The idea of a determinant appeared in Japan and Europe at almost exactly the same time although Seki in Japan certainly published first. In 1683 Seki wrote Method of solving the dissimulated problems which contains matrix methods written as tables in exactly the way the Chinese methods described above were constructed. Without having any word which corresponds to 'determinant' Seki still introduced determinants and gave general methods for calculating them based on examples. Using his 'determinants' Seki was able to find determinants of 2 × 2, 3 × 3, 4 × 4 and 5 × 5 matrices and applied them to solving equations but not systems of linear equations.