 Understood most comprehensively, the importance of Confucianism in Japanese history is undeniable: as in China and Korea, Confucian philosophizing in Japan came to define one major if not dominant layer of the early-modern and modern worldviews. Its lexicographic legacy is omnipresent in modern Japanese discourse, with Confucian terms playing new roles in discourses ranging from modern philosophy to science, religion, the humanities and the social sciences. One indication of the importance of Confucianism to Japan today is that the modern word for “university” (J: daigaku; C: Daxue) is taken from the title of the first of the four books of Neo-Confucianism, the Daxue (The Great Learning; J: Daigaku), a text that was understood as the gateway to learning for adults. This legacy, incidentally, is one that originated in Japan, with the founding of Tokyo Imperial University and a number of other imperial universities including Kyoto Imperial University, but soon spread throughout East Asia. The acceptance of this designation signaled the consensus among East Asian statesmen and intellectuals regarding the significance of Confucianism for the advanced educational values of the region as well as the multifaceted lexicon of Confucianism as the most apt for conceptualizing and ultimately translating modernity.