ABSTRACT
Nishitani Keiji was one of the leading figures to emerge from the ongoing interchange of philosophical and religious thought between Japan and the West which began with the Meiji restoration in 1868. He, together with his mentor Nishida Kitaro, was a member of the Kyoto school, a group of thinkers who adapted some of the concepts of western philosophy, particularly those of German idealism and existentialism, to the expression of the unmediated experience of Zen Buddhism. Of particular interest to Nishitani were the similarities between Zen and existentialist ontology. He was not uncritical of western concepts, maintaining that the many dualisms to be found within western thought, such as those of subjectivity and objectivity, time and eternity, being and nothingness, creator and created, the personal and the impersonal, could and should be superseded by sunyata , the Void or emptiness. Sunyata is not to be understood in nihilistic terms, but instead is the all- encompassing predicateless unity which underlies all phenomena.
