The Japanese introduced Confucianism in the sixth century. Unlike Confucianism in China and Korea, which was strong and all-encompassing, Confucianism in Japan developed in a radical way. As Macfarlane (2007: 200) states: "It [Confucianism] provided some norms of behaviour, particularly in the relations between human beings, but it was not a religion or even a widespread set of principles which set up an ideal against which a person should measure his or her life. It has profoundly affected much of Japanese life, but…it lost its Axiality as it was absorbed." This statement from Macfarlane (2007) points us towards a very important point. In contrast to China and Korea, where Confucianism shaped both Chinese and Korean social and political organisations,
