Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

0
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō

南無妙法蓮華経 namu myōhō renge kyō Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō

This is a philological study of the Japanese daimoku 南無妙法蓮華経 (namu myōhō renge kyō), devotion to the Lotus Sutra. It spans a court poet's prayer of 881 to Nichiren's own dated letters and the English renderings from Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 to Soka Gakkai today, and examines where the formula's founding by legend differs from Nichiren's own account.

Japanese Scroll of Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō (namu myōhō renge kyō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō (namu myōhō renge kyō)

Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō (namu myōhō renge kyō) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

View Scroll ›

Abstract

南無妙法蓮華経, namu myōhō renge kyō, is the daimoku of the Nichiren schools, seven characters of homage to the Lotus Sutra chanted as the schools' central practice; the dictionaries' word for its sense is 帰依, taking refuge in, devotion to the Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law. The formula is older than the school that made it famous: a court poet, Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真, closed a prayer for his dead father with the same seven characters in 881, three hundred and seventy-two years before Nichiren (1222–1282) made the chant the ordinary practice of his school in 1260. Nichiren's own letters date the first proclamation of his teaching to noon on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month of 1253 at Kiyosumi temple, plainer than the dawn the later tellings give it. The English has never settled on one word for 帰依, adoration or devotion, each true to the phrase in its own register.

Overview

The sense. One sense, held steadily for seven hundred years, and the commentators differ only in how much they load onto it. Nichiren in 1260 makes the chant the whole practice for the ordinary person, and elsewhere calls chanting it polishing the mirror of the mind [1]. The Britannica entry puts the school's claim in a sentence: even the unlearned are saved by chanting these words alone [2]. Anesaki insisted the formula was not a mere title but an adequate embodiment of the whole truth revealed in that unique book [3]. The Japanese encyclopedia adds that only the Nichiren schools chant it, and that on Nichiren's own mandalas the seven characters are written with their strokes drawn out, the whisker daimoku, to show the title's light reaching all of creation [2].

The words. 南無 is namu, the Chinese spelling of Sanskrit namas, homage. The Japanese dictionaries translate it 敬礼 and 帰命, reverence and taking refuge [4]; Hepburn's dictionary of 1888 rendered it I adore thee [5]; Nichiren Shu says adoration [6] and Soka Gakkai to devote or dedicate oneself [7]. 妙法蓮華経 is Myōhō Renge Kyō, the title Kumārajīva gave the Lotus Sutra when he translated it into Chinese in 406: the Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law [8]. The English has called that law True (Kern, 1884) [9], Good (Hearn, 1898) [10], Perfect Truth (Anesaki, 1916) [3] and Mystic (Soka Gakkai today) [7]. Together the seven characters are the 題目, daimoku, the title; the 言海 dictionary of 1889 defines the word as in the Nichiren school, the title of the Lotus Sutra, that is, the phrase 南無妙法蓮華経, called the seven-character title [11]. In ordinary Japanese お題目 also means empty words, and a writer who uses odaimoku in English should know that [12].

The text in English. The chant reached English dictionaries early, in Hepburn's editions of 1872 and 1888 and Brinkley's of 1896 [13][5][14], then in Hearn, Chamberlain, Lloyd and Anesaki through the turn of the century [15][16][17][3]. Murray's handbook of 1894 and a mission scholar's study of 1917 give it as the sect's formula [18][19]; Kanzō Uchimura's English essay on Nichiren of 1908 hears it beaten on drums through Kamakura [20]; Anesaki's history of 1930 gives the formula with its gloss and its etymology [21]; and the Nichiren of the university presses in 1958, 1990 and 2001, and the school's own translation of 2004, carry both spellings [22][23][24][25]. Since Anesaki's 1916 life of Nichiren the standard English has been Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō with adoration; since the postwar growth of Soka Gakkai a second standard, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with devotion, is at least as common and is the form most English readers have met. The two spellings are one chant; the difference is whether the u of namu is written or swallowed.

The historical record

881. Sugawara no Michizane, a prayer for his dead father. In the tenth month of 881 Michizane, then a scholar of the Ministry of Ceremonial and not yet the god of learning, held a Lotus Sutra rite at 吉祥院 for his father, who had died the year before. The prayer he wrote for it survives in his collected works, the 菅家文草, and it ends, after the grief, with two lines of homage: 南無觀世音菩薩 南無妙法蓮華經 如所説, homage to Kannon, homage to the Sutra of the Lotus of the Wonderful Law, as the sutra says [26]. A 1700 printing of the text carries it [26]. That is the formula, used as a formula, three hundred and seventy-two years before Nichiren. Whether Heian monks already chanted it as a practice, which the Japanese Wikipedia asserts uncited, is not established [27].

