Nichio
Nichio
日奥 (1565–1630)
The founder of the No Alms Accepting or Giving (Fuju Fuse) school, a branch of the Nichiren school in Japan. A native of Kyoto, he became the head of Myokaku-ji, a local temple of the Nichiren school in 1592. When Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the ruler of the country, held a Buddhist ceremony in 1595, priests of the Nichiren school attended along with priests of other schools. Nichio refused to attend the ceremony, however, asserting that a follower of Nichiren should neither accept alms from nonbelievers, even the ruler, nor give alms to them. His doctrinal stand having been rejected by other priests of the Nichiren school, he left the temple and secluded himself in the countryside. In 1599 Tokugawa Ieyasu, who later founded the shogunate in Edo (now Tokyo), summoned him to debate with priests of the Nichiren school, whose views were opposed to his. Because Nichio persisted in his assertion, challenging the idea of the ultimate supremacy of secular power, in 1600 he was exiled to the island of Tsushima. In 1612, however, he was pardoned and returned to Myokaku-ji in Kyoto. His position instigated a schism in the Nichiren school with regard to the precedence of religious tenets over secular authority.
