 In the long run, however, German philosophy, especially German idealism had the most lasting and deep influence. This was partly a fortuitous connection brought about by the close association formed in the late nineteenth century between Tokyo Imperial University and Germany. Not only were some key early foreign professors at Tokyo from Germany, but also Germany became the favored location for sending Japanese philosophy students for foreign study. Another factor was the modernization strategy of Japanese government and intellectual leadership. To modernize as quickly as possible, a Western country was identified as the model to emulate for each academic field. For example, for medicine and physics, Germany was the target; for government bureaucracy, France; for agricultural science and public education for school children, the United States. Once the decision was made, urgency made it difficult to change direction. And Germany was chosen for philosophy. In that context even more than Plato or Descartes, Kant was considered the key figure for the founding of tetsugaku. He had settled the challenge of Hume’s skeptical stance toward science, saved us from scholastic theological metaphysics by establishing critical philosophy and the antinomies, as well as given direction––either positive or negative—to the development of Fichte’s philosophical anthropology, Hegel’s dialectical thinking, Schopenhauer’s and Nietzsche’s Will, Kierkegaard’s subjectivism, and the later school of neo-Kantianism. At least that became the mainstream view among the majority of Japan’s early twentieth-century philosophers.