 The liberation of Neo-Confucianism from the domination of Zen learning only became possible in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, following Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s (1537–1598) invasions of the Korean peninsula. As a result, a number of Neo-Confucian texts that included pointed critiques of Buddhism came into Japan. As the anti-Buddhist perspectives of these texts came to be ever more influential throughout the seventeenth century, an increasingly common theme in Japanese Neo-Confucian discourse was its relationship, positive or negative, to Buddhism.