Regarding Great Bodhisattva Hachiman Chapter1
IHAVE received the one thousand coins that you sent and reported that fact before the Lotus Sutra.
Earlier I heard that the mausoleum of the late General of the Right [Yoritomo] and the tomb of the late Acting Administrator [Yoshitoki] had been destroyed by a fire, which is most regrettable,1 and now you write that the Wakamiya shrine of Great Bodhisattva Hachiman2 has burned. This must have caused much lamentation among the populace.
Background
Nichiren Daishonin sent this letter on the eighteenth day of the twelfth month in 1280 to a believer named Chimyō-bō, who presumably lived in Kamakura but about whom little is known. It is a reply to Chimyō-bō’s offering of a thousand coins and to an accompanying report from him about a fire at Hachiman Shrine at Tsurugaoka in Kamakura. On the twenty-eighth day of the tenth month, 1280, a major fire had broken out in Kamakura. The fire, beginning in the center of the city and spreading outward, burned the tomb of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the founder of the Kamakura shogunate, and the gravesite of Hōjō Yoshitoki, the shogunate’s second regent. Then, on the fourteenth day of the eleventh month, another fire burned several structures within the precincts of Hachiman Shrine at Tsurugaoka.
At the time, the entire nation was in terror because of an imminent second attack by the Mongol Empire. As the Daishonin observes, to have the shrine of such a central deity damaged by fire must have heightened people’s anxiety.
Stating that he has reported about Chimyō-bō’s offering to the Lotus Sutra, the Daishonin responds to the information Chimyō-bō has conveyed concerning the fire in Kamakura that damaged Hachiman Shrine. He takes the opportunity to explain that Hachiman, a Japanese tutelary god viewed by the warriors as their guardian deity, was once regarded as a manifestation of Shakyamuni Buddha. In recent times, however, the Japanese people have come to view Hachiman as a manifestation of the Buddha Amida. This, he concludes, indicates that the people, misled by the teachers of the Nembutsu school, disregard Shakyamuni Buddha.
In “On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land”, the Daishonin, as a reason for his prediction of foreign invasion, cites the principle that the deities will abandon a nation that is hostile to the correct teaching. In accord with this principle, he states that he, the votary of the Lotus Sutra, is harassed and attacked, and “for that reason Great Bodhisattva Hachiman has set fire to his dwelling and ascended to the heavens.” He concludes by saying, “How pitiful could be the consequences” of heeding the priests who deceive and mislead others concerning Buddhism.
Notes
1. The fire destroyed the central area of Kamakura on the twenty-eighth day of the tenth month, 1280.
2. Great Bodhisattva Hachiman refers to the deity originally worshiped at Hachiman Shrine in Usa, Kyushu. The Minamoto family adopted Hachiman as their patron deity. In 1191, Minamoto no Yoritomo, the founder of the Kamakura shogunate, established Hachiman Shrine at Tsurugaoka in Kamakura. “The Wakamiya shrine” refers to this shrine at Tsurugaoka.