 As the second fountainhead of Japanese philosophy, Confucianism entered the country as a literary tradition from China and Korea beginning around the sixth and seventh centuries. By then it already enjoyed a sophisticated continental philosophical heritage well over a millennium old. Confucian philosophy in Japan underwent only minor changes until its second wave in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries after which it experienced major transformations as it became Japan’s dominant philosophical movement until the radical changes brought by the modern period. With the Meiji Restoration of 1868, that is, with the overthrow of the shogunate and the return of imperial rule, Confucianism receded somewhat in its philosophical dominance, yielding to the rise of Western academic philosophy, State Shintō ideology, and the secularized version of bushidō (Way of the warrior) as promulgated in the educational program of National Morality. That is not to say, however, that Confucianism did not continue to remain influential in its emphasis on scholarship, the definition of hierarchical social roles, and general models of virtue.