The Hokke mondō shōgishō 法華問答正義抄 consisting of 22 fascicles was written by Nichizen 日全 (1294–1344), a monk belonging to the Nakayama monryū 中山門流 of the Nichiren School. In this book, he exerted himself not only to stress the orthodoxy of the doctrine of Nichiren School, but also to strictly criticize the dogmatics of other Buddhist schools including Zen Buddhism. For Nichizen, the Uzenshō 有禅抄 was one of the source books for criticizing Zen Buddhism, and its two parts of quotations are found in volume 17 of the Hokke mondō shōgishō kept at the library of Rissho University as handwritten copies made by Saitō Yōrin 斉藤要輪 in the 1930s.
In this paper, I analyze those quotations, and make clear their historical and philosophical meaning, especially through their relationship with the two fascicles of the Himitsu shōbōgenzō 秘蜜正法眼蔵, which many of scholars of Zen Buddhism have hitherto believed that Dōgen 道元 (1200–1254), the first patriarch of the Japanese Sōtō School, wrote.
One of the important results of my research is that these two fascicles of the Himitsu shōbōgenzō, i.e., the Butsukōjōji 仏向上事 and the Shōji 生死, may have been edited under the influence of the Uzenshō by someone / several persons succeeding to a linage of the Japanese Sōtō School after Dōgen’s death.