1253–1279. Nichiren's own letters on how it began. Nichiren (1222–1282) is the reason anyone chants it now, and his own words on how it began are plainer than the legend's. In a letter of 1279 he wrote: on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month of 1253, in the province of Awa, on the south side of the Buddha hall of Shobutsu-bō at Kiyosumi temple, at the hour of the horse, I began to declare this teaching; it is now twenty-seven years [28]. An earlier letter to the monks of Kiyosumi gives the same day and place and names the audience, a priest called Jōen-bō and a few of the brethren [29]. Neither letter quotes the seven characters at the founding; both say this teaching, and both say noon.

1260. 唱法華題目抄, written at Nagoe in Kamakura. The seven characters as the ordinary practice come seven years after the founding: let the ordinary practice be to chant the title as Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō, with a verse or a line read by those who can, and homage to Śākyamuni, Tahō and the assembly as the supporting practice [30].

1275. 撰時抄. By 1275 Nichiren calls it the heart of the Lotus Sutra, and predicts it will spread through the world as the nenbutsu now sounds in every mouth in Japan; that sentence is the dictionary's earliest citation for the phrase [31].

Fifteenth century and after. The seven characters go everywhere the school goes. A fifteenth-century collection of tales has monks chanting it [32]; a poem-debate on wine and rice has a Lotus believer end his speech with it [33]; the chronicle of Oda Nobunaga says his nine battle banners carried it in the drawn-out whisker hand beside the coin-crested standard [34]; Lafcadio Hearn, in 1894, saw it on temple charms and knew it as the text of Katō Kiyomasa's flag [15].

Seventeenth century and after. The founding becomes a story. A sightseers' guide to Kyoto printed in the seventeenth century says Nichiren first chanted the seven characters of Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō at thirty-two, on the twenty-eighth of the third month [35]; a later miscellany says the twenty-first of the third month, aged twenty-two, facing the morning sun [36]; Anesaki's English life of 1916 has him cry the seven characters at dawn, making the all-illumining sun his witness [3]. The date, the age, the hour and the words move from telling to telling. Nichiren's own are the fourth month, noon, and this teaching.

What is not a source. The dawn: every dawn proclamation traces to tellings later than Nichiren; his own letters say noon. The seven characters at the founding: likewise the tradition's, and a reasonable inference, but not in his two accounts. The lineage's own words are adoration and devotion.

The text in English

1872. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, second edition. Gives it as the sect's formula of prayer [13].

1888. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition. Defines daimoku as the title of the prayer of the Nichi-ren sect [5].

1894. Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. The famous text Namu-myo-ho-ren-ge-kyo, inscribed of old upon the flag of the great captain Kato Kiyomasa [15], and what a pilgrim chants to his gong through every village.

1894. Basil Hall Chamberlain and W. B. Mason, Murray's Handbook for Travellers in Japan, John Murray, fourth edition, Route 5, Hommonji. At the temple where the Buddhist saint Nichiren died in A.D. 1282, the Daimoku-do, where some of the faithful are generally to be heard beating the drum and reciting the formulary of the sect—Namu myoho renge kyo [18].

1896. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary. Adds the verb daimoku wo tonau and the daimokukō, a fraternity of Nichiren's followers [14].

1898. Lafcadio Hearn, Exotics and Retrospectives. In his essay on tomb inscriptions, The Literature of the Dead, the Nichiren often preface their inscriptions with the famous invocation, Namu myo ho renge kyo [10].

1899. Lafcadio Hearn, In Ghostly Japan. The chant on a girl's lips [37].

1905. Chamberlain, Things Japanese. Quotes the physician Baelz watching devotees at Minobu repeat it for hours [16].

1908. Kanzō Uchimura, Representative Men of Japan, Keiseisha, Tokyo, pp. 223–224. In the essay on Nichiren, the sect's monks at Kamakura: Each carries a drum in his hand, and all in unison repeat their prayer, with — Nam-Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo, — five strikes to accompany its five syllables. Twenty of them is stunning to our ears [20].

1911. Arthur Lloyd. Called it the name carved on stone or painted on wood, which is found all over Japan [17].

1916. Anesaki, Nichiren, the Buddhist Prophet. The standard English becomes Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō with adoration [3]; a second standard follows with the postwar growth of Soka Gakkai, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo with devotion, at least as common today and the form most English readers have met, including Tina Turner's chant from 1973.

