Shinto. Nichiren called such mistaken views "slander of the law" and the teacher Tsunesuburu Makiguchi was to refer to them as being a cause for the ruin of the nation.

The rest of the Story

The primary negative impact of Tanaka's teachings was to encourage Japanese militarism. People came to think of Nichiren as a Nationalist and that his idea of "world wide Kosenrufu" was synonymous with Japanese Cultural and political hegemony. He encouraged the repressive efforts of the Militarist regimes to try to "Unite" the Nichiren Groups in syncretism with Nationalist Shinto, and thus contributed towards the deluded fashion that Japan entered war with the China, the United States and Britain. Thus his ideas contributed both to Japanese aggression and its eventual defeat.

Each of the Nichiren Groups in Japan was influenced by the Nichiren Shugi movement differently. The "New Religions;" the Reiyukai and Rissho Koseikei were all heavily influenced and even inspired by Tanakas lectures. Within the Nichiren Shoshu, the High Priest Nikkyo, Jiko Ogasawara, and the founder of the Kenshokai, Shoei Asai, all were also influenced by Tanaka. The teacher Tsunesuburu Makiguchi had heard one of his lectures and was not impressed. Makiguchi was actually to come to oppose some of the key ideas of the "Tenno" nonsense of Tanaka -- at the cost of his life. After the war, most Nichiren movements eschewed Tanaka's ideas. But not all. Suddenly a lot of people who thought the war with the west was justified became people who were for peace all along.

The Nichiren Shoshu Kenshokai have followed in Tanaka's legacy.
ogasawara.html
Prior conflicts within Nichirenism

Footnotes

(Most of the footnotes are put in as "references" to linking pages).

  1. Indeed in a letter to his disciple Sanmibo Nichiren compared the Emperor to an Island Chieftain and criticized the Japanese for their insularity.

References and Additional readings

One of the first books I read which mentioned these issues was this book:
Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, by David Bergamini. ISBN: 0671785664, published 1972 and mostly out of print
Additional material (You need Adobe Acrobat) can be found at:
Nichiren Thought in Modern Japan -- Two Perspectives, http://www.iop.or.jp/0010s/sato.pdf)
http://www.geocities.com/~newfields/sb/tan.htm
http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/nlarc/pdf/Rude%20awakenings/Minamoto.pdf
http://www.businessweek.com/1997/20/b352726.htm
http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/421.pdf
Tanakas views on Nichiren:
Original:http://www.ic.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/550.pdf
LEE, Edwin B. Nichiren and Nationalism: The Religious Patriotism of Tanaka Chigaku. 30: 19-35. :http://monumenta.cc.sophia.ac.jp/mnindex.html
Myoshinko sources include
(My own page)Myoshinko
http://www.fpcj.jp/e/shiryo/vfj/99/4_12.html#12-15
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501020708-268236,00.htm
http://www.nichirenmonka.net/english/fondation.html
Untold History:
Downloadable readings
Untold History of the Fuji School, chapter 13
http://www.nichiren.com/History/c/c2.html
http://www.city.hanamaki.iwate.jp/main/english3/e-kenji/e-kenjibungaku.htm
Hosted by www.Geocities.ws

1