His duties also included the translation of European books into Japanese for review by a select group of government officials within the Tokugawa bakufu.

Aside from Nishi, the Yōgakusha included Fukuzawa Yukichi, Mori Arinori, and Nakamura Masanao, who were all schooled in kangaku, a kind of traditional Chinese learning.

With increasing foreign pressure on Japan to end its national isolation policy, in 1862 the Shogunate decided to send Nishi and Tsuda Mamichi to the Netherlands to learn western concepts of political science, constitutional law, and economics.

The two Japanese students were put in the care of Professor Simon Vissering, who taught Political Economy, Statistics and Diplomatic History at the University of Leyden.

[1] Nishi brought back to Japan the philosophies of positivism, utilitarianism and empiricism, which he transmitted through his writing, lectures and participation in Mori Arinori's Meirokusha, and contributed numerous articles to its journal.

Through Nishi’s transmissions, positivism was able to thrive in Meiji Japan because it gave the Japanese people a chance for stabilization and understanding in a society and culture that was undergoing rapid revolutionary change.

To Nishi, positivism was the Western counterpart to Eastern practical studies (jitsugaku), with an emphasis on a hierarchy of knowledge similar to that of Confucianism.

Nishi’s encyclopedia essentially classified and categorized the intellectual realm of Western civilization, including topics such as literature, natural sciences, mathematics, theology, and politics.

[5] Nishi was unique in this society in that he maintained a view of Japanese modernization in which he reconciled traditional Confucianism with Western Philosophy and pragmatism together in order to ascertain the correct path for Japan to take.

This publication was an original piece of Nishi scholarship that dealt with two main topics: the separation of politics and morals, and the distinction between human and physical principles.

[1] In Jinsei Sampo Setsu (1875) he urged all Japanese to seek the goals of health, knowledge and wealth, or what he called the “three treasures,"in place of Confucian subservience and frugality.

[1] Moreover, Nishi thought that the Japanese government should be responsible for promoting the pursuit of these three treasures in society as well, and in turn, the political and national strengthening within the Meiji Enlightenment would not require Western rule or governmental tactics.

[1] Nishi promoted that if policy were structured based on enhancing general happiness through an equal balance of domestic enforcement of law, diplomacy and military defense of society, encouragement of industry and finance, and obtainment of the state’s own three treasures, this would be the key to good government.

Nishi was a tireless advocate of Western civilization as a role model for Japan's modernization, stressing the need to evolve without losing the Japanese character.

He was responsible for using classical Chinese terminology to translate and/or transmit common terms used in Western Philosophy into Eastern dialect, and many of these philosophical words are currently in use today.

[9] Tetsugaku is the first known recording of an Eastern term representing the notion of philosophy, which Nishi referred to as “the study of human nature and the principles of things.”;[10]).

The site is surrounded by earthen walls, and in addition to the main house and storehouse, there is a garden and a farmland on the back side, which is the basic layout of a samurai residence.