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Japan: Portrait of Japanese Buddhist monk Nichiren Daishonin, 4th-15th Century

Japan: Portrait of Japanese Buddhist monk Nichiren Daishonin, 4th-15th Century

This picture of Nichiren Daishonin was painted in the 14th-15th Century, and is kept at the Nichiren Head Temple, Kuon-ji, in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. It is considered the most accurate picture of Nichiren extant.

Nichiren (February 16, 1222 – October 13, 1282) was a Buddhist monk who lived during the Kamakura period (1185–1333) in Japan. Nichiren taught devotion to the Lotus Sutra, entitled Myoho-Renge-Kyo in Japanese, as the exclusive means to attain enlightenment and the chanting of Namu-Myoho-Renge-Kyo as the essential practice of the teaching. Various schools with diverging interpretations of Nichiren's teachings comprise Nichiren Buddhism.

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