Matsubagayatsu Persecution ［松葉ケ谷の法難］ ( Matsubagayatsu-no-hōnan): An attempt on Nichiren’s life by believers of the Pure Land (Jōdo) school at his dwelling at Matsubagayatsu in Kamakura, Japan, on the twenty-seventh day of the eighth month, 1260. The attack was motivated by anger at Nichiren’s criticism of Hōnen, the founder of the Pure Land school, and his teachings. Nichiren had publicly expressed these criticisms in On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land, which he submitted to Hōjō Tokiyori, the retired regent but de facto leader of the shogunate, on the sixteenth day of the seventh month in 1260. In this treatise, he called upon the rulers to stop patronizing Buddhist schools whose teachings he described as provisional, especially the Pure Land school, which encouraged people to abandon the Lotus Sutra. Turning against the correct teaching, he said, was the basic cause for the disasters facing Japan in his time, and upholding it would stem these disasters. This apparently incensed Hōjō Shigetoki, father of the regent Nagatoki, and other members of the ruling Hōjō clan who were ardent followers of the Pure Land teaching and its priests. These shogunate officials apparently played a role in inciting Pure Land followers to attack and attempt to kill Nichiren. On the night of the attack, a group of several hundred people besieged Nichiren’s dwelling at Matsubagayatsu, though he had already managed to escape. He then went to the home of his follower Toki Jōnin in Shimōsa Province, where he spread his teachings for nearly half a year until he returned to Kamakura the following spring.