A Study of Styles and Materials used in Nichiren's Letters and Works

日莲（1222 - 1282）是日本佛教主要教派之一日莲派的创始人。他的许多书信和作品仍以其原始形式保存着。在这项研究中，我们试图积累这些原始文字的基本数据，关于书写垫的材料和尺寸以及它们今天是如何安装的。为了收集资料，我们集中在日莲的原始著作中的主要作品，而忽略了一些我们无法直接访问的材料。在此基础上，我们试图从现存的文献资料中，为重建日莲著述的原貌而搜集资料。书写垫的类型及其尺寸）以及纸张的使用与内容之间的关系没有得到适当的关注。此外，甚至像日莲文字的大小这样的基本数据，迄今为止也没有人研究过。因此，我们对日莲的原始著作进行逐篇研究，建立了一个日莲原始著作的基础数据库，与同时代的大师如神兰、霍念等相比，日莲留下了大量的原始著作。因此，即使在古地理学方面，本研究可以在很大程度上有助于研究其他当代宗教大师的原始著作。

Nichiren (1222 - 1282) is the founder priest of Nichiren Sect, one of the major Japanese Buddhist denominations. Many of his letters and works are still preserved in their original forms. In this study, we attempted at accumulating fundamental data on such original writings, regarding the materials and sizes of writing pads and how they are mounted today. For the collection of data, we concentrated on the major works among Nichiren's original writings, leaving aside some materials that we don't have direct access. Further, from today's preserved condition, we attempted at collecting data for reconstructing original condition of his writings.As for the philological study of Nichiren's writing till today, the study of the style (I.e., types of writing pads and their size) and of the relationship between the usage of paper and the contents has not been paid proper attention. Moreover, even the fundamental data like the size of the characters in Nichiren's writing have not been studied so far. Therefore, we researched Nichiren's original writing paper by paper, and we made a kind of fundamental database on Nichiren's original writings.Comparing to contemporary masters like Shinran and Honen, Nichiren left enormous amount of original writings. Therefore, even in paleographical terms, the present study can contribute in great deal to the study of original writings of other contemporary religious masters.