Cheng Hao
Neo-Confucianism was brought to Japan during the late Kamakura period. It was spread as basic education for monks in training and others of the Five Mountain System (Gozan) network of Zen temples while its theory was completed by annotations brought by the monk Yishan Yining, who visited Japan in 1299 from the Yuan Dynasty, in the form of the Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-Confucianism. Moreover, Neo-Confucianist thought derived from the works of Cheng Yi, Cheng Hao, and Zhu Xi, and the then-orthodox ideology of China and Korea. The rise of Neo-Confucianism in Japan was aided by state support from the Tokugawa government, who encouraged the establishment of national secular ideology as a method of strengthening political rule over the country. The philosophy had arrived earlier in the 14th century, but knowledge of it was limited to Zen monasteries, who saw Confucianism as intellectually interesting, but secondary to Zen, and some schools like the Ashikaga Gakko.