Relationship between Chinese Confucianism and modern Japanese language: taking I am a cat as an example (original) (raw)
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Religions, 2024
This paper examines the intersection of Confucianism and Buddhism as presented in the Nihon‑ryōiki (NIH), focusing on the catechetical efforts of its Buddhist author to fuse these ethical traditions. A central concern of the text is the introduction of karmic law and rebirth, concepts that Buddhism imported from ancient India that were not fully accepted in Japanese society at the time of its composition. This study explains how many of the miracles described in the NIH are consistent with Confucian values, particularly in their emphasis on benevolence, compassion, and social duty. In this paper, I argue for synthesizing Confucian and Buddhist ethics in the NIH as universal values that underscore the importance of social harmony based on filial duty—the Confucian worldview underlying the NIH’s linking of personal conduct to the cosmic law of karmic retribution.
Confucianism as Cultural Constraint
Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at Kobe Shoin トークス, 1999
Confucianism as Cultural Constraint * Ken Tamai Due to its uniquely adaptable qualities, Confucianism has survived 2,500 years of history and still exists as the core of morality in Asia, specially in the north eastern part of Asia: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. Although there is a tendency recently to attribute Asia's economic success to the moral qualities of Confucianism, the shapes and forms of Confucianism vary greatly. Confucian moral values have developed in different ways through different processes of history in their respective countries, and it thus becomes necessary for researchers to clarify the characteristics of Confucianism in each respective nation. This study aims at looking into Confucian influences on the behavior of the Japanese, particularly influences on human relationships. Three hypothetical views on Japanese Confucianism are introduced: 1) Confucianism as a framework that determines reciprocal social roles of the people involved. 2) The effect of determined social role as default interpersonal relationship which enables high-context communication. 3) The tight and inseparable combination of moral values with the social structure. Discussion follows here on three of the most influential moral values: loyalty, filial piety and harmony. These values are considered to be working not only as a source of moral qualities but also as expected behavioral codes in different contexts of one's social life. Thus, by focussing on the socio-, *This paper is part of a project subsidized by Shoin Women's University and was written based on the presentation given at the World Congress of Comparative Education held at
Asian Studies Review, 2015
The purpose of this conceptual paper is to understand the role of Confucianism Chinese philosophy in influencing modern Korea and Japan. This paper found that Confucianism had a significant impact on current modern world. However, it has been a selective application. Confucianism still has vital value within the modern times; this paper examined to expound the modern significance of Confucianism, In particular, it is clear that Confucianism has had profound influence on world politics and foreign policy. The major focus was on the impact of Confucianism on modern world politics and foreign policy. In the field of international relations and foreign policy analysis, it is well known that ideas are always critical to any changes of a country's foreign policy. The author examined the influence of Confucianism Chinese philosophy on Chinese domestic politics and modern politics. The analysis covered recent arguments about the role of Confucianism from several leading contemporary thinkers. Korea and Japan spent much time culturally and politically under the influence of China, Which brought Confucianism to these countries? Korean, as well as Japanese communication is heavily influenced by Confucian traditional values. It is demonstrated that those values are changing. But they seem to be better preserved in Korean society based upon the educational system of teaching moral values, nationalism, and arrested Cultural Revolution.
This article employs the history of Confucianism in modern Japan to critique current scholarship on the resurgence of Confucianism in contemporary China. It argues that current scholarship employs modernist formulations of Confucianism that originated in Japan’s twentieth-century confrontation with Republican China, without understanding the inherent nationalist applications of these formulations. Current scholarly approaches to Confucianism trace a history through Japanese-influenced U.S. scholars of the mid-twentieth century like Robert Bellah to Japanese imperialist and Chinese Republican nationalist scholarship of the early twentieth century. This scholarship employed new individualistic and modernist visions of religion and philosophy to isolate fields of “Confucian values” or “Confucian philosophy” apart from the realities of social practice and tradition, transforming Confucianism into a purely intellectualized “empty box” ripe to be filled with cultural nationalist content. This article contends that current scholarship, by continuing this modernist approach, may unwittingly facilitate similar nationalist exploitations of Confucianism.
Rethinking Confucianism: Past and Present in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam (review)
China Review International, 2003
Rethinking Confucianism is a collection from the UCLA Asian Pacific Monograph Series consisting of sixteen excellent essays that reexamine the meaning and role of "Confucianism" in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam largely in light of two central presuppositions. The first is that Confucius represents the cultural backwardness and conservative agendas that many progressive thinkers in Asia saw as an obstacle to positive change. The second is that Confucius provides the core values, in all their permutations, of a stable and human-centered community, such as the kind that has recently been credited with enabling the economic growth in so much of Asia in the 1980s and 1990s. Rethinking Confucianism challenges both of these presuppositions on a number of grounds, but in generaland despite the fact that this grand text takes generalization to be more of an impediment than an aid to serious study-I will say that the challenge focuses more on the failure to properly frame the discussions around "Confucianism" in a context that is specific enough to do justice to the inquiry. For instance, specific geographical, cultural, historical, and sociopolitical factors must be taken into account that show how Confucian thought was initially "appropriated" by Japan, Korea, and Vietnam and then later "reappropriated" in the twentieth century by these countries and by China as well. This goes hand in hand with the philosophical reality that Confucianism itself must be defined and, as this tour de force of essays shows, must happen in a specific context for any
CONFUCIANISM AND EDUCATION (Special issue of Asian Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2)
Asian studies, 5(2), 2017
Since Immanuel Kant’s seminal essay “What is Enlightenment?”, independent, autonomous and critical thinking has stood at the forefront of any “progressive” (and even any reasonable) theory of education. In today’s neo-liberal and globalized world, the common trend of making everything a marketable commodity has also affected this, notwithstanding the fact that the ability to establish one’s critical and independent judgement remains the very basis of becoming an autonomous individual, and represents a central pillar of democracy. As such, critical thinking has become a product that can be bought, sold or even stolen––just like its traditional breeding ground, namely institutionalized education. It may thus be time to mourn the loss of the critical mind, and so mark the sad end of a certain kind of education, one which gave a key place to the humanities. However, instead of grieving for such losses and memorializing the end of the European subject, who has obviously lost his free will in the whirlwind of the all-embracing market economy, and sadly died in front of the barbed-wire fences defending his homeland from thousands of unarmed, weakened, starving and freezing refugees, we are searching for alternatives. As such, we present in this issue another kind of education. Admittedly, the values Confucian education aimed to foster did not include much absolute independence, but it still laid emphasis on autonomous critical thinking and genuine humaneness. While many believe that Confucianism is incompatible with the critical mind and personal autonomy, this issue aims to show that this wide-spread prejudice is rooted in a lack of knowledge. The most common image of Confucianism is that it was advocating a strict, rigid and hierarchically structured society based on the absolute obedience of those at the subordinate levels of the system, and, analogously, on absolute power of their superiors. However, we would like to present another Picture of Confucian education, one that is more academically justified and closer to the truth. It is important to recall that this model was originally, and especially in the classical Confucian teachings, rooted in the principles of complementarity and reciprocal responsibility. Moreover, while the autocratic model of hierarchy, by which the ruler’s authority was absolute and their responsibility towards their subordinates reduced to a mere formalism or symbolism, has undeniably held sway in Chinese history, we must also bear in mind that Confucianism in its role as the state doctrine represented the interests of the ruling class, and as such was defined by legalistic elements that are not found in original Confucianism. We must not forget that hierarchic structures are also present in Western democratic systems, and most importantly, authority based on experience, knowledge and abilities is not necessarily a negative ideal, or a threat to individual autonomy. The Confucian classics stress the important role of ideational and axiological elements, like rituality, relational ethics, the virtues of humaneness and justice, and the crucial role of education as a basic means of cultivating and thus improving (inborn) humaneness in order to achieve progress and social development. While they also lay stress on the so-called “Six Arts”—ritual, music, archery, chariot-riding, calligraphy, and computation—it is clear that the Confucian classics see morality as the most important subject. Confucian didactic methods are rather remarkable. Like Confucius, a Confucian teacher never lectures at length on a subject. Instead, he or she poses questions, quotes passages from the classical works, or applies fitting analogies, and then waits for the students to find the right answers “independently”––by themselves. According to the Analects, Confucius pointed out that thinking without learning is blind, and learning without thinking dangerous. Besides, he also asserted that attacking the views of others is harmful. This tolerance is based on a notion of moral autonomy, which is typical for the Confucian ideal personality, and implicit in most of the Confucian discourses. As such, promoting education is one of the most important Confucian values, and it is better to educate one’s children than to give them wealth. However, education is not only the wealth of a person, but also that of the cultures and societies he or she lives within. It is the most valuable inheritance we can give future generations. Moreover, in today’s globalized world, in which different traditions can interact and learn from each other, this kind of inheritance can be exchanged, combined, synthesized and thus enriched. Therefore, this special issue wishes to present different approaches to achieving and preserving this, in the West, at least, hidden treasure. It also aims to raise awareness regarding a particular, culturally and historically conditioned model of institutions, didactic structures and axiological priorities, which differs profoundly from traditional Euro-American educational models.