 The foundations of Watsuji’s thought were the extensive studies in Western philosophy that he engaged in during his earlier years, up until 1917 or 1918, followed by his extensive studies in Japanese and Far Eastern philosophy and culture. Upon his return from Europe in 1928, and as a direct result of being among the very first to read Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Watsuji began work on Fūdo (Fūdo ningen-gakuteki kōsatsu), translated into English as Climate and Culture. ‘Fūdo’ means “wind and earth…the natural environment of a given land” (Watsuji 1988 [1961], 1). We are all inescapably environed by our land, its geography and topography, its climate and weather patterns, temperature and humidity, soils and oceans, its flora and fauna, and so on, in addition to the resultant human styles of living, related artifacts, architecture, food choices, and clothing. This is but a partial list, but even this sketchy list makes clear that Watsuji is calling attention to the many ways in which our environment, taken in the broad sense, shapes who we are from birth to death. Heidegger’s emphasis was on time and the individual, and too little, according to Watsuji, on space and the social dimensions of human beings. When we add to our sense of climate as including not only the natural geographic setting of a people and the region’s weather patterns, but also the social environment of family, community, society at large, lifestyle, and even the technological apparatus that supports community survival and interaction, then we begin to glimpse what Watsuji had in mind by climate, and how there exists a mutuality of influence from human to environment, and environment to human being which allows for the continued evolution of both. Climate is the entire interconnected network of influences that together create an entire people’s attitudes and values. “History and nature,” remarks Yuasa Yasuo, “like man’s mind and body, are in an inseparable relationship” (Yuasa 1996, 168).  Culture is that mutuality of influence, recorded over eons of time past, which continues to effect the cultural present of a people. Who we are is not simply what we think, or what we choose as individuals in our aloneness, but is also the result of the climatic space into which we are born, live, love, and die. 