“Admonishing the State”: Challenging Worldly Authority in the Nichiren Buddhist Tradition

During Japan’s medieval period, Nichiren Buddhist clerics engaged in kokka kangyō (“admonishing and enlightening the state”): direct remonstrations with the shōgun, his representatives, or local officials to abandon support for all other teachings and embrace the Lotus Sūtra alone. Such acts reenacted precedent set by the sect’s founder, Nichiren (1222–1282), who had remonstrated to this effect with the Kamakura shogunate. Famine, earthquakes, and other catastrophes ravaging Japan, Nichiren argued, stemmed from neglect of the Lotus Sūtra, the Buddha’s highest teaching; conversely, faith in the Lotus would make this world an ideal buddha land. At great personal risk, Nichiren’s successors established a tradition of such remonstrations, especially in times of widespread disaster. Kokka kangyō asserted the dharma’s claims over those of worldly rule. It illustrates how remonstrations with authority articulated from the margins in the name of a transcendent truth can symbolically invert power hierarchies and solidify group identity.