 The Tokugawa regime largely distrusted Buddhism with its armies of monks on Mt Hiei and Mt Kōya and with its popularity among peasants who rebelled (for good reason) over high taxes and the mismanagement of agricultural resources. Hoping to centralize the government by building up large urban centers, the shogunate believed Confucianism could support its aims. First, compared with Buddhism and Christianity, Confucianism in Japan was basically secular and unlike Buddhism had no preexisting institutional networks to conciliate. As a philosophy, Confucianism stresses communal harmony grounded in hierarchical social relations, an ideal that had served the state well in building Japan’s first permanent capital in eighth-century Nara. Perhaps it could work again. Lastly, Confucian academies could serve the new urban, literate, and mercantile culture the shogunate was envisioning.