History of Japan men instead joined forces with Emperor Go-Daigo and overthrew the Kamakura shogunate. Japan nevertheless entered a period of prosperity and population growth starting around 1250. In rural areas, the greater use of iron tools and fertilizer, improved irrigation techniques, and double-cropping increased productivity and rural villages grew. Fewer famines and epidemics allowed cities to grow and commerce to boom. Buddhism, which had been largely a religion of the elites, was brought to the masses by prominent monks, such as Hōnen (1133–1212), who established Pure Land Buddhism in Japan, and Nichiren (1222–82), who founded Nichiren Buddhism. Zen Buddhism spread widely among
Nichiren Buddhism Japan while Tadao Yanaihara described Nichiren as one of the four historical figures he most admired. While various sects and organizations have had a presence in nations outside Japan for over a century, the ongoing expansion of Nichiren Buddhism overseas started in 1960 when Soka Gakkai president Daisaku Ikeda initiated his group's worldwide propagation efforts growing from a few hundred transplanted Japanese to over 3500 families just by 1962. Nichiren Buddhism is now practiced in many countries outside of Japan. In the United States Prebish coined the typology of "two Buddhisms" to delineate the divide between forms of Buddhism that