He was made Deputy Minister of Austria-Hungary to Japan, where he remained for 4 years, studying Buddhism and marrying a young Japanese woman from a samurai family, Mitsuko Aoyama.

They had seven children, including Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, best known for his role in establishing the Pan-European Movement, and Ida Friederike Görres, a well-known Catholic author.

He had expected to confirm his antipathy towards the Jews when he started work on his treatise, Das Wesen des Antisemitismus (The Essence of Antisemitism).

He further sought to defend the Jews against bigoted charges of parasitic greed and cowardice with anecdotal counterexamples of Jewish industriousness and martial courage.

[3] An English translation of his book Das Wesen des Antisemitismus (1901) was published in 1935 as Anti-Semitism Throughout the Ages, with an additional chapter on "Jew-Hatred To-Day" added by his son Richard.