Tanaka Chigaku

Who was Tanaka Chigaku?

Tanaka Chigaku was a Japanese Buddhist scholar and preacher of Nichiren Buddhism, orator, writer and nationalist propagandist in the Meiji, Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He is considered to be the father of Nichirenism, the fiercely nationalistic blend of Nichiren Buddhism and State Shinto espoused by such figures as Inoue Nissho, Ishiwara Kanji and Kita Ikki. Notably, however, the children's writer, poet, and rural activist Miyazawa Kenji also idolized Tanaka, and both Miyazawa and Ishiwara joined his flagship organization, the Kokuchūkai, in 1920.

Born Tada Tomonosuke in Tokyo, the third son of a noted physician and former devotee of Pure Land Buddhism who had converted to the Nichiren sect, Tanaka was placed under the care of the Rev. Kawase Nichiren following the death of his parents in 1870. Enrolled as a novice at Rev. Kawase's temple, he later entered the Nichiren Buddhist academy of Daikyo-in, during which time he adopted the sobriquet 'Chigaku'. During this time, though, Tanaka came to be disillusioned with the sect leadership, whom he considered too passive in their teachings, and in 1879 he abandoned the priesthood and set out to establish himself as a lay preacher of the "true" Nichiren Buddhism. Briefly employed at a German engineering company in Yokohama, he was quickly drawn to religious proselytizing, joining the lay Nichiren organization Nichiren-kai as a preacher, in which capacity he honed his public speaking skills and developed his own distinct uncompromising Nichiren doctrine, which he came to refer to as "Nichirenism".