 Without foreign ideas being coerced on them, Japanese thinkers had the luxury of alternatives outside the binary of simple wholehearted acceptance or utter rejection. New theories from abroad could be tried and, if need be, experimentally modified before making a final decision about endorsement. Sometimes a foreign philosophy might be seen as supplying raw material to be fashioned to serve ongoing native philosophical enterprises. In other cases a new philosophy might be imported whole cloth to either supplement or supplant a home system of thought. Because of those circumstances, Japanese philosophers acquired skill in analyzing foreign ideas by examining the cultural assumptions behind them to determine their potential implications if they were to be adopted into their own culture.