Nichiren proclaims his teaching

Born in 1222 in Awa province, Nichiren entered Seichō-ji at twelve and later studied in Kamakura, on Mount Hiei and on Mount Kōya. Back at Seichō-ji, he preached on the supremacy of the Lotus Sutra and for the first time chanted the daimoku in public; on the same occasion, according to his own account and later tradition, he took the name Nichiren. The date is the 28th day of the fourth month of the fifth year of Kenchō, that is, 26 May 1253 by the Julian calendar; the “28 April” found in many sources is the lunar date left unconverted. The date comes from one of Nichiren’s own later letters; modern scholars think the events unfolded over a longer period rather than on a single day.

Soon afterwards — in 1253 or 1254, by different accounts — Nichiren settled in Kamakura. In 1260 he submitted the treatise Risshō Ankoku Ron to Hōjō Tokiyori, warning that a country which rejected the true teaching would suffer civil strife and foreign invasion; he was exiled to the Izu peninsula (1261–1263) and later to Sado Island (1271–1274). When a letter from the Mongols reached Dazaifu in 1268, Nichiren took it as confirmation of his treatise and sent out eleven letters. Nichiren and his followers saw in the Mongol embassies of 1268–1269 a sign that his prophecy was coming true, and in the invasion of 1274 its fulfilment. He spent his last years on Mount Minobu and died at Ikegami in 1282.