 A conference on "overcoming modernity" proclaimed the "world historical meaning" of the war was resistance to the Western cultural ideas imposed on Japan.The Meiji Restoration had plunged the nation into Western materialism (an argument that ignored commercialism and ribald culture in the Tokugawa era), which had caused people to forget they were a classless society under a benevolent emperor, but the war would shake off these notions.The government likewise urged the abandonment of Western ways—such as baseball and jazz—for a pure spirit of sacrifice.