  Nevertheless a special place is accorded the nation of Japan. The Japanese nation is in a position to foster not only an awareness of the East but also a global awareness on the part of every nation. For Japan is the nation in Asia that has best retained Asian traditions while adapting Western technology and values. In the new world order Japan can stand for Asia, and stand against the domination of the West.  Nishida’s language, perhaps deliberately ambiguous to avoid his incarceration, ostensibly wavers as to whether this special mission describes Japan’s calling, what it can be for the world, or refers to its current practice in its war-time struggle with other nations. A charitable reading of Nishida’s statements on the special place of Japan interprets them as advocating that his country overcome its outdated vision of itself as a colonizing nation, and embrace a global conception of itself as a nation interacting with other nations in a world of mutually defining  equals.[4]   A more critical reading interprets these statements as falsely absolutizing the particular nation of Japan, suggesting that Japan embraces other nations of the East which is abstractly opposed to the West. Similar challenges face us in the twenty-first century not only in a world of continuing imperialism and contesting nations with different religious and cultural traditions, but also in single nations of multicultural composition.