 Not having a philosophical tradition of its own, proto-Shintō did not so much argue against or refute the Chinese idea of the mandate of heaven; it simply ignored it, however fundamental it was to Confucian political theory. It is significant that no major Confucian thinker, not even in the most ascendant period of Confucian philosophy under the Tokugawa shogunate, vigorously argued that the mandate of heaven should supersede the Shintō justification for imperial rule based in the function of the emperor as holographically reflecting the ontological, inherent connection among the kami, the Japanese people, and the physical land of Japan.