@jamesrg Oh, btw, the pure centre and the impure periphery?
That shit isn't even Japanese. It's Neoconfucianism and was stolen from the Chinese.
Literally, Neo-Confucianist scholars (this would be the predecessors to where my masters studies started, so think 1600s and 1700s) basically said "Naw, China isn't the middle kingdom. Japan was the real middle kingdom the whole time!"