1917. August Karl Reischauer, Studies in Japanese Buddhism, Macmillan, pp. 93–94. one believer may preface his meditations and prayers by the formula, "Namu Amida Butsu," "I adore Thee Thou Buddha of Eternal Life and Light" and another believer may use the equally popular form of, "Namu-Myoho Renge-kyo," "I worship Thee Thou Scripture of the Wonderful Lotus"; the former being to-day the special prayer of the Amida sects, and the latter the "vain repetition" of the Nichiren Sect [19].

1930. Masaharu Anesaki, History of Japanese Religion, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner (Tuttle printing, 1963), pp. 192–193 and 230. he reduced the whole of his religion to a simple method, that of uttering the formula "Sacred Title" of the scripture, Namu Myo-Horenge-kyo, which meant "Adoration to the Lotus of Perfect Truth." It was for him not a mere oral utterance but a real embodiment of the truths revealed in that book, with the footnote Namu is a corruption of the Sanskrit Namah, "Adoration," and Myo-Horenge-kyo is the Sino-Japanese form of Sad-Dharma-pundarika-Sutra. This was calling on the name of the Scripture instead of calling on the name of Buddha; and at p. 230 the chant as a battle-cry of 1536, Shouts of "Namu Myo-Horenge-kyo," the slogan of the Nichirenites, vied with "Namu Amida-butsu", the prayer of the Ikko men [21].

1958. Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Donald Keene (comp.), Sources of Japanese Tradition, Columbia University Press, pp. 213 and 222. The compilers' own sentence: "Namu myoho rengekyo" is the Buddha's pledge of salvation, which Nichiren often called out to the beat of a drum—"dondon dondoko dondon"; and at p. 222, under the credit From Anesaki, Nichiren, pp. 83–85, Anesaki's translation of 1916 reprinted: Namu Myoho-renge-kyo! Namu Myoho-renge-kyo! (Adoration to the Lotus of Perfect Truth) — one witness with 1916, not a second [22].

1990. Philip B. Yampolsky (ed.), Selected Writings of Nichiren, translated by Burton Watson and others, Columbia University Press, p. 94. From 開目抄, The Opening of the Eyes: when the two syllables Namu are prefixed to the title Myoho-renge-kyo, we have the formula Nam-myoho-renge-kyo — the hyphenated Nam- spelling in a university press, with the copyright held by the Nichiren Shoshu International Center [23].

2001. Kazuo Kasahara (ed.), A History of Japanese Religion, Kosei Publishing, p. 98. The title chanted before Nichiren: In the late Heian period we find devotees involved in sutra copying who chant the sacred name of Amitabha or the daimoku, the sacred title of the Lotus Sutra (in Japanese, Namu-myoho-renge-kyo), and Tendai priests who preach the efficacy of reciting the title of the sutra at the hour of death [24].

2004. Burton Watson (tr.), The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, Soka Gakkai, translator's preface. The school's spelling as the one exception to the translator's own system: with the exception of the formula Nam-myoho-renge-kyo or Myoho-renge-kyo, all Japanese words are shown, where appropriate, with macrons to indicate the long vowels [25].

Today. The dictionaries' word for the formula's sense is 帰依, and a rendering must keep that sense of taking refuge, whether it says adoration or devotion; the two school spellings, Nichiren Shu's Namu Myoho Renge Kyo and Soka Gakkai's Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, are one chant, the difference being whether the u of namu is written or swallowed. The house's rendering, Glory to the Sutra; Hail Lotus Sutra, is one online dictionary's gloss; no printed dictionary, Japanese or English, says glory, and the nearest ancestor is Hearn's Hail to the Sutra of the Lotos of the Good Law of 1898 [10], where the lineage's own words are adoration and devotion.

A reading

The seven characters are older than Nichiren: a grieving son wrote them in 881. Nichiren's own account of their founding is plainer than the legend, and better for it: a teaching declared at noon on a spring day in 1253, and the chant as the ordinary practice seven years later. The English has never settled on one word, because 帰依 is both adoration and devotion, and a calligrapher's daimoku is a devotional hanging, not a Gohonzon, the inscribed mandala of the schools.

