  Because of his prestige as Japan’s premier philosopher, government officials—among them his former student and then Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro—appealed to him to justify Japanese nationalism. Nishida complied by addressing the issues, if not legitimizing Japan’s expansionism and imperialism. Yet he considered much of that work a distraction. He lectured on “The Problem of Japanese Culture” in 1938; when published two years later the book quickly sold some 60,000 copies. He delivered an invited address to the emperor in 1941 that advocated academic freedom and a place for each nation in the global world, with each developing its own global  perspective.[1]  Addresses on the “Principles for the New World Order” and on “The Body (or Essence) of the Nation” (kokutai) followed. During this time Nishida’s critics on the right considered his political writings either too abstract or insufficiently supportive of the government; his leftist critics, especially after the Second World War, found them profusely nationalistic. Despite his failing health and the bombing of cities all around him, Nishida persisted in his philosophical investigations, using for example Descartes’ Cogito and Leibniz’s Preestablished Harmony as points of departure. He completed the seminal essay, “The Logic of Place and the Religious Worldview,” just two months before his death on June 7, 1945. Publication of his collected works in 19 volumes began two years later. An extant photograph shows dozens of people camped out all night long awaiting the issue of the first volume on July 20, 1947.