I CANNOT adequately express my gratitude for your frequent letters. At the time of my persecution on the twelfth, not only did you accompany me to Tatsunokuchi,1 but also you declared that you would die by my side. This can only be called wondrous.
How many are the places where I have thrown away my life in past existences for the sake of my wife and children, lands and followers! I have given up my life on the mountains and the seas, on the rivers, on the seashore, and by the roadside. Never once, however, did I die for the Lotus Sutra or suffer persecution for the daimoku. Hence none of the ends I met enabled me to attain Buddhahood. Because I did not attain Buddhahood, the seas and rivers where I threw away my life are not Buddha lands.
In this life, however, as the votary of the Lotus Sutra, I was exiled and put to death—exiled to Ito and beheaded at Tatsunokuchi. Tatsunokuchi in Sagami Province is the place where Nichiren gave his life. Because he died there for the Lotus Sutra, how could it be anything less than the Buddha land? The sutra reads, “In the Buddha lands of the ten directions there is only the Law of the one vehicle.”2 Does this not bear out my assertion? The “Law of the one vehicle” is the Lotus Sutra. No true teaching other than the Lotus Sutra
exists in any of the Buddha lands of the ten directions. The sutra continues, “There are not two, there are not three, except when the Buddha preaches so as an expedient means.”3 This being so, then every place where Nichiren meets persecution is the Buddha land.
Of all the places in the saha world, it is at Tatsunokuchi in Katase of Sagami Province in Japan that Nichiren’s life dwells. Because he gave his life there for the sake of the Lotus Sutra, Tatsunokuchi deserves to be called the Land of Tranquil Light. This is what the “Supernatural Powers” chapter means when it states, “Whether in a garden, a forest . . . or in mountain valleys or the wide wilderness . . . in such places have the Buddhas entered nirvana.”
You accompanied Nichiren, vowing to give your life as a votary of the Lotus Sutra. Your deed is a hundred, thousand, ten thousand times greater than that of Hung Yen,4 who cut open his stomach and inserted the liver of his dead lord, Duke Yi [to save him from shame and dishonor]. When I reach Eagle Peak, I will first tell how Shijo Kingo, like myself, resolved to die for the Lotus Sutra.
I have heard unofficially that by the order of the lord of Kamakura5 I am to be exiled to Sado Province. Among the three heavenly sons of light, the god of
