was a Buddhist priest who spread the teachings of the Lotus Sutra to the island of Yakushima in southern Japan. In 1488 he founded the temple of . Due to his missionary activities all of the temples on the island transitioned to the Nichiren school of Buddhism.
In the 1480s, Nichizō retreated to a cave atop Mount Nagata where he recited the Lotus Sutra for seven days. Since then, the native kami of the Shinto religion, Hikohohodemi no Mikoto, has been venerated as a manifestation of the Buddhist mountain deity Ippon Hoju Daigongen. This fusion of the indigenous Shinto religion with the introduced Buddhism religion is known as Shinbutsu-shūgō.
References