The Nichiren tradition divided early, over which of his senior disciples held his intention, and it has gone on dividing.
Nichiren Shu is the largest of the traditional schools, with its head temple at Kuon-ji on Mount Minobu; its own figures report several thousand temples and some millions of adherents, and they are self-reports. Nichiren Shoshu traces itself to the disciple Nikko, holds its head temple Taiseki-ji near Mount Fuji, founded in 1290, and rests its authority on the Dai-Gohonzon, a mandala it holds Nichiren inscribed in 1279 as the object of worship for all people. The other schools do not accept that object's status, and some question the artefact itself.
The modern story belongs to the laity. Soka Gakkai was founded in 1930 by two educators, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda; Makiguchi died in prison in 1944, having refused the state Shinto talisman. Under Toda and then Daisaku Ikeda the movement grew into the largest lay religious organisation in Japan, initially through an aggressive method of conversion, and in 1964 it founded Komeito, which has been in coalition with the Liberal Democratic Party since 1999.
For most of that period Soka Gakkai was the lay organisation of Nichiren Shoshu. The relationship broke. The priesthood excommunicated the entire lay organisation on 28 November 1991, and its individual members in 1997. In 1998 it demolished the Sho-Hondo, the vast hall Soka Gakkai had paid to build in 1972. Soka Gakkai removed the last references to the priesthood from its rules in 2014.
It is among the largest institutional ruptures in modern Buddhism, and it left a priesthood separated from most of its people.