 In his book written around the same time, View of the World and the Nation, Nishitani went so far as to claim that this was the moment in time when the “focal point of world history” was to become the Japanese nation, just as previously world history had centered on the Roman Empire and then later on the British Empire. However, Nishitani argued, unlike the former two empires Japan’s historical mission was to bring about a world that has “no specific center” but rather consists of various “politically and culturally unified spheres” (NKC IV, 298–300). The Japanese nation would be able to carry out this mission, he crucially adds, only if it incorporates a religious spirit of self-negation, thus becoming what he calls a “nation of non-ego” rather than a self-centered aggressive empire (NKC IV, 285–86). In this idealistic vision, which unfortunately had little to do with the cruel realities of Japanese expansionism, Japan was to be an altogether new kind of empire, a self-negating and compassionate one that would help other nations to cooperatively form their own identities, rather than an aggressive and “imperialistic” one that would remold others into inferior replicas of itself. (It remains for us to ask how best to characterize today’s political superpowers and economic empires, and how to relate their ideologies to their realities.)