NISHIDA KITARŌ (1870–1945) is generally considered the most original modern Japanese philosopher and the galvanizing force behind the creation of the Kyoto school of philosophy. Nishida, who incorporated Mahāyāna Buddhist spirituality and its worldview into his philosophical system, made his debut in Japanese philosophical circles in 1907, while he was a professor of psychology and logic at the Fourth Higher School in Kanazawa. After a year of teaching at Gakushūin, the Peers School, in Tokyo, he became, in 1910, a professor at the Imperial University of Kyoto, where his career flourished. Nishida's personal life during this period, however, was plagued by a series of illnesses and the deaths of several members of his family, causing him to call the source of philosophy the "pathos of life" rather than the "wonder." His retirement from the university in 1928 marked the beginning of a productive...