 Nevertheless, even after we have carried out a hermeneutically sensitive reconstruction of the context, and after we have finished reading between and behind the lines of his political texts, there undoubtedly remain a number of controversial aspects of Nishida’s political thought. Affirming the central place of the emperor in Japan as “an identity of contradictions,” Nishida cryptically writes: “Our [i.e., Japan’s] national polity is not simply a totalitarianism. The Imperial House is the beginning and the end of our world, as the absolute present that embraces past and future” (NKZ XII,  430).[16]  And with regard to the central role of Japan in East Asia, he claims that “in order to build a particular world, a central figure that carries the burden of the project is necessary. In East Asia today there is no other but Japan” (NKZ XII, 429; Arisaka 1996, 102).