 In an illuminating study of the debates surrounding the concept of “philosophy” in Japan since the Meiji period (1868–1912), John Maraldo has isolated four senses in which the notion of “Japanese philosophy” has been used: (1) Western philosophy as it happens to be practiced by Japanese scholars; (2) traditional Japanese thought (Confucian, Nativist, Buddhist, etc.) as it was formulated prior to the introduction of Western philosophy; (3) a form of inquiry which has methods and themes that are Western in origin, but that can be applied to pre-modern, pre-Westernized, Japanese thinking; and (4) a kind of reverse Orientalism that asserts the superiority of specifically Japanese ways of thinking.