 Confucianism had been part of Japan’s intellectual tradition since ancient times, but a series of events in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries breathed into it new life. With their skills in Chinese language, their general knowledge of Chinese culture, and their intermittent personal contacts in China, Rinzai Zen Buddhist monks often served as advisers about China to the medieval shoguns. Yet, for the most part, the Rinzai monks had lost touch with Confucian movements in China through much of the medieval era and were surprised to discover in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that since the eleventh century totally new forms of Chinese Confucianism had developed, what is called in the West neo-Confucianism.