 Five months before the end of the Second World War, Watsuji organized a study group to re-think the Tokugawa Period (1600-1868), which resulted in his popular work, Closed Nation: Japan’s Tragedy (Sakoku), published in 1950. Some critics reacted by dubbing this work “Watsuji’s Tragedy” (LaFleur 2001, 1), yet La Fleur insists that Sakoku, together with a collection of other contemporaneous writings, provides a serious and important insight into Watsuji’s later philosophical position. His focal thesis was that the tragedy of the Japanese involvement in the Second World War was a direct result of Japan’s policy of national seclusion. Isolationism took Japan out of the events of the world’s activities for two centuries, allowing the West to outstrip Japan in terms of science and technology. But even more important is Watsuji’s insistence that the nationalists and militarists should have seen that Japan was in no position to win the war since both “men and materiel were in increasingly short supply” (LaFleur 2001, 3). Not that Watsuji opposed the war, but the point he was making was that the tragedy came to be because the earlier isolationist attitude had been revived from 1940 on. Japan was out of touch with the strengths and determination of its adversaries, and seemingly convinced that the character of the Japanese people would ensure success. Furthermore, coupled with this short-term return to a head-in-the-sand isolationism of the 1940s, was Watsuji’s insistence that throughout most of Japan’s history, the Japanese people had demonstrated an intense curiosity and a robust desire to learn, and in particular to learn from cultures quite different from their own: “No matter how far we go back in Japanese culture we will not find an age in which evidence of admiration of foreign cultures is not to be found” (Watsuji 1998, 250). Japan was withdrawing inwards at precisely the time when the West’s expansionism and imperialism was gathering steam. LaFleur goes so far as to suggest that in a 1943 lecture to Navy officials, Watsuji attempted to warn those in charge of the dangerous course they continued to pursue. LaFleur speculates that this is why Watsuji felt no need to recant after the War had ended. The salient point of all of this is that the instances of isolationism in Japanese history are exceptions which run counter to what Watsuji saw as the dominant tendency of the Japanese to both welcome and encourage outside influence. Japan’s national character throughout the bulk of its history displays a remarkable openness to and interest in other cultures, and a steadfast desire to learn from those cultures. He was advocating a return to this more ‘normal’ attitude towards the outside world, and not a return to Japanese nationalism or chauvinism. Watsuji presents us with a complex perspective. 