 In 1943 Yatsugi Kazuo, a member of the Center for National Strategy, approached Nishida and asked him to contribute a scholarly account of Japan’s role in East Asia, that is, to help provide a rationale for the creation of the so-called “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Nishida is said to have burst out in anger, shouting something like: “What on earth do government officials and militarists think these days, that scholars are like artisans from whom they can order something to be tailor made?” And yet Yatsugi apparently countered to the effect that not only prominent Japanese scholars, such as Fukuzawa Yukichi, but also Western philosophers, such as Kant and Adam Smith, did not neglect to apply their theoretical insights to practical social and political circumstances (see Ōhashi 2001, 47). In the end Nishida did agree to write an essay, “Principles for a New World Order” (NKZ XII, 426–434; see Arisaka 1996), though his original text was edited and “simplified” by a sociologist serving as a go-between. Nishida was even then disappointed that his attempt to “bring out the dimension of universality present in the Japanese spirit” seemed to have had no effect on Prime Minister Tōjō Hideki and his bellicose regime (see Yusa 1994, 124).