Broadly speaking, a yamato nadeshiko is a "flower of Nipponese womanhood": a woman with attributes that were considered desirable in the neo-Confucian Japan of the nineteenth century and beyond. The term was generally ascribed to noble women with traditional upbringings, but after the formal abolishment of the caste system it passed into wider use among the new "middle classes". Being a yamato nadeshiko revolved around the Confucian concepts of Feudal Loyalty and Filial Piety.