Utsubusa, the lady of ［内房女房］ (n.d.) ( Utsubusa-nyōbō): A follower of Nichiren who lived at Utsubusa in Ihara District of Suruga Province, Japan. Judging from the content of an extant letter Nichiren sent to her in 1280 called White Horses and White Swans, she seems to have been a woman of considerable erudition and affluence. Marking the hundredth-day anniversary of her father’s death, she made an offering of ten thousand coins to Nichiren and declared that she had read and recited the entire Lotus Sutra once, the “Expedient Means” (second) and “Life Span” (sixteenth) chapters of the sutra three hundred times each, and the verse section of the “Life Span” chapter three hundred times. In addition, she said that she had chanted the daimoku fifty thousand times. Views differ as to whether she is the same person as the lay nun of Utsubusa, whom Nichiren mentions in his Letter to Misawa; one account holds that she is, and another regards her as the lay nun’s daughter or daughter-in-law. The latter is most probably the case, however, because Nichiren wrote in Letter to Misawa, “[The lay nun of] Utsubusa is the same age that my parents would be” (896).