References

  1. 日蓮, 一生成仏抄, in 『日蓮上人御遺文』, 日明編, 祖書普及期成会, 1904, p. 119. National Diet Library pid 823848, scan 75. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823848/1/75
  2. 「南無妙法蓮華経」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉・ブリタニカ国際大百科事典・日本大百科全書, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/南無妙法蓮華経-108527
  3. Masaharu Anesaki, Nichiren, the Buddhist Prophet, 1916. Internet Archive nichirenbuddhist00anes. https://archive.org/details/nichirenbuddhist00anes
  4. 「南無」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/南無
  5. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, Z. P. Maruya, Tokyo, 1888. Internet Archive japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
  6. Nichiren Shu, English teachings. https://www.nichiren.or.jp/english/teachings/
  7. Soka Gakkai, Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo. https://www.sokaglobal.org/practicing-buddhism/nam-myoho-renge-kyo.html
  8. 妙法蓮華經 (Taishō Tripiṭaka T0262), Kumārajīva, tr., 406. CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T0262&juan=1
  9. Kern, Saddharma-Pundarîka (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 21), Clarendon Press, 1884.
  10. Lafcadio Hearn, Exotics and Retrospectives, Little, Brown, 1898.
  11. 言海, 1889, p. 590. National Diet Library pid 992954, scan 370. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992954/1/370
  12. 「題目」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/題目
  13. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, second edition, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1872.
  14. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseido, 1896.
  15. Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, 1894. Internet Archive glimpsesofunfami01hear. https://archive.org/details/glimpsesofunfami01hear
  16. Chamberlain, Things Japanese, fifth edition, John Murray / Kelly & Walsh, 1905, p. 118.
  17. Arthur Lloyd, The Creed of Half Japan, 1911, pp. 303–304. Internet Archive creedofhalfjapan0000lloy. https://archive.org/details/creedofhalfjapan0000lloy
  18. Basil Hall Chamberlain and W. B. Mason, A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, John Murray, London, fourth edition, 1894, Route 5 (Hommonji). Internet Archive a-handbook-for-travellers-in-japan-1891 (the copy names the 1893 season). https://archive.org/details/a-handbook-for-travellers-in-japan-1891
  19. August Karl Reischauer, Studies in Japanese Buddhism, Macmillan, New York, 1917, pp. 93–94. Internet Archive studiesinjapane00reis. https://archive.org/details/studiesinjapane00reis
  20. Kanzo Uchimura, Representative Men of Japan: Essays, Keiseisha, Tokyo, 1908, pp. 223–224.
  21. Masaharu Anesaki, History of Japanese Religion, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London, 1930; Charles E. Tuttle printing, Rutland and Tokyo, 1963, pp. 192–193 and 230.
  22. Ryusaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Donald Keene (comp.), Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 1, Columbia University Press, New York, 1958, pp. 213 and 222.
  23. Philip B. Yampolsky (ed.), Selected Writings of Nichiren, translated by Burton Watson and others, Columbia University Press, New York, 1990, p. 94.
  24. Kazuo Kasahara (ed.), A History of Japanese Religion, Kosei Publishing, Tokyo, 2001, p. 98.
  25. Burton Watson (tr.), The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings, Soka Gakkai, Tokyo, 2004, translator's preface. https://www.nichirenlibrary.org/en/ott/toc/
  26. 菅原道真, 『菅家文草』卷十一, 吉祥院法華會願文, 元禄13年 (1700) print. National Diet Library pid 2562894, scan 27. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2562894/1/27
  27. 「南無妙法蓮華経」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/南無妙法蓮華経
  28. 日蓮, 聖人御難事 (1279), in 『日蓮上人御遺文』, 日明編, 祖書普及期成会, 1904, p. 1875. National Diet Library pid 823848, scan 953. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823848/1/953
  29. 日蓮, 清澄寺大衆中 (letter to the Kiyosumi monks), in 『日蓮上人御遺文』, 1904, p. 1371. National Diet Library pid 823848, scan 701. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823848/1/701
  30. 日蓮, 唱法華題目鈔 (1260), in 『日蓮上人御遺文』, 1904, p. 341. National Diet Library pid 823848, scan 186. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823848/1/186
  31. 日蓮, 撰時抄 (1275), 御書検索, Soka Gakkai. https://gosho-search.sokanet.jp/page.php?n=258
  32. 玄棟, 『三国伝記』, fifteenth century. National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2552946
  33. 一条兼良, 『酒飯論』. National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2542602
  34. 小瀬甫庵, 『信長記』, scan 21. National Diet Library pid 2566489. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2566489/1/21
  35. 山本泰順, 『洛陽名所集』, scan 19. National Diet Library pid 2591931. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2591931/1/19
  36. 駒井乗邨, 『鶯宿雑記』. National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10303488
  37. Lafcadio Hearn, In Ghostly Japan, Little, Brown, 1899.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every item tested at its address; some resolve; the rest not openable; one claim the check could not find, found here at the address the record already held