RISSHŌ KŌSEIKAI (Society Establishing Righteousness and Harmony) is one of the new religions of postwar Japan. It was founded in 1938 by Niwano Nikkyō (1906–1999), at that time a minor leader of Reiyūkai, and his disciple and assistant Naganuma Myōkō (1889–1957), a woman with shamanic attributes. The school regards the Lotus Sutra as the ultimate source of their teachings.

Niwano Nikkyō was born into a farming household in a mountain village in Niigata Prefecture, went to Tokyo in 1923, and eventually became a shopkeeper. In his early twenties he studied systems of fortune-telling based on people's names and on rules governing auspicious and inauspicious dates (rokuyō) and directions (shichishin) derived from ancient Chinese forms. In 1934, when his daughter became seriously ill, he turned to Arai Sukenobu, a chapter leader in the Reiyūkai organization and a renowned...