 He taught that if one will advance to the stage of being able to recite the most ancient Man’yōshū verses aloud, one will be affected to the point where only one’s body remains mired in the here-and-now, as one’s language and heart (kokoro) are transported back to the ancient past. In the process one will spontaneously acquire the virtues of that past—truthfulness, directness, manliness, vitality, and native elegance—which were the antithesis of the notoriously corrupt political culture of his times. He also became virulently anti-Chinese, insisting that the absence of native Japanese words for the classic Confucian virtues was evidence that such teachings were unnecessary in ancient Japan when life enjoyed a morally and ethically untutored order rooted in its conformity to the natural rhythms of heaven and earth.