Persecution of his sect continued, reaching a high point in the mid-sixteenth century, when a band of rival Tendai monks burned twenty-one Nichiren temples in Kyoto, slaughtering all the priests, including a reputed three thousand in the last temple.
The sect has survived, however, and today Nichiren Shoshu and its lay affiliate, the Soka Gakkai, or Value Creation Society, claim the membership of one Japanese in seven and control of the country's third largest political party. The Soka Gakkai recently dedicated a vast new temple at the foot of Mt. Fuji, said to be the largest religious structure in existence. With services that often resemble political conventions, the Nichiren sect has achieved might once have been thought impossible: it has simplified even further the ingenuous philosophy of its founder, embellishing the praise of the Lotus Sutra with marching bands and gymnastic displays in sports-stadium convocations.
The Japanese reformation represented by Amidism and Nichiren was a natural outcome of the contempt for the average man that characterized the early sects. It also opened the door for Zen, which found an appeal among the non-aristocratic warrior class to equal that of the popular Buddhist sects among the peasantry and bourgeoisie. As it happened, the warriors who became fired with Zen also took control of the government away from the aristocracy after the twelfth century, with the result that Zen became the unofficial state religion of Japan during its great period of artistic activity.
[ The Chronicles of Zen]
A special transmission outside the sutras; No reliance upon words and letters; Direct pointing to the very soul; Seeing into one's own essence. (Traditional Homage to Bodhidharma)
Bodhidharma