On the other hand, Nishida recognizes that religion is a social and cultural phenomenon, and that the contemporary individual is a subject of a state. He seems however to reverse any implied priority of culture over religion and state over individual: it is because culture is religious in its core that we find religion in every culture; and obedience to the nation must be based on true religious awareness. To be sure, writing under a totalitarian government in 1945, Nishida couches his statement