Japan's ability to successfully modernize in the late nineteenth century was directly tied to certain unique features of her traditional culture. Most important were two factors: the tradition of borrowing from others who were culturally and/or technologically advanced and the institutions and values associated with Japanese feudalism. Beginning as early as the 6th century A.D., the Japanese demonstrated an ability to adopt foreign ideas and adapt them to Japanese society without fundamentally altering indigenous values. At this early date the Japanese borrowed heavily from China, whose cultural achievements were superior to those of Japan, but the Japanese never lost sight of who they were in cultural terms. In this way, Confucianism, Buddhism, Chinese architecture and the written Chinese language in character form came to Japan. All of this and more was digested and distilled by the Japanese to accommodate already established Japanese cultural norms. The end product was a Japanese version of imported Chinese culture that was made to serve pre-existing values. When the leaders of the Meiji Restoration turned to the task of transforming Japan to the status of a modern nation state, they drew on this tradition, borrowing much from Western nations, but ultimately they created a unique and, at base, thoroughly Japanese version of modernity. Although the hardware and technology of Japan's modernization was frequently unchanged and identical to that of modern Western states, social and political values thought to be "modern" by the West were imported and modified by the Japanese to reinforce long standing political and social norms. There is no better example of this than the establishment of political parties and the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution in the decade of the 1880s. Known to the West as "modern" political institutions, in Japan they were controlled by traditional elites and functioned in a decidedly undemocratic fashion.