 The unintentional founder of the Kyoto School is  Nishida Kitarō[1]  (1870–1945). In the Meiji period (1868–1912), when Japan reopened to the rest of the world after more than two centuries of national isolation, a generation of scholars devoted themselves to importing Western academic fields of inquiry, including “philosophy.” After many years of studying Western philosophy and Eastern classics, alongside a dedicated practice of Zen Buddhism, Nishida was the first major modern Japanese thinker to successfully go beyond learning from the West to construct his own original system of thought. This he began to do in his maiden work, An Inquiry into the Good, published in 1911 (Nishida 1990). On the basis of this work he obtained a position in the Philosophy Department of Kyoto University, where he went on to ceaselessly develop his thought and to decisively influence subsequent generations of original philosophers, including the two other most prominent members of the Kyoto School, Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962) and Nishitani Keiji (1900–1990).