This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Niwano Nikkyo was drawn to the Lotus Sutra in the 1930s through Reiyukai, a Nichiren-descended lay Buddhist organization he joined after seeking help for his daughter's serious illness from one of its chapter leaders. What began as a search for help with a personal family crisis became, through his involvement with Reiyukai, a deepening engagement with the sutra at the center of its teaching.
That engagement grew into dissatisfaction. Niwano Nikkyo came to disagree with Reiyukai's position that formal study of the Lotus Sutra's own teaching was unnecessary for its lay members, believing instead that sustained study and discussion of the text belonged at the center of religious practice rather than at its margins.
In 1938, he broke away from Reiyukai together with fellow member Naganuma Myoko to found Rissho Kosei Kai, formally established on March 5 of that year and built, from its founding, around shared lay study and discussion of the Lotus Sutra alongside ritual practice. The organization he and Naganuma Myoko founded treated the disagreement that had driven their break as a founding principle rather than a passing dispute, putting sustained textual study at the center of the movement in a way its parent organization had not.