 An important legacy of Confucian philosophy in modern Japanese history derives from Confucian understandings of the philosophy of history. This is evident in the transition from the Tokugawa period, dominated politically by a samurai regime led by a shogun, to the Meiji period, at least billed as a restoration of imperial rule. Rather than assuming that history was progressing ever forward to incrementally better levels, Confucians tended to see ideals in the past. Therefore, they often advocated a return to a supposed golden age as a means to improve conditions in the present. Confucius himself had denied that he was an innovator, insisting that he only sought to transmit the ideals of the past. Although Confucius might have cast his work as mere transmission, he was clearly innovating in revolutionary philosophical ways. The political transformation giving rise to the Meiji imperial regime, at least in terms of its philosophical presentation as a return to an ancient, supposedly more ideal model, was characteristically Confucian. So was the fact that this purported return to the past ushered in a profoundly new historical period, one that revolutionized most aspects of life.