 On the other hand, Nishida did think that nations—and in particular the Japanese nation with the emperor at its spiritual center—had a special role to play in the historical formation of this truly “worldly world” (sekai-teki sekai). Moreover, in his writings he did affirmatively employ such problematic phrases as “all the world under one roof” (hakkō-ichiu) and the “imperial way” (kōdō). While there is certainly room for criticism here in light (and hindsight) of the historical record of Japan’s political and cultural “leadership” (in fact, domination) of East Asia at this time, the issue of how to critically evaluate Nishida’s theoretical interventions is complicated by the hermeneutical fact that today we read such catchwords and phrases through the semantic lenses of the right wing ideologues who in the end succeeded in carving their definitions into the annals of history. It must be kept in mind that, at the time, the precise meaning of these phrases was still in dispute. Ueda Shizuteru has aptly spoken of Nishida’s “tug-of-war over meaning,” a struggle which he ultimately lost (Ueda 1994, 97; also see Goto-Jones 2005). Yusa Michiko writes in this regard: “Rather than invent a new vocabulary that would rise above the fray, [Nishida] took up the jargon and slogans of the day and sought to redeem them from their petty provincialism by opening them up to a more universal perspective” (Yusa 1994, 131).