Nishida Kitarō, founder of the Kyoto School, opened his first book, An Inquiry into the Good (1911), with two words: pure experience. He meant experience before anything is added to it: the instant of seeing a colour or hearing a sound, before any thought that this comes from outside, or that I am the one feeling it, before even judging what the colour is. In that instant there is not yet a subject or an object; knowing and the known are one. In the preface he turns the usual picture round: it is not that there is experience because there is an individual; there is an individual because there is experience. The term comes from William James (No. 02), whom Nishida read closely and cites in the same chapter; he brought it into conversation with Zen practice and German philosophy. We print the kanji in a light Japanese serif, with the English beneath.