There is a rumor that he is a member of Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist association affiliated with the teachings of Nichiren.
Plans for a railroad bisecting the Bōsō Peninsula were drafted by the Railway Ministry in the Meiji period, with the aim of connecting the town of Kominato (now part of Kamogawa City), a town facing the Pacific and famous as the birthplace of Nichiren, for economic and military reasons.
He arrived ten days later at the residence of Ikegami Munenaka, a lay believer who lived in what is now Ikegami, the site is marked by Ikegami Honmon-ji.
This is unusual because Motonobu was a member of the Nichiren or Hokke sect.
He became a full member of Soka Gakkai International, a lay Buddhist association affiliated with the teachings of Nichiren.
Ryūkō-ji, marks the site where Nichiren was to be executed.
Hon'ami Kōetsu founded an artistic community of craftsmen supported by wealthy merchant patrons of the Nichiren Buddhist sect at Takagamine in northeastern Kyoto in 1615.
It is said that, on September 12, 1271 Nichiren, arrested in his hut in Nagoe and on his way to the execution ground in Tatsunokuchi to be beheaded, turned to Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū and yelled: "Hachiman Bosatsu, if you are a kami, give me a sign for the sake of Buddhism!"
The story goes that one day, Nichiren the founder of Nichiren sect of Buddhism, dropped in at the house of his old friend, Tokimitsu on his way to Sado.
During the Edo period (1603–1868), Tomari Jochiku, a Confucian monk of the Nichiren sect who had been born in Yakushima and served the Satsuma domain, saw the destitution of the islanders in Yakushima and submitted a plan to cut down yakusugi to the Shimazu clan daimyo.