 First, in the two or three centuries preceding the modern period, Confucianism and its secular academies dominated the philosophical scene. Since Confucian philosophy placed a premium on the mastery of classic historical texts and given the etymology of the neologism tetsugaku, it is probably not surprising that the study of the history of Western thought was one pillar of the Japanese philosophy curriculum. Many young philosophers could read the original texts in English, German, or French and sometimes also in Greek or Latin. For a wider audience, there was a major publication effort to translate major Western philosophical works into Japanese. With Japan’s new openness to Western ideas, modernization, and the democracy promised in the Meiji Constitution of 1889, there was initially an attraction to the liberal political ideas of Rousseau and J. S. Mill, for example.