During the first half of the twentieth century, Taiseki-ji was plagued by fierce factional struggles for the seat of high priest. To resolve disputes over who should succeed to the post, elections were held. But fraudulence and corruption interfered with elections for high priest, eventually prompting government intervention, both by the police and the Ministry of Education.

On August 18, 1923, Nissho, the fifty-seventh high priest, died at Okitsu, Shizuoka Prefecture, where he had been convalescing from the tongue cancer. Before his death, however, he did not directly transfer the highest office of Nichiren Shoshu to his successor, Nitchu, grand study master, the position then stipulated by the school’s rules to be filled by the candidate for the office of high priest. Instead, Nissho invited two lay believers to Okitsu where he was staying and entrusted them, as temporary custodians, with the heritage of the Law, the formal lineage of the Fuji School. Later these two lay believers transferred the heritage to Nitchu at Renge-ji, a branch temple in Osaka.

The reason behind this unusual method of transferring the office of high priest was that Houn Abe, who later be-came the sixtieth high priest Nichikai, was trying to interfere with the appointment of Nitchu as the next high priest at all costs. Houn Abe, then leading a faction against Nissho within the priesthood, schemed to keep Nitchu away from Nissho so that the former might not receive the heritage. He also applied various forms of pressure to Nitchu, attempting to force his resignation from the position of grand study master. After his attempt failed and Nitchu became high?priest, Houn Abe schemed to force him out of office.

On November 18, 1925, Nichiren Shoshu held a council meeting at Taiseki-ji. Originally, they met to discuss their stance toward the Nichiren School at Mount Minobu. But two days later, the council suddenly passed a resolution calling for the impeachment of Nitchu. Following the resolution, the council issued a recommendation to the high priest that he resign. Prior to their meeting, the majority of council members had entered into a secret agreement to impeach Nitchu, a plan masterminded by Houn Abe.

Abe’s scheming was chiefly motivated by his personal grudge against the high priest and his own ambition for the school’s highest office. Four months before the council met, Nitchu had demoted Abe from the position of secretary general, as well as from his executive standing within the priesthood, for the errors he had made in an article critical of the Nichiren School at Minobu. Abe’s article, published in Dai-Nichiren, the priesthood’s official magazine, was intended to refute the tenets of the Nichiren School but instead became an object of ridicule in religious circles for its elemental mistakes.

In accord with its plan, the council successfully coerced Nitchu into writing a letter of resignation and reported to the Ministry of Education that the next high priest would be Nichiko Hori. However, leading parish members of Taiseki-ji started to campaign on behalf of the deposed high priest and decided to stop their financial contributions to those priests who supported Nitchu’s impeachment. The two factions fought bitterly.

The bureau of religious affairs within the Ministry of Education, which exercised enormous control over religious organizations, saw no possibility of arbitration in the dispute and instructed Nichiren Shoshu to hold an election to determine the high priest. At that time, there were about ninety priests qualified to vote under the school’s rules and regulations. On February 17, 1926, ballots were taken. Supported by the leading faction and widely respected for his character and scholarship, Nichiko Hori won a landslide victory. Nitchu received only three out of eighty-seven votes. Before the election, Nitchu declared that he would not transfer the office of high priest to anyone, no matter who was elected. Despite his threat, he received only two votes besides his own.

After the election, however, some parish members lodged a complaint with the local police department that the leading faction, led by Houn Abe, had coerced Nitchu into writing his letter of resignation. Many priests were summoned to the police station for questioning. The turmoil was finally settled on March 8 when Nitchu transferred the high office to Nichiko.

Nichiko, who was more respected for his scholarship and integrity than Abe, had been persuaded by Abe’s faction to run against Nitchu. As soon as Nichiko assumed that office, however, Abe began working to isolate Nichiko and force him out.

While in office, High Priest Nichiko tried to revise the school’s rules and regulations to eliminate the rampant in-fighting characteristic of that time. But the committee overseeing the revisions, the council and the staff of the administrative office successfully sabotaged Nichiko’s efforts. Lacking any support, Nichiko chose to retire and did so in November 1927, little more than a year after taking office. Upon his retirement, Nichiko expressed his desire to work on a compilation of the complete works of the Nichiren Daishonin and of the Fuji School. Besides being disappointed at the?subterfuge he had faced from other high-ranking priests, Nichiko was also dissatisfied with the contents of what was known as the heritage of the Law—the supposedly secret transmission passed from one high priest to the next —which he had received from Nitchu. After becoming high priest, Nichiko met with the two lay believers who had received the transmission of the heritage from Nissho to reconfirm its contents.

Upon Nichiko’s resignation, another election for high priest was held. Two candidates, Houn Abe and Koga Ari-moto, ran for the office. The ballots were counted on December 18, 1927, with Abe receiving fifty-one votes, and Arimoto, thirty-eight. Abe had defeated his opponent by a margin of thirteen votes. This election, however, was tainted by corruption. Charges of fraud, including extortion, bribery and obstruction of votes, were brought by Arimoto’s supporters. Furthermore, after the election, Abe was investigated by police and charged with embezzlement. He allegedly had cut down trees on the head temple grounds and illegally used the profits from their sale to fund his election campaign.

Because so many allegations were made concerning the election and its results, Nichiren Shoshu had no choice but to seek help from the bureau of religious affairs in the Ministry of Education. In June 1928, after six months of arbitration, the ministry finally acknowledged the election result, and Houn Abe, now called Nichikai, became the sixtieth high priest of Nichiren Shoshu. Meanwhile, the faction led by Koga Arimoto continued to attack Nichikai, accusing him of election fraud, lack of scholarship and sexual misconduct. (Houn Abe, when he was assigned to Josen-ji in Tokyo, had an illicit affair with Suma Hikosaka, a young servant, and had a son out of wedlock. Five years later Abe legally recognized his son. That son, Shinno Abe, went on to become Nikken, the sixty-seventh high priest.) In an open letter dated March 13, 1928, Arimoto’s supporters declared that Nichikai’s appointment as high priest would be “an ignominy of the priesthood.”

The factional infighting in the early 1900s also attracted much attention from the media. The March 16, 1926, edition of the local paper, Shizuoka Minyu Shimbun, reports: “Nichiren Shoshu Taiseki-ji continues its ugly infighting. Priests and parish members have abandoned their proud tradition of the transmission of the heritage of the Law handed down from the founder seven hundred years ago and are fighting one another over the election of a high priest, causing public embarrassment to their school.”
If what was known as the heritage possessed by the high priest had been sacred and absolute, the factional infighting and elections for the office of high priest would have been regarded as grave sacrilege. In reality, however, many priests did not recognize it as such and thus caused a drawn-out internal conflict over the seat of high priest. This is further evidence from the history of the Fuji School, which makes clear that the doctrine of the infallibility of the high priest is no more than a makeshift dogma. It is a position conveniently invoked by the priesthood to silence criticism toward the high priest.