 With the swing toward conservatism and nationalism in the late-Meiji period, philosophical voices such as that of Inoue Tetsujirō advocated not so much a faithful return to Confucianism per se but to what Inoue called kokumin dōtoku, or “national ethics.” This set of teachings was based largely on selective Confucian virtues such as loyalty and filial piety. Inoue is also noteworthy for having led the way, albeit along highly nationalistic lines, in interpreting Confucian developments of the early-modern period as movements in “philosophy,” using the newly coined Japanese word, tetsugaku. This Japanese word chosen as the gloss for “philosophy” alluded back to, in Chinese literature, the Book of History, a Confucian classic, where tetsu (C: zhi) refers to the “wisdom” manifested by the ancient sages of China. In that respect, the “study of wisdom,” the literal meaning of tetsugaku, was as much an apt characterization of the Confucian project as it was one of the western field of philosophy.