CHAPTER XXIV

NICHIREN AND THE EARLIER SECTS

IN the year 1257 Japan was visited by a very terrible earthquake. After the earthquake, in 1258, came a destructive hurricane which overthrew much that the earthquake had left standing. In 1259 there was, as a natural result of the two calamities already mentioned, a famine throughout Japan, with the pestilence which always seems to follow in famine's train. The distress was so great, says Nichiren, in one of his letters, that men prayed to die rather than remain alive in the midst of the universal misery. The Government was at its wits' end to know what to do to relieve the general suffering: supplications and prayers were ordered to be offered up in all temples throughout the land. But months passed by without any signs of alleviation or abatement. At last, in 1260, Nichiren took to preaching in the public streets of Kamakura, after having handed in to the Regent and his retired father his newly written treatise entitled "Rissho Ankoku-ron." In the same year, Kublai Khan, the grandson of Jingis Khan, established his capital at Pekin, or Khambalik, where he received a visit from the Italian traveller, Marco Polo. These few facts will serve, I trust, as a sufficient introduction to this chapter.

Nichiren was born in 1222, in a remote village on the coast of Awa. He was in the habit of describing his

father as an outcast, from whence some have inferred that he was of low descent. This was not so, however; his father had been the retainer of a high noble at the Court of Kyoto, and had been banished, according to the custom of the time, for some fault which had displeased his master. What the fault was is not mentioned; if the father was at all like the son, we may infer that it was that outspoken plainness which men of high position do not always like. The family, which consisted of father, mother, and the one child born to them in exile, lived alone and apart in the fishing village, shunned by the natives because they were in disgrace, and holding little intercourse with their neighbours. The child, sensitive, tender-hearted, high-spirited, and fearless, grew up solitary and alone, the butt of the fisher lads, but devoted to animals, especially to the injured and maimed.

In 1234, being about twelve years, he was taken by his parents to the Temple of Kyosumidera, not far from his native village, and there placed under the care of an old Shingon priest, who was the incumbent. It has always been, in Japan, the course pursued in dedicating a child to the priesthood, to take him to some worthy priest to be trained and educated, and to let him serve as acolyte and personal attendant on his master until such time as he is ready to take upon himself the Vows of the Order.

Nichiren took his life seriously. One of his first acts after entering the Kiyozumi Temple as a student was