I remember asking her if “kaikyoge” was shindoku or modern Japanese, and she got restless with me, if not a bit annoyed. Myosho Obata at the Portland Nichiren Shu temple. The Nichiren Shu booklet I shared in this thread was actually given to me by Rev. Apparently, they said to her, “It doesn’t matter what it means….” My mother actually joined Nichiren Shōshū in the 1970s, but she became frustrated when no one could explain to her what exactly it was that she was chanting. Just did a google search but can't locate it right now. Kanse Capon posted a recitation of the Lotus Sutra in English on the internet a while back. I've heard positive experiences with that. If you feel like chanting in English, do it. If you want to understand what is chanted, just read an English translation. You would in fact need to learn Japanese first for it to make sense to you. In short, a modern Japanese translation of the Lotus Sutra will not lead to Japanese language proficiency. Japanese is a very hard language to learn and master precisely because there are different modes of the language, not to mention you need to be able to read 2000+ individual characters with their onyomi and kunyomi variations, on top of all the combinations of characters. If you really want to understand you might want to take up Japanese language study.

They are not in spoken Japanese because formal written Japanese and spoken Japanese follow different conventions. There are translations of the Lotus Sutra into modern Japanese. (It is, of course, said that Nichiren Buddhism is the only truly Japanese form of Buddhism.) But back to my original question: does anyone know where I could find a copy of the lotus sutra in modern day spoken Japanese? Seems like an extremely on-topic question for this forum.

Gongayo china gongyo