Word: hokkekyo
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Once again, as they had for 700 years, the chosen priests of Japan's Nichiren Buddhist sect trouped to the temple of Hokkekyo to undergo 100 days of purification and study. At the temple gateway stood Chief Priest Nissei Nakakita, asking the novices for six times last year's entrance fee. For three months of contemplation and 700 duckings in the ice-cold waters of the temple pump, 58 novices paid the inflated rate. Outside "the door that is not opened" devoted followers waited eagerly for their cries as freezing water coursed down their naked bodies...
...Hokkekyo was not the only place in Japan last week where the interests of God and Mammon were becoming entangled. Shinsho Temple's plump, leathery Abbot Araki had to journey 40 miles to Tokyo to find out where his temple and its 350 employees stood under the new Labor Standards Act. So far his only word of encouragement has come from Temple Warehouse Keeper Shigeru Shinohara, head of the union of which 252 temple workers (including all 22 priests) are members. "We want regular wages," Shigeru said, "but no regular eight-hour working days. Sometimes a whole delegation...